Betabeat caught wind that we’re opening our public beta to the world. We have deep coverage in fashion, food, tech, home, music and are a great way to add content, community and traffic to publisher sites, ecommerce, startups, non profits, apps and more. Reach out to matt (at) tid.al if you’re interested!

Blogger Syndication Network Tid.al Opens Self-Serve Platform in Beta by Adrianne Jeffries

New York-based content syndication networkTidal is promising it will have a ton of announcements in January, but here is the first: after almost a year in beta with partner Condé Nast, the startup is opening up its self-serve platform to the public. “This will allow online stores, non-profits, startups or most any company to easily add a crowdsourced topical blog,” the startup announced in an email today. “This is a great way to engage the Tidal community, and your biggest fans, to bring content and traffic to your website. Our self-serve platform will start at just a few hundred dollars a month, and if you join the beta program we can give you January and February free while we work out the kinks.” 

Tidal is a marketplace where advertisers and publishers can comparison shop for blog posts to fill content holes and increase their cachet with special audiences. Mashable helpfully sums up the idea as “Unlimited content for publishers, exposure for bloggers.” Most writers on Tidal already have their own established blogs; they list themselves in the directory and submit information about their influence and traction. Publishers pay a monthly fee to get blog posts recommended to them and accompanied by social and traffic metrics to help them decide what to syndicate. If a publisher sees a post they like, they can syndicate it immediately.

Bloggers are remunerated in exposure, in theory, and Tidal emphasizes this on its splash page with view counts for posts.

The startup is also announcing a partnership with BobVila.com, a home improvement guru who has already established a small empire of home design, renovation and architecture bloggers on Bob Vila Nation.

Bob Vila is the biggest name in home building, renovation and improvement. Bob learned building alongside his father and has spent his life helping teach others through thousands of TV episodes, a dozen books and now online. He truly is the dean of home repair.

Bob turned to Tidal when it was time to expand bobvila.com across the country. Bob Vila Nation features posts by hundreds of “housebloggers” renovating their own homes in small towns and big cities. At any time home renovators are refinishing woodwork, searching for the perfect paint, finishing a basement or dealing with finicky radiators. All the while they are sharing their tips, tricks, triumphs and trials with Bob Vila readers following along.

“As the most respected and well-known brand in the category, Bob Vila Nation creates a showcase where passionate and committed DIYers can share, learn, compare and show-off their home improvement projects… and grow their own audiences and fans, too.”

-Larry Bilotti, Executive Editor, Bob Vila

We’re excited to work with the Bob Vila team. Restoring old houses has a special place in Matt’s heart. He has a 1903 8-bedroom victorian in Philly that he continues to work on. He’re hoping he’ll get to meet Bob sometime!

The day after launching tid.al, Sarah Kessler of Mashable posted a comprehensive report on the launch, and how Tidal works.

A few choice quotes:

“Genius Idea: Unlimited content for publishers, exposure for bloggers.”

“Tidal seems like a no-brainer for such publishers. Instead of paying for each piece of content from a source such as Demand Media or Contently, they pay a monthly fee for access to as much content as they want.”

We think this is some great coverage of where we are today. Stay tuned for more on where we’re going.

Today was the kickoff of the fourth “vintage” of the First Growth Venture Network. This group helps to connect top startups with venture funding. Tidal was chosen from tons of applicants and we’re in good company with First Growth alums like Birchbox, ChallengePost and 20x200. 

It was a great session getting to know the other companies, getting some initial feedback on our pitches, and getting the scoop from some of the top investors out there.

Aileen Lee of Kleiner Perkins and Joe Apprendi, founder of Collective Media and a partner at Revel Partners talked a bit the gap between

There were also some great discussions on the goals of early PR (align it to business goals) and remote teams (unless they’ve worked together before try your best to skip them).

It was a great, big day. Check out the TechCrunch writeup announcing this year’s class.

We quietly launched a new feature on Teen Vogue Fashion Click. The Fashion Click 100 uses votes from readers to rank hundreds of fashionistas contributing to Teen Vogue. Everyone wants to be number 1! Fashion Click members promote to their thousands of friends, fans and followers on their blogs, Twitter and Facebook.

We think this ranking is actually pretty important. Everyone loves to have lists, ranks. The US News & World Report 2012 College rankings just came out. I think that list is the only thing keeping that brand alive. It’s been around since ‘83 and they have been trying to extend ranking to other categories; hospitals, vacations, cars, diets (?!). Everyone loves to view easy lists of the best, and oftentimes hate to be ranked on those lists, unless their #1! We’ll have to straddle the line between great info for our readers while trying to not alienate too many of our members (all of whom are amazing in our eyes).

Stay tuned for even more ranking and scoring in every topic.