What is Regator?
Regator.com and Regator for iPhone are tools that helps a mass market audience easily browse, search, read, and share the web’s best blog posts. Every blog on Regator was selected by qualified editors because of its original, well-written content. So whether users are browsing Regator’s 500+ categories, monitoring the blogosphere for a specific keyword, or searching the archive, they’ll find only relevant, high-quality posts. Regator also provides accurate real-time blog trends for any topic and fun ways to discover new content.
What is your background/bio?
Regator has three cofounders: Scott Lockhart, Chris Turner, and Kimberly Turner.
Scott has had a diverse career path that has included being a firefighter, salesman, ambulance EMT, co-owner of a hardware store in Sydney, handyman, CTO of Atlanta’s largest real estate company, and business/technology consultant, among other things. Even more confusing: His degrees are in biology and chemistry.
Chris has a BFA in studio art from Truman University and in addition to being the sole programmer for Regator.com and Regator for iPhone, is a talented artist. He has been active for many years in the independent video game development community as both an artist and programmer and is completely self-taught.
Kimberly is an award-winning magazine journalist who has occasionally dabbled in working for animal rights organizations. She never, ever thought she’d run a web startup. She has a BA in creative writing and an MA in applied linguistics from the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia).
How did you get the idea?
Scott was working as CTO of a real estate company and wanted to give agents a resource that would help them access great real estate blogs. (While “Regator” is short for “aggregator,” the “re” initially stood for “real estate” as well.) Chris and Scott began working on the site but quickly realized that the appeal of a central place to find high-quality blog content extended well beyond real estate, and the idea for the current Regator was born. We now have blogs on more than 500 topics.
What makes Regator unique?
No other site or service has Regator’s combination of high-quality, spam-free blog content; extensive, searchable blog archive; and comprehensive toolset. There are sites that have one or two of these elements, but only Regator consolidates them into one easy service.
No other site or service provides real-time trends for the blogosphere or suggestions for related searches/blog content that are as accurate and timely as those provided by Regator’s algorithms.
No other iPhone app provides the level of mobile access to the blogosphere that Regator does.
How does Regator make money?
Regator’s business model has three main revenue streams: data, mobile applications, and advertising. Regator’s data, and the way that our users interact with it, is one of our biggest assets. We’re in the process of completing a commercial API that will allow companies and institutions to access and use our data on a subscription basis; in essence, creating a data platform that provides quality-controlled data in easy-to-implement formats for purposes such as supplemental website content, analytics, trends, and monitoring. Regator is also in the final stages of developing its second mobile application, which should be for sale in Apple’s App Store within a few weeks. Of the three streams, advertising is not our main focus for revenue, but it does fit into the mix and will provide supplemental income through display advertising and sponsorship opportunities.
How has ATDC helped you?
Regator is fairly new to ATDC, but our team is looking forward to attending more educational events in the future and, in particular, to participating in the peer groups that are in the works. ATDC has been encouraging and supportive of what our team is working to achieve.
How will Regator change the world?
Regator is changing the world by making the well-written, well-researched blog posts that are created every day more accessible. We deliver search results that are more consistent than those provided by Google Blog Search, higher quality content and a better user experience than Technorati, and a far more extensive archive than Alltop. Regator is fast becoming THE go-to place to find great blog content.