Stealth Marketing

The Wall Street Journal reports today that we have a blog portal and newsreader. Who knew?

The company in September quietly launched a Weblog portal located at www.projectdu.com and known as “Project D.U.” — the initials stand for “Digital Universe.” Surfers are greeted by links to such categories as “music” and “entertainment,” which in turn lead people to about 30 Weblogs, those quirky but burgeoning Web-based diaries of commentary and opinion, also known as blogs. Project D.U. carries a reminder that it is “presented by SBC.”

Also available: an invitation to download a free Weblog reader. The technology involved essentially ships blog content to individual computer users. People who accept the reader aren’t limited to SBC’s blog choices. In fact, they can customize the reader to get any type of downloadable information they might want, says Michael Grasso, SBC’s executive director of consumer marketing.

Sounds like it’s being run a bit like the Gawker media empire, but without all the porn.

c.f. feedster, technorati