Paying bills collectively with friends is common, but keeping track of such matters, particularly for recurring charges or moments of extensive cost write-ups (vacations, for example), can be a taxing process in and of itself. You might do it by way of the age-old paper-and-pencil routine. Or through a spreadsheet king like Microsoft Excel. But if in the case that you reside somewhere in the middle and need a quick and simple application to get the job done, a utility by the name of Shareabill may come handy.

It keeps everything sorted. And it’s as much calculator as organizer. You note who is responsible for what and how much they must pay, and as each party billed presents you with money to pay charges to your credit card or recompense for past cash transactions, Shareabill sorts it out until all t’s are crossed and i’s dotted. Furthermore, if there is a discrepancy with a charge that still requires discussion, messages can be posted to help bring clarity to such a situation. (For those “Who said they’d pay for the extra round at the bar last night?” moments.)

There’s really nothing too complex to Shareabill. It sports a sensible design, we think. You might prefer something a bit simpler and more amenable to free-form assembly of bills, but it’s easy enough that it will presumably cause little or no trouble for most users.

Its creators describe a feature in development that will prove useful for those seeking to climb out of the hole that is the IOU. If you’re in the situation that you need to recoup multi-party borrowings intelligently without exchanging cash with the same persons again and again as you run through an extensive history of past dues, Shareabill promises to offer a feature called Debt Shuffle. It is in beta now and closed for testing, however. For the time being, only Shareabill’s standard provisions - a standard desktop browser-based solution and mobile site - are accessible.

Source:Mashable!

This past weekend, much of the Mashable team descended on Las Vegas for the second annual BlogWorldExpo. The conference, which brings together hundreds of bloggers and the companies that provide services to them (platform providers, widget makers, and ad networks) is a combination of dozens of discussion panels, exhibiting companies, and of course, parties.

Along the way, much was gleamed about the current state of the blogosphere and social media, and where it all might be heading in the months and years ahead. The official BlogWorldExpo site has tons of links to coverage around the Web, but here were the major trends spotted by Team Mashable:

Users Own The Comments, Not Bloggers

By my count, at least a half dozen companies at BWE either provided a commenting system for bloggers or attempted to organize comments in a more meaningful way. The main premise behind these companies – which include Disqus, JS-Kit, and SezWho – is that users should own their comments. They provide commenters with a login that can be used across all of the blogs that use their system, and then an account where they can go to manage and track all of these comments in a central location.

As such, the argument goes that if you’re a blogger, using one of these systems should improve engagement because users are more likely to comment when they can own it. These services have been gaining a lot of momentum this year, and the space was further validated yesterday as Automattic acquired one of the top players – IntenseDebate – who was also in attendance at BWE.

Widgets Are Evolving Into Web Rings 2.0

Remember web rings from the Internet of the 1990s? They are making a comeback in a big way in the form of widgets. Numerous widget providers at BWE were offering publishers ways to improve their page views – either by syndicating their content elsewhere or by doing a better job of driving intrasite traffic.

For example, Widgetbox has a new network that allows you to place your blog into an interest channel – such as technology – and then install a widget that links to content from other members of that channel. Meanwhile, Lijit looks to increase page views by adding social search to blogs, while Outbrain looks to do the same by identify your blog’s best content and providing widgets that link to it. Of course, the issue with widgets is that they take up real estate on your blog – real estate that can otherwise be used for making money through ads. Which brings me to my next point …

Everyone is Launching an Ad Network

There are more options than ever for monetizating your blog, and it would seem that everyone with any sort of scale is trying to get a piece of the pie by launching their own advertising network. Some – like Buzzlogic and Technorati – are already live and accepting new publishers, while others are still under wraps and slated to launch within the next couple months. The basic premise of most of them is that they have a network that is large enough and has the critical mass necessary to serve advertisers, while having the data about users and blogs needed to target ads effectively.

With so many ad networks launching, consolidation would seem to be inevitable. Similar to how one of this year’s trends has been aggregating activities from the hundreds of social networks that have launched, perhaps one of next year’s will be aggregating and making sense of all of the ad networks.

Twitter, Twitter, Twitter

One of the most popular posts in the history of this blog was one Pete penned in 2006: “If You Don’t Get MySpace, You’re a Lametard.” The same could probably be said these days for Twitter, at least if you’re a blogger or work in the social media space.

Aside from the fact that Twitter was being used by virtually everyone at the conference to document what was happening and to plan activities, we heard from a number of people and companies not in our immediate social circle that are using Twitter in productive ways. For example, in the “Creating Customer Loyalty with Social Media” panel, we heard from Tony Hsieh of Zappos, the online shoe company, and Frank Eliason of Comcast, the much-derided cable company, about how their respective companies are using Twitter to respond to customers and improve their customer relationships.

Blogs Are Increasingly Becoming Mainstream Media and Vice Versa

Coincidentally, Technorati released its “State of the Blogosphere 2008” report on Monday after BWE concluded. Many of the findings rang true with what we experienced at BWE, especially the assertion that “the lines are continuing to blur” in response to the question “what is a blog?”

There are many reasons for this. As you’ve probably noticed with the new Mashable design, while we still meet the generic definition of “a collection of stories posted in reverse-chronological order,” our blog is now complete with sections for different topics, our own job boards, and also includes coverage and ticketing for our events all around the country. This trend can be seen on blogs not just in the tech vertical, but all over the Web as blogs become small-to-midsized media companies in every sense of the term.

Additionally, at the same time that large blogs start to resemble mainstream media sites, the amount of blog posts is actually on the decline as so much conversation moves to services like Twitter and Frienfeed. At BWE, this was certainly the case, leading Louis Gray to ask “Q: Were there any good blog posts that covered the Blog World Expo panels? All those bloggers, and no “coverage”? Did I miss them?” which was quickly met with the following response from Robert Scoble: “The best coverage was live Tweets and conversations on FriendFeed. That’s what http://search.twitter.com and FriendFeed’s search is there for …”

So What Does It All Mean?

While one could easily conclude with the overdramatic “blogging is dead” as many big blogs transition towards media companies and many individual bloggers embrace microblogging over long-form text, I think the more accurate statement would be “opportunities abound for niche publishers.” One of the coolest things about BWE was meeting lots of bloggers that are finding success outside of the tech space – people who are using lots of the same tools that we are to build an audience and reach underserved niches.

In short, while it may not be the best time to start another broad tech, politics, or celebrity gossip blog, if you’re able to find a unique segment within a big vertical, there have never been more ways for finding an audience and building a brand that will resonate. And, once you’ve done that, there have never been more tools for helping make some money along the way. So blog on, and thanks to BlogWorldExpo and Las Vegas for a fantastic weekend

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