Zemanta, a service that helps bloggers find related content as they write, launches a new version of its service later today. As well as a general makeover designed to make its widget lighter and faster, the big change is that Zemanta is opening up its recommendation engine to no longer just include so-called ‘professional media’ but also content from its community of users. This, says the company, will create a level playing field, giving community content the same chance of being featured as more established sources as long as it’s deemed relevant. However, it’s not yet clear if all community content will make it into Zemanta’s index.

For those that do, however, being regularly featured as a ‘related content’ source could drive significant traffic for a small blog, and presumably that’s Zemanta’s gamble. While it risks diluting the quality of those links, it gives joe-blogger another reason to keep using the service.

On that note, the service offers stats to its users showing how many links they’ve received each month and where they were published.

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