Bloglines, a popular web-based RSS reader, announced that they have begun testing the waters of monetizing the service with display ads. If you login to the Bloglines start page, you may see an ad on the right hand side. In addition, if you conduct a search in Bloglines, you may see ads show up on the right hand side. It is important to note that these ads are not contextually driven, meaning the ads can have very little to do with your subscription list or your search query.

In addition to this announcement, Bloglines announced the release of a new skin to Bloglines Beta.

Here is a picture of the classic starter page:

Here is a picture of the ads on a Bloglines search result:

Hat tip to ReadWriteWeb and Matt Cutts’ FriendFeed post.

Bloglines announced a few new features you can find in the Bloglines Beta RSS reader. These include a new save feature, a photo widget enhancement, and a blog view option for the 3-Pane view. Here is a more detailed look at all three.

Bloglines Beta Save Feature:

When you view your feeds in Bloglines Beta, you will see a new “Save” button that will save the feed, with a comment in your saved folders. The save button can be found under the feed item as illustrated in the image below:

After you click on the save button, you are asked to add a comment and specify a folder you would like the item to be saved under:

You can view all your saved items by clicking on the “Saved” section at the bottom left of the left pane. It then pulls up your saved items, as shown here:

Bloglines Beta Photo Widget:

This feature gives you larger thumbnails of images from your Flickr feeds. Previously, only the text description was available, so viewing Flickr feeds is better and faster. This was a necessary feature, and here is what it looks like:

Bloglines Beta Blog View:

With RSS, some people rarely ever visit a site anymore — so a site may lose its branding. The “Blog View” allows RSS readers to see the RSS item within the full blog site, as opposed to just the text of the item. To activate it, you must be in the 3-pane view.

Notice the “RSS” and “Preview” tabs? The image above is the RSS view. Clicking on the “Preview” tab will show you the “Blog View” version:

Bloglines Beta has launched the Bloglines Top 1000 list. Didn’t Bloglines have a top blog list already? Yes, they had a top 200 list, but users wanted to see a larger picture of what feeds people subscribe to, so Bloglines has released an expanded top 1000 list. A formal announcement is planned to go live on the Bloglines News page later today, but here’s a closer look at what you can see now and some explanation.

Bloglines compiles the top 1000 list by looking at the number of "active" subscribers for a particular feed. Bloglines told us that they know people may try to game the system, so they have decided not to detail exactly how the list is computed and ranked. You can also see that Bloglines has added a graph showing subscriber trends, a top movers chart and "New to Bloglines Top 1000."

Here is a screen capture showing the trends for specific blogs:

The number seems to indicate the position a particular blog or feed previously held in the Bloglines 1000, which appears to be updated on a weekly basis. We say this because when talking about the Top Movers (below), Bloglines said that Sew, Mama, Sew came into the Bloglines 1000 this week for the first time, moving up 790 rank spaces. Here’s the chart, and you can see the 790 figure indicating the rank rise:

We assume the chart shows rank changes over time, but how long it’s plotted isn’t clear. We’re checking on that.

The Top Movers chart can be found on the right-hand side of the Top 1000 page. Below it is a "New to Bloglines Top 1000" list:

Bloglines rival Google Reader recently added subscriber counts for feeds handled by its service, but Google Reader said they have no plans to do an official top list of their own (several unofficial lists have been compiled). For more about the Google Reader stats, see this past coverage from us:

• Google Reader Now Reporting Subscriber Figures
• Are Google Reader Stats Correct? Can We Trust Feed Stats in General?
• Google Reader Says It Does "Dailyish" Update Of Subscriber Counts

Don’t forget, aside from the new Top 1000 list, Bloglines is also still running a new Bloglines Beta, which is covered more in our Bloglines Beta To Challenge Google Reader post.

Finally, we’re thrilled to make the top 1,000 list. We’re currently ranked 310 — want to help us move higher? Then subscribe to our feed in Bloglines using this button:

And/or, subscribe to our feed using any of the services listed below this post or on our search news feeds page.

Postscript: News from Bloglines now up here. Bloglines also tells us in response to questions:

• The numbers reflect the number of ranks gained from the previous week. For example, if I’m number 10 and had a ranking of 60. My ranks gained would be 50.

Bloglines released a new public beta of their popular web-based RSS reader. The new beta is optimized to run well in Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox.

The new beta has several new features including a customizable start page with drag and drop AJAX functionality, three feed viewing options including a “Quick View,” “3-Pane View,” and a “Full View.” New enhanced AJAX drag-and-drop makes feed management easy, plus a new “Unread System” that makes marking feed items clearer, quicker and easier.

I have been beta testing the beta for a while now. I am personally strongly considering switching back to Bloglines from Google Reader. I was going to do a huge review, but due to SES, I just didn’t have time.

No need to worry, Read/Write Web has a comprehensive review of the new beta Bloglines, plus there is a lot of coverage at Techmeme. You can also read Gary Price’s write up at ResourceShelf.