We spend a lot of time at Viget keeping an eye on new site launches. Since we help traditional businesses be successful online and work with emerging Web 2.0 companies (e.g., Squidoo, Pickle) to plan, design, build, and market their sites, staying current is key for us. People often ask what blogs we follow to keep up, so I did a quick Lab Poll and put together our list of top 10 blogs following Web 2.0 (in no particular order):

1. TechCrunch - Mike Arrington reviews new companies often after a talk with the founder(s). The reviews are quick and to the point. With 85,000+ feed subscribers ranging from geeks to venture guys, TechCrunch is currently the center of the Web 2.0 buzz.
2. GigaOM - While not solely focused on Web 2.0, GigaOM is ranked one of the top 100 blogs by Technorati and CNET, with a monthly audience in excess of 500,000.
3. PostBubble - This blog “asks industry experts about what they believe will succeed or crash and give it to you” — meaning each review comes with a success or failure bet.
4. eHub - Designer Emily Chang runs Ideacodes and keeps up eHub with brief listings of new sites, occasional details in her blog, and quick interviews with the brains behind the start-ups.
5. rev2.org - This site covers everyday topics around Web 2.0, written by Sid Yadav of Queenstown, New Zealand.
6. Mashable - Pete Cashmore’s blog covers social sites and Web 2.0 startups.
7. Dion Hinchcliffe - Dion runs Hinchcliffe & Company in nearby Alexandria, VA. His blog generally focuses on the impact Web 2.0 will have on enterprise applications, but with this post Dion predicts the next round of “Breakout” Web 2.0 Sites.
8. Read/WriteWeb - Here blogger Richard MacManus gives us “information on innovative Web apps and services, together with product positioning, Web news and industry insights.”
9. /Message - Stowe Boyd, another local, is known to be an authority on social media, and his blog covers Web 2.0 accordingly.
10. SolutionWatch - Brian Benzinger provides well-written, in-depth reviews of emerging sites.

Update - James Yu of BuzzShout (mentioned below) points out the ShoutBlog, where he provides more detailed info about the sites being submitted to BuzzShout.

Many of these blogs are part of the Web 2.0 Workgroup, a network of blogs focused on Web 2.0. While its not a blog, last week Seth Godin and Alexaholic put together this list of 937 Web 2.0 companies sorted by their Alexa traffic rank at the Web 2.0 Traffic Watch List. The list is based on the All Things Web 2.0 directory. Both Web 2.0 List and BuzzShout let the users list, rate, and review sites. These are all great resources for following the hundreds of new companies in this space. If it’s really just those glossy, pastel logos you care about, skip right to web2logo.com or create one yourself.

While we’re on the topic, Web 2.0 events and conferences are popping up all over the place. Two notable ones are:

• O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Conference - Nov. 7-9, San Francisco, CA - Now in its 3rd year, this is the major conference following Web 2.0.
• The New New Internet - Web 2.0 for Business - Sept. 20, McLean, VA - ExecutiveBiz (which I help to run) is organizing this one-day East Coast event which will focus on the impact Web 2.0 is having on business. Both Dion and Mike Arrington will be speaking, and many emerging companies will demo their wares in the Technology Showcase. Use the promo code “vigetdeal” and get $50 off your registration.

With all the activity around new site launches, following Web 2.0 is increasingly time-consuming. As new blogs jump on our radar, we’ll no doubt update our feeds and post an updated list — let me know if you have any suggestions …

Update: I’ve created a Squidoo lens called Top Blogs Following Web 2.0 as a more permanent location for this list of blogs and resources.

One of the great trends around blogging is that book authors can use blogs to share their thoughts as they happen, gauge their readers’ reactions and interest to ideas as they are formed, and then select their most compelling work (or Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas, as the case may be) and put it into a tidy, portable (as in hard copy aka “old school portable”) format that’s marketed, distributed, and consumed like any other book.

Would you pay $16.35 for a book full of “best of” blog entries that you can also get online, just in a different order (book is alphabetical, blog chronological)? If you like what you’re reading, I expect you would. What about if you’d already read every entry, the day Seth Godin wrote it? If you’re a Seth fan, certainly. That’s just what Seth’s latest book, Small is the New Big, is: blog entries (mostly) in a “handy, nearly waterproof, easily shared and referred to format.” It’s a book that was prepublished in bits on Seth’s very popular blog, and it’s going to be a bestseller.

In a nice chat with Guy Kawasaki this week, Seth points out that “books are the new t-shirts.” He likens them to souvenirs as he explains how non-fiction work is written these days — with all the “core ideas available for free, online” and often in pieces as it is realized. The result is that the readers are along for the ride, and authors have a much better sense for what’s working.

Would prepublishing work this well for other industries? If the Rolling Stones had released the riff to Satisfaction the moment Keith Richards came up with it, would they have recorded the song the same way? And, would people have still listened (again)? If you watched one scene from Rocky every day for a month, would you go see them all put together in a movie?

Prepublishing certainly works in building web businesses. When we run a strategy workshop, we try to conjure up every idea, every possible feature, every marketing tactic that might fit, and then focus in on just what we need to build to go live. Launch something remarkable, but keep it as simple as possible. Then, stay dedicated to adding to that foundation over time by building in all those great features, with their priority influenced by your early users. If Seth sat down to write a book every day, he’d get nothing done — no blog posts and no books. When you think about your web business, think in manageable pieces and consistent progress.

By prepublishing the core elements of your web app as a starting point (i.e., the beta period), you’ll leverage user community feedback and practical experience to ultimately create something that’s much more likely to be successful. Try to do too much all at once, and you just might get nothing done.