The Scoop

Sacramento Connect, the linking and social media network launched by The Bee, now has 34 partners and will soon add Sacramento Magazine and its sister publication, Our Wedding Magazine, as well as several others.

Among the most recent partners are Cakgrrl.com, a food, wine, recipe, travel and entertainment website; Buckhorn Road, a local school teacher who blogs about education, politics and current events; the Citrus Heights Herald, a hyperlocal news site and a sister site of partner Rancho Cordova Post; Quantum Dice, a news media blog from former McClatchy editor Howard Weaver; and several blogs on gardening: the Sacramento Vegetable Garden, The Farmer Fred Rant and Through the Garden Gate.

The full list of current partners can be found here.

We'll keep adding partners as well as working on the toolbar you see at the bottom of your browser that allows you to find content from partners and share content. We'll also be stepping up our efforts to promote content from our partners in The Bee so we can keep readers informed on where to find some of the most interesting content in the region.

We continue to make improvements and add partners to Sacramento Connect, the content linking and social media network that debuted two weeks ago. The toolbar you see at the bottom of your browser is sort of the glue that holds the network together, and you can use the toolbar to find related content across the network and to share it via email, Twitter and Facebook.

Each partner was invited into the network by Bee editors or applied to join. Bee editors are looking for regional sites and blogs that frequently post and are transparent in who writes the posts and any sourcing used in those posts. We're also looking for posts that are interesting and well written. The intent is to make it easy for readers to find quality, related content by using the toolbar, which is on every page of sacbee and on partner sites and blogs. So part of improving the network will come as we add more quality partners, such as Saving in Sacramento, Cakegrrl, Sacramento Sidetracks, Sacramento Vegetable Gardening and Nanny Goats in Panties, a humor blog, that all will be debuting on Sacramento Connect in the coming days.

As we anticipated, during the first days of testing Sacramento Connect there were some technical bugs to work out. We think we've identified and ironed out most of the bugs, and now our tech team is focusing on improving the user's experience with the toolbar and adding other improvements to the landing page for Sacramento Connect. We also will be making improvements on how we highlight some of the best content from partners, including on the homepage of sacbee, via Twitter and Facebook and in the paper.