If before we weren’t interested at all by Shiny Media things have changed over the last weeks. Let’s be honest, why would us cowboys and muppets have bothered to follow a bunch of (not so) hot geek chicks and gadget bloggers who brought nothing to the party but occasionally were quoted in teh local UK press? Indeed, I couldn’t think of any reason to read those sites either.

But life changes and Shiny Media went in administration. Less than 2 months after new blogger gigs were available and only weeks after new editors were announced. Ever since then the blogosphere has been following Chris Price and his team. Much has been written since then and the network made a return as Shiny Trends. More →

Donations are for charities – not bloggers.

I could care less about your “growing bandwidth expenses” when the world is rife with disease and poverty. For the price of a cup of coffee I could help take your blog to the next level – but I choose not to. Something about educating an underprivileged kid or saving a kitty from an icy death tends to warm my heart just a touch more.

And I hope the same goes for you, dear blog reader. You should NOT donate when bloggers and podcasters beg for change – you should be insulted!

I can already hear blogger’s arguments.

“If the guys at Dunkin’ Donuts can do it, why can’t I.”

Well wake up, Francis – THEY shouldn’t be doing it either.

Restaurants shouldn’t automatically tack on gratuity – cause then people are left wondering – ‘should i leave something extra anyway.’

Tips should be reserved for people who go beyond the call of duty – not for people who do the bare minimum just to accomplish their job – the one they are PAID to do. Even if you go “above and beyond” to be the best blogger the blogosphere has ever seen: who cares. That’s your prerogative. Babies don’t choose to be born with clef pallets or cancer – they’re the ones who need help – not suburban bloggers.

You can blog for free these days. It costs pennies to get on the Internet. Just cause you’ve chosen to get a fancy template and the latest WordPress plugins, shouldn’t mean I have to “tip” you. Unless, of course, I get to tip you over.

Let’s cut to the chase. Your plan, dear begging blogger, is to monetize the thing. And you’re hoping “donations” will get you on the road to riches that much faster. If that’s the case, there’s a homeless guy on the corner of Maple and Main who’s a better businessman than you. And he plays the harmonica.

Are bloggers really cash-strapped? Do they need to unionize? Nah, for the most part, we’re just bored big mouths looking for a venue to vent.

Take your virtual tip jar and shove it.

If readers really want to help a blogger – and the blogging community – here’s how you can help for free: Tell a friend about the blog; Leave a comment on the blog; Offer up a guest post on the blog; Tattoo the blog’s name on your knuckles.

The list goes on and on. Just don’t pull out your wallet – I mean Paypal ID. Cyber begging is lame. There are better causes in the world. Go find one.

By now everyone already knows that bloggers have a pretty exciting life! Exciting and relaxing. Just like Franky, I’m sitting here naked from the waist down and haven’t shaved for weeks.
But as if all that wasn’t enough, a Union to protect my rights, both on insurance and financial level is exactly what I still need! I want a Union! My kingdom (and the overused wheels of my office chair) for Unionized bloggers!.

Let me explain.

A blogger’s life is hard, it’s the epitome of every professionalized freelance dream. Unionized protection IS needed!
Here’s why.

Blogger’s wake up hours need to be protected
One of the biggest advantages of being a blogger is the freedom to decide my own working hours. And start working whenever I want. With the growing amount of wannabes, it becomes important to protect this advantage: no blog network owner should be allowed to impose me to publish entries before 6.00PM (my local time!)

Coffee is expensive and should be paid for by the network owner
Bloggers are notorious coffee addicts and belong, together with (web) designers, to the resident group of $tarbuck$ squatters. Both $tarbuck$ and good coffee beans are expensive. Those expenses have to be covered by the blog network owners. No coffee beans below Lavazza or Segafredo quality should be accepted. Daily at least 3 outdoor Mochaccinos should be paid for.
Every blog entry hitting the Digg/Reddit/Netscape/Techmeme front page should be rewarded with a bonus kilo of exotic Arabica coffee beans!

Fruity hardware, allowing anytime wireless access has to be provided
How can you call yourself a decent blogger if you use a box equipped with Redmond software? Of course you need the shiniest gadget, allowing you to be online at any time. You never know you might just get that stroke of genius while you’re in the middle of the pampas, far away from your internet connection. Your iPhone will save you and allow you to publish your marvelous entry at anytime. Fancy touch keyboard inclusive.
If you live outside of the distribution area of new, shiny gadgets, it’s the blog network owner’s task to hire a bunch of hackers and make sure anyone, anywhere can access and use those oh so shiny gadgets. And brag about them on their blog. Paid by the network owner of course.

Maximum working time has to be minimalized
It is important for bloggers to be allowed to whip out quick and dirty entries. Entries that only need 4 minutes of work, proofreading inclusive. Actually, the maximum time devoted to an entry should be limited to 4 minutes. If a blogger wants to work longer at an entry, this should only be goodwill-based, not expected.

At least 200 social contacts has to be provided by the network owner
To make sure that bloggers have enough of distraction and IM noise, every network owner has to provide at least 200 active social contacts to newly hired contributors. Minimum 40% of those contacts voluntarily have to cyber on cam whenever the blogger feels the need to go dirty!

Travel equipment and expenses have to be paid for.
Being the overactive, glued to the office chair or couch, blogging species we are, I demand that every 3 months a new set of pillows and ‘soft wheels’ for my office chair and couch are provided. More experienced bloggers will get a new duvet and new bedding every 6 months.

It is obvious that we bloggers, freelance contractors, special working requirements have and those need to be protected by our future Union!
Furthermore, we shall continue to enjoy the right to decide ourselves not to work under a certain rate/entry. But that… that’s a freedom we already have.
Maybe we can oblige blog network owners to include links to at least 5 of our own sites as well. On every network blog of course!

Please give me that Union now! Let my own voice, personality and (in)competence be oppressed (protected) by the strong voice of an Union, putting everyone on the same level. Obviously Union leaders will be the best paid ones among us!!!

For a more serious take on the topic, go read Jeremy Wright’s view on the economics of unionized blogging.

This plan has been under wraps for some time now, and people I know who have been in the loop tell me they almost burst with excitement because of this un-shareable knowledge they had. I didn’t even know about it until the announcement, but people were already dropping hints. And that’s about Splashpress Media‘s recent acquisition of Performancing.com. Splashpress got to bag the metrics package and community of Performancing, and I think that’s a great thing.

Previously, it has been reported that Performancing’s metrics and community assets were acquired by PayPerPost, but that deal seem to have fallen through. Apparently, Performancing’s top honchos didn’t go too well with the idea that the new owners were of questionable online ethics (if simply because of the grey area that pay-per-post blogging occupies).

One disclaimer: JOAB is owned by Splashpress Media (the same Splashpress that acquired Performancing). And I can probably speak for the network when I say our ethics are intact, and we don’t do evil (sound familiar?).

So the Blog Herald was one big thing, and when Splashpress purchased it from Problogging, Inc last December, we were still quite inexperienced when it came to blog networks and even blogging itself. We’ve experienced a lot of growth since that time, and with another big ticket purchase, I would say we sure have a lot of challenges ahead of us! Performancing is, after all, dedicated to helping bloggers succeed, with its analytics tools and community. Hopefully we can live up to that expectation.

Performancing is now being managed by JOAB’s previous owner, the reformed (really?) Celebrity Cowboy, David Krug. I hear he has big plans, especially with building up the community. David, we’re all behind you on this!

Okay, so Shiny Media, UK’s (and Europe’s, as claimed) largest blog network has recently received venture funding.

The UK’s Sunday Times newspaper yesterday broke the news that Shiny Media have secured US$4.5m worth of funding, thanks to Bright Station Ventures who now take a 50% stake in the company.

Now the next question is what they would be doing with that money. If I were Shiny, I’d be asking for wads of cash in a few backpacks so I can just run off to some unknown island and splurge there. Okay, kidding aside. Here’s what Shiny Media says it will do with the dough.

1. Compete with mainstream media.
2. Develop the commercial side of the business.
3. Get into video production.
4. New projects and ventures.

The plans actually look promising. I mean if you’ve got several millions at your disposal, then you won’t have to worry about paying the bills and putting food on the table–at least in the medium term. That goes the same for your employees, mostly your bloggers who are the creative talent behind it all. They won’t have to worry that the network might suddenly go bankrupt one day. But then again there’s the question of creative control. Shiny’s investor now owns 50% of the network.

Well we have worked really hard to develop Shiny and we wanted like-minded entrepreneurs who were prepared to ‘sweat’ with us, not just look over our shoulder. Shaa and Dan are both dynamos who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. They don’t just bring the backing of an exciting new fund to Shiny, they also bring experience, contacts and the kind of commercial nous Shiny needs to achieve its goals.

The investors seem to know what they’re doing, with apparent experience in new media. This notwithstanding, I can see potential problems here. Sure, there’s no single entity that owns an actual majority (more than 50%), but at the end of the day, it’s he (or she) who has money who usually has the say. Remember the rumored DIGG buyout?

[R]eports came in that News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch was offering over $100 million for Digg. In Leo Laporte’s TWiT podcast netcast ( This Week in Tech Episode 77: Kiss My Ring, 1:16:25), he mentioned that Kevin (and maybe even CEO Jay Adelson) wanted to take it.

BUT and that’s a big but, the investors weren’t willing to settle with anything less than $150 million. Now, that’s what happens when you take investors. You don’t really get to say when and how you want to get compensated with a pet project that turns out get a lot of attention. Kevin’s original $10,000 capital turned $100 million in 2 years is a huge success. He surely deserves to reap the fruits of his success, and if he wants to cash in now he has every right to do so.

But then again I may be wrong. And the business model in this case is different. DIGG is surely a Web 2.0 behemoth, but blog networks aren’t probably big enough to warrant a quarrel over a matter of 50 million bucks or so.

Good luck to Shiny!

I am proud to announce you that Splashpress Media has added another blog to its Mr. Bloggy network.

In the last hours of 2006 Paul Scrivens and Splashpress Media agreed the sale of Wisdump for an undisclosed amount.
The Wisdump blog will be moved to our servers in the next days and be eratizined as soon as possible, just like the other Mr. Bloggy blogs.

No details are known yet about Scrivs’ future plans, but it is rumored he will hold a sabbatical year and prepare a music vlog network together with Prince Campell, from former Chartreuse fame.
No one less than Cowboy David Krug brokered the sale.

Wisdump is expected to stay member of the 9rules network because of its quality and unique content.

More details to come.

Reading Khaled‘s Best of the Net 2006 today I was surprised. A quote about 9rules struck me.

While I know it wasn’t fun for any of the 9rulers out there to see our network’s name dragged into the mud, it made for interesting reading to be included in the internet gossip pages.

So much for the once well known, sometimes snarkily spiced proud over at 9rules.

Khaled, an early and long time 9rules member, expresses perfectly the difference between a professionally run network like b5media and a fun board such as 9rules.

And I thought ScrivsTyme was gossip.

@ Network Director : Can someone please get rid of the excerpt on the main page?

Bloggy Network blogs are getting a facelift. We’ve talked before about the possibility of a complete redesign, but given the circumstances we thought Chris Pearson had already done an excellent theme in eratizine–the theme that JOAB, Gadzooki and Biziki use–we decided to adopt it instead network-wide. So with the acquisition of Gadzooki and Biziki, we already started to modify the theme for use on our other sites.

We’re no crack designers like Chris P., but we hope we’re doing it right. So let me introduce our first in a series of transformations–our business blog, Bizcrunch.

It’s a light-blue eratizine theme that we hope would come as easy to the eyes. The appearance is more like Gadzooki than JOAB, with a brushed-metal feel (particularly the header) and simpler lines. The font face is also smaller than JOAB’s own. But overall, the same elements are present.

We hope you like it. Comments would be very much welcome (okay, we’re enabling comments on this post). We’ll be implementing this theme across the rest of our blogs soon enough.

Our latest purchase, under the Bloggy Network group of blogs and sites, has been Gadzooki.com. It was a private sale for an undiscosed sum. Gadzooki is perhaps most famous for it’s unforgettable tagline “I want one!”. It’s a truly excellent site that shines out in the extremely competitive area of gadget-related blogs. This is largely due to the insightful, cutting-edge content of its writers: “Quimby”, “Mr Butterscotch” and “Jackoozi”- all of whom have agreed to stay on.

Gadzooki was formerly in the portfolio of Blog Media, and one of the sites that David Krug, former owner of this blog, took away with him when he parted company with BM. It was sold privately via a sitepoint auction for an undiscosed sum last May. Despite slipping to a PR5 since then (expect that to go back up pronto!)- it only had about 80 visitors per day in those days. Now it has over 500 per day, on average, and it’s starting to generate significant search results.

This purchase comes hot on the heels of our acquisition of Biziki, as reported in a previous post. Given our intended design plans to use Chris Pearson‘s eratizine theme as the design “makeover” for all our blogs- we really had no choice but to buy Gadzooki! As mentioned before, the only other blogs in blogosphere that currently have this erazatine theme by Chris are yours truly (JOAB), Biziki and Gadzooki. We happen to think that Chris is the best WP theme designer out there and that erazatine is one of his most memorable and unique designs, although he has done excellent ones since. We are thrilled (with a caveat) to have exclusively captured the erazatine theme- especially as we feel that it will stand the test of time.

The caveat is, that although we have assurances from the previous blog owners of Gadzooki, etc- we’re pretty sure that, as with all “artistic” creations, the ultimate copyright reverts to the creator. As respect to Chris, we will be putting at the footer of all blogs: “A uniquely designed theme by Chris Pearson“. And we are encouraged (although saddened by the context of the thread: that someone had stolen Chris’ design; see Blog Herald’s take on it) by Chris’ (in not mentioning erazitine) comments when he says in his post:

“There are only three “living” projects in which I retain ownership — Pearsonified, Tubetorial, and Cutline.”

In his post “How Much Should A Design Cost?”- Chris says (dated last June)-:

At this time, blog designs start at $1500. This price is for a blog that has minimal graphical complexity, no customized icons, and no logo production. What you do get at this price is rock-solid, hand-crafted, browser-tested CSS, XHTML, and simple (but striking) graphic design. In most cases, bells and whistles like plugin support, unique page designs, and extra graphics push the price up into the $1800-$2000 range. From there, the price is largely dictated by page-specific CSS/XHTML production and custom graphic design. It’s totally conceivable that a pimped out blog could run as much as $3000. Rest assured, though, that it would be totally badass, and the recipient of the design would receive mad props for having such a killer online abode.

When I emailed Chris, I told him that we weren’t put off by his prices and wanted to be “pimped out”! Anyway, it didn’t end up happening as I explained in my previous post.

So what an expensive way for us to have gone about this plan! Even after spending the dosh on Biziki and Gadzooki, we still need to convert and customize all our other blogs. Currently we have 26 blogs in our network (which we own 100%) and a further 14 related Bloggy “service sites”.

I think all of this is a result of the fact that I am, on a personal level, completely obsessive-compulsive. If I want something, I have to get it- no matter the cost. I totally understood why Chris couldn’t help us out, so no hard feelings there. But I then had to find another way, by hook or crook.

Anyway, Gadzooki is a great site, as I said. So no regrets there….!!

[tags]gadgets blog, gadzooki,chris pearson,cutline,tubetorial,biziki,erazatine,blog design,blog skins,WP themes[/tags]

Matt Craven announced at the Blog Herald yesterday that Blog Media Inc. is rebranding itself into Problogging Inc. He goes into more detail about the whys and wherefores at the Problogging site itself. It does go a long way as to explaining why Blog Media (or now Problogging) have been so aggressive recently in selling up their blogs. To name just a few-: Biziki (which we bought), Gadget Bloggers, Mobility Watch and now Sporty Blog is on sale at sitepoint. To quote Matt-:

This is part of a deliberate strategy to move beyond the “wide & deep” network strategy that we have employed in the past in order to refocus our efforts on our consulting business and expand more into services for professional bloggers, including directly consulting in that arena.

An interesting comment was left by John Evans from Syntagma Media and then a futher observation in a post-:

As I’ve written here many times, I believe the blog network concept was over-egged because Weblogs Inc was seen as a network rather than two superstar tech websites. The charge out of this space is becoming more like a stampede. As I write, Steve Rubel is asking whether Weblogs Inc itself will survive within AOL now that Jason Calacanis has left.

I am not going to argue the semantics here of this specific scenario, but I would like to pick up on the general gist of it- as there’s been a lot written about the “rise and fall of blog networks” recently.

I’m sure that Blog Media/Pro Blogging know what they are doing and have good strategies in place.

And I’m sure that Syntagma are sure that they are going down the right path as well. Anyway, it’s not really any of my business and I loathe the childish bickering that one often finds in blogosphere. Each to his or her own. And looking over one’s shoulder is a waste of time. As is egoism. Where I come from, humility is a quality, not a defect.

But what I would say is that we are perhaps seeing an evolution of the “creators” of blogosphere moving out, and the offline, “commercial players” (who can ride out long-term ROIs and gain lateral, rather than direct, benefits)- moving in.

Unlike John Evans, I believe very much that blog networks will be extremely healthy long-term investments. Far from being a “bubble”, I don’t think we have even seen the tip of the iceberg yet. Right now the US almost completely dominates the space.

This, in percentage terms, will change over time- a great deal. Blogging will increasingly become more “mainstream” and less “tekkie”. So that people who don’t even know what RSS is- will soon be signing up on their TV screens. Who do I want reading my blogs long-term? People who don’t even know what “blog” means yet. So if this takes us 5 or 10 years, so be it.

I used to work in the stockmarket and we, on a daily basis, were so obsessed with the “technicals” and trading “the margins”, that we never saw the real profits from the bull market, always too eager to buy and sell, and failing to see the overall picture.

The senior expert on a 15th Century Flemish artist, Jan Van Eyck (most famous for his “Arnolfini Marriage” portrait)- was called Erwin Panofsky. He wrote volumes about the symbolism of Van Eyck’s paintings. My point? He yearned to own a Van Eyck and was often consulted for authentication purposes. After he died and his estate was being evaluated- to everyone’s utter amazement, a small (previously unknown and attributed to “school of Master of Flemalle”) iconographic painting by Van Eyck was hanging beside his desk! In other words, while writing books and books on his favorite artist, Panofsky had missed the fact that he owned an original Van Eyck himself all along!

This was my experience playing the stocks. I was “too close to it” and too quick to predict the peaks and troughs. And this I fear is the same thing happening with false predictions now of the demise of blog networks- from the very people who have helped build them up. They are too close to the action and unable to see that the movement is only just getting started!

I hate to repeat a cliché from a previous post, but here it is again-:

“Fools build houses for wise men to live in“.

[tags]blog media,problogging,matt craven,blog herald,blog networks,john evans,syntagma,van eyck,stampede[/tags]