b5media

August 30th,2005

About b5media: Jeremy’s Perspective

By Jeremy Wright

Duncan originally approached me to do b5, as some type of “advertising alliance” type of suggestion. Me, being me, wondered why it couldn’t be something bigger. Specifically, I pressed really hard for this new ‘thing’ (no name yet) to be a blog network where we all pitched our blogs in.

This idea eventually became too complex, as it was hard to figure out how people could still own their own blogs while still being part of the network.

But, the core of it lived on: we all believed that there was not only space for a new blogging network, but also demand for it. The big blogging networks (Gawker, Weblogs Inc and 9rules) are covering a lot of topic areas, but we believe there’s potential not only for more topics, but also for covering them in new and exciting ways.

Out of the three networks listed above, our model follows closest to the Weblogs Inc model. We aren’t Gawker, which is totally a commercially driven, tabloid-esque company. And we aren’t 9rules, which is a loosely aligned network of blogs which cooperate as they see fit.

We’re a network of people. There are the 5 founders, there are the bloggers, there are the readers and there’s the larger community each blog is a part of. While we’re planning some truly new, exciting and innovative things, we decided to launch this small (and “soft”) to make sure we have some of the fundamental kinks worked out.

b5 is a mult-phase project. This first phase will be very much “running before we can walk”. The next phase? Well, you’ll just have to wait and see. Most of what we do will be driven by the people involved in this project. What do the founders see happening? What do the bloggers want to blog about? What do the readers want to hear about? What changes does everyone think will be cool?

This is very much an open project. We’re new, we’re young and we’re full of energy, so anything’s possible.

Hopefully you enjoy the ride as much as we’re hoping to, and hopefully we can break some creative new ground in the process!