b5media Merges with ‘About Weblogs’
I’m happy to announce today the news that b5media is merging with the ‘About Weblogs‘ blog network run by Shai Coggins.
Duncan, Jeremy and I have been in discussions with Shai about the possibility of joining together for a couple of weeks now and we’ve gradually pieced together an agreement that will see About Weblogs join b5media under the name of b5media. The agreement will see Shai take a stake in b5 as a partner to Jeremy, Duncan and myself and see b5media grow to 50 active blogs.
I’ll let Shai talk about why she and her bloggers decided to join b5 - but speaking for myself here I’m excited by the merger for a number of reasons:
International Flavour - the AboutWeblogs team of bloggers have a very international flavour to them. This is one of the aspects of b5media that we are most proud of and to enhance it in this way just seems to ‘fit’.
Size and Diversity of Blogs - About Weblogs currently has 25 active blogs on a wide range of topics ranging from Crafts, to Travel, to Parenting, to Leadership. Take a look at the sidebar over at their current home-page and you’ll see a unique mix of blogs being covered. Strangely enough there are no blogs in the mix that directly compete with b5media blogs. Some of the topics there were on our list of blogs to launch in the coming rounds of blogs - others we’d never considered before. I’m excited that these blogs will bring b5media’s total blog count to around 50 active blogs (there are a few others in development as we speak).
Gender - This will probably all come out wrong - but one of the things that excited us about the About Weblog bloggers is that they are all female (yep that did sound wrong). One of the interesting things about the many applications that we’ve had from people to join b5 is that the majority of them have been from women. We saw this as a real opportunity and were planning to release a mini-network of blogs written by women already but felt somewhat awkward about doing so as 3 males. The idea of having Shai on board and her bringing 25 blogs into the network all written by females just seemed right with this whole direction. We’re not planning on becoming a female only network - but are really pleased to be a network with such a diverse mix of bloggers in terms of location, gender, blogging experience and age.
Shai’s Experience and Expertise - Shai’s bloggers have a wealth of experience of their own (surf through some of their blogs and you’ll notice some amazing quality of writing) - but Shai herself will bring a lot to b5media. Shai is the blogging guide at the massive About.com network, she is a published author, podcaster, mum and has years of blogging behind her. She is also comes with some great people management skills (she has a Masters in Applied Psychology so if she can’t work Jeremy, Duncan and I out who can?) - something I think will add a lot to the emerging community that we have among b5 bloggers.
There are other things we’re excited about the merge - but I’ll let Shai and the other guys have their say if they choose.
So where to from here?
There are a number of things that you’ll see happening at b5media in the coming weeks (and some others that will be going on behind the scenes).
- Firstly we’ll be bringing together the b5 and AW bloggers into the one team. This will largely happen behind the scenes. We’ll begin to get to know each other and develop our new rhythm. Each network has it’s own systems and ways - it’ll no doubt take some time to develop some shared identity.
- At the same time we’re adapting our blogging contract/agreement. While b5 and AW have a similar ethos and approach to sharing revenue there will be a few changes that we’ll be making. In fact some of these changes were on the cards anyway at b5media out of our first month or so of experience of blogging as a network. The most noticeable of these will be in the area of content ownership - but I’ll leave the details of that for a later post when we’ve finished consulting with our bloggers and rewriting the agreement.
- Next we’ll begin transferring the About Weblogs blogs to our server, to new domains and to the WordPress blogging platform. The About Weblogs network is currently hosted on one domain and we feel it will do better and fit better within b5media with each blog on it’s own unique URL. This process will obviously take some time as there are 25 blogs to transfer.
- Once these transfers are complete we’ll begin to roll out the second round of blogs that we’ve been planning. Obviously we’d wanted to do this sooner - but we felt it best to settle the merged blogs into the network first to get them established before starting any new projects. To those bloggers who have applied to join b5 that are waiting on our response we want to thank you for your patience with us - we are excited by the hundreds of applicants that we’ve had and are looking forward to moving forward with many of them. Please bear with us a little longer while we bed down these new merged blogs.
So there’s our announcement - exciting for us and we hope for others also.
We know that this means a lot of work ahead of us but the benefits of the merge far out weigh the costs in our minds.
Speaking on a personal level - I’m very excited by the continued growth of b5media. Our bloggers have been producing some excellent quality work and we’re all starting to see the fruit of their efforts already with a variety of advertisers expressing interest in partnering with the network.
I’m under no illusions that we’ve ‘arrived’ or that we’re the ultimate in blog networks - we have much to learn and many ways to grow and improve what we’re doing - but I have a growing satisfaction that we’re creating something of significance here - both for blog readers, bloggers themselves, our advertising partners and hopefully as we continue to grow and experiment the wider blogging community.
Thanks for sharing the journey and helping to shape b5media.
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The Conversation
congratulations on the merger
first thing’s first: start the redesign on those eye-aching About Weblog sites… they harken to the days of geocities!!!
YAY!!!!! Congratulations! What wonderful news (and, hey, it wasn’t about socks!).
;-)
“Please bare with us a little longer while we bed down these new merged blogs.”
Holy smokes! Uhm . . . don’t you mean “bear with us”? I about choked on my coffee. I’m excited about the news of the merger, but whew, that statement put me on the floor laughing so hard!
lol - hehe - sorry for the coffee mihap. Fixed now.
Hey, don’t hassle Darren, my spelling is far, far worse :-)
Absolutely outstanding! WTG! You couldn’t have found a more wonderful person to partner with IMHO.
And… Shai has the most beautiful sister in the world! :-) (Hi Shai)
Seriously, this is great news guys… I’ll be spending more time here for sure.
Mark
The new beginnings of an enterprise are always so exciting. Congratulations everyone! Keep those great announcements coming!
[…] Today b5media announced that they were going to merge About Weblogs under the b5 banner. Congratulations to Jeremy, Duncan, Darren and Shai for making the move which should make things a little bit more interesting in the blog network space. I guess I can now speak of what could have been between About Weblogs and 9rules. […]
Wow, congrats guys!
I remember when we were talking with Shai over the summer about a merger that we realized the value of their network, and the real passion and skills their writers have. I’m really happy to see that they found a new home with such great company.
Congrats on the announcement! It looks like b5media is going to be something pretty special in the next couple of years.
Hey Darren - no prob on the misspelling. In fact, if you want to take off that first post of mine, feel free to do that. Having created church bulletins and newsletters for many years, I have cringed at a few of my own bloopers. And, of course, I seemed to get bunches of bloopers from other sources as well. Blessings on your merger and future adventures!
[…] Today we’ve seen wonderful news announced - the merger of b5media and About Weblogs. Which means that almost all the folks whom I’ve been learning Blogging from will now be together in one network! […]
well this bloody excellent.. I really take my hat off to you guys. I think taking on board well established bloggers like “about weblogs” was a smart idea.
Personally I like the fresh look of b5medias sites, they are clean, and eye catching. Who customed designed them?
It will be interesting to see how things develop.
im interested to know how long b5medias blogs had been online before you announced yourselves as a network?
Peace Guys.
You’re going to need a bigger tent for the company picnic - LOL!
Congratulations to all!
[…] We just announced our bigger announcement for the day over at b5media. […]
Congrats! We will soon see more and more Blog millionaires soon.
[…] Again, the usual suspects, with personality and sense of humour probably being one and the same. But where are the ‘here’s where I explain what I mean in a few words’ parts to go with those answers? Tsk tsk. However, Jeremy’s ass was saved just a few short minutes later as Shai Coggins, owner of AboutWeblogs.com and now partner in b5media.com expanded… (whether or not that was planned, who knows. Shai - I definitely think you’re needed over there ;o)) ). So, I’m now assuming that whatever Shai told me she looks for in an AboutWeblogs.com blogger, she’ll also look for the same in a b5media blogger. Got that? No? Nevermind… just read what she says. It’s good. A Passion For Blogging - and a passion for blogging about their chosen topics/niche. Personality - I like to work with bloggers I can trust and admire. Good people. Not snarky, war-freak, and difficult types. They don’t have to be goody-two-shoes types, but I certainly have an aversion to prima donnas. Diligence, Patience, Tenacity and Openness (Ooh. That’s 4, isn’t it? Ah, well.) - Becoming successful at problogging takes time and effort. Bloggers who work hard are great to have around. And, with so many things that happen in the world of web logs, you can’t have someone who’s so afraid of changes and risks. […]
[…] Who is she? Sheila is the guide to the extensive resources at Web Logs at About.com. Some people know her as Shai. She was recently in the news when her blogging network AboutWeblogs merged with b5 media. […]
[…] Hot on the heels of the Textpattern to WordPress importer, I’ve landed a relatively high profile job of writing a Nucleus CMS importer for b5Media, the little blog network that is far too big beyond it’s infancy. On November 9th, b5 went public with it’s merger plans with About Weblogs, the all female blog network run by Shai Coggins. […]
[…] Genetics and Health is Alive!By Hsien Hsien Lei, PhD | Related entries in Genetics Blogging Welcome to the revamped Genetics and Health blog (formerly known as the Genetics and Public Health Blog). Our former network, About Weblogs, merged with b5media in November and this is the result: our own domain name, new design, and new team mates. This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 30th, 2005 and is filed under Genetics Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. […]
[…] Welcome to the revamped Genetics and Health blog (formerly known as the Genetics and Public Health Blog). Our former network, About Weblogs, merged with b5media in November and this is the result: our own domain name, new design, and new teammates. […]
[…] The other big change is a professional one. Via a merger between About Weblogs Network and b5media, my precious Genetics and Public Health Blog will be joining one of the most promising blogging networks online today. […]
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