The iFroggyNetwork has re-launched the news section of their DrGregHouse.com site as the DrGregHouse Blog:

The DrGregHouse.com News section has been relaunched as the DrGregHouse.com Blog. Basically, I got tired of the “news section” format. The activity was sporadic and it was kind of boring. So, instead of a news section, it will be a straight blog where anything related to House can be mentioned. We may even get into live blogging some of the episodes. The Comments link goes right to the DrGregHouse.com Forums and TrackBacks are enabled. For each blog post, a topic in the forums is created, so there is “some” integration, although it’s not complex.

As previously announced, Syntagma Media has now launched Vista Office:

Our newest blog, Vista Office, is now live.

Vista Office will “watch” the new product offerings from Microsoft due for release in 2006. These include Windows Vista and Office 2006 (codenamed “12″).

Yaro has a pretty good read on how he got 1000 feed subscribers in six months:

Finally, I did it. I was really hoping it would happen this year and it just squeezed in on the second day before the new year. I made it over 1000 on my RSS Feedburner counter.

Chitika announces more changes and some delays in their auditing:

However, we are currently running into unexpected delays in our monthly audits for November. We are aggressively working on completing the audit process as soon as possible. We apologize for the delay and we are hoping that we will be able to complete and finalize the November audits over the next two weeks. In fact, we are trying to complete both November and December audits by January 15th. While we are working on ironing out the kinks in our beta program, we thank all our clients for the continued support. We do not expect the delay in audits to become a recurring issue going forward, because we are focusing on putting in place robust systems that will help streamline the reporting and auditing processes.

Unlike traditional pay-per-click advertising programs, our eMiniMalls service is based on the novel impulse-merchandising model that is new to all parties. We are confident that our eMiniMalls program will continue to evolve and offer a significant incremental revenue stream that will complement, not cannibalize, web publishers’ existing revenue from traditional branding-based advertising programs. Although eMiniMalls is based on the CPC model, the program is able to command relatively higher CPC bid amounts from merchants, because it is predicated by the implicit assumption that leads from our interactive units tend to be highly pre-qualified and hence will result in higher click to sales conversions. Initial feedback from our merchant partners is very positive.

Technorati Tags: chitika

At this point, I’d pretty sure that this won’t be a suprise to many readers of Blog Network Watch, but we’ve done a bit of hiring over the last few weeks. The official announcement is now up:

BlogMedia, Inc. is pleased to announce our new online services team:

David Krug, aka “Cowboy”, has joined BlogMedia as Senior Content Developer & Community Director for our Erati Media division.

David brings several years of online media experience to BlogMedia, most recently as the blogger of the infamous Jack of All Blogs, formerly part of the Fine Fools network. In his new role, Krug will oversee our new Erati Media division and work on content & community development.

Ben Bleikamp has joined BlogMedia as Senior Designer.

Ben brings many years of design experience to our team. He is currently the blogger of College Startup and previously created The Poker Blog. Ben’s designs can also be seen at Blogger Idol and GamerzBlog.

Chris Pearson has joined BlogMedia as a Designer.

Chris also brings many years of design experience to our team. He currently is the blogger at Blog Louisville and the President of Intelligenterprises, LLC in Louisville, Kentucky.

We have some great new things in store for the new year. Watch this space and our corporate blog at blogmedia.biz.

We’re looking for an editor/blogger for Blog Network Watch. If you’ve been reading here, you’re well aware of what we’re looking for.

Drop us at note at jobs [at] blogmedia [dot] biz with your information and three sample posts that you’d post at Blog Network Watch if you were blogging here.

The first, with John Battelle of Federated Media Publishing:

Q. For those readers not familiar with FM Publishing, can you tell us in a nutshell what it is, who it’s targeted at and what makes it noteworthy?

Federated Media (we call it FM) is something of a mashup of business models, all of which exist to support what might be called “talent” – think of the music labels, agents, book publishers and the like, but without the evil approach to intellectual property rights. Federated is a service business that partners with authors of great websites to bring them services and revenue. From our overview (not yet up, but soon): WE SELL ADVERTISING, indeed we do.

But that’s not all we do. At FM, we believe great voices attract great audiences. We’re in the business of supporting those voices, by both connecting them to great marketers, as well as providing a suite of services that let authors focus on what they do best: make compelling media. In doing so, we hope to create federations of respected voices which prosper on their own terms.

We have a platform (in limited alpha right now) that connects marketers with great authors, and we focus on the human side of it – making sure that it’s a great fit. So far, we have about 20 sites in the network, with another 20-30 in the works to join over time. We are creating category clusters for the marketers, and meta sites for audiences. But we are not telling the authors what to write, how to design their blogs, or what to do in general. We are providing them with services that will help them make their sites better, if they care to use them (for free). And all advertising must first be approved by each author before it runs. That’s why our tagline is “author-driven”.

The second, with Nandini Maheshwari, the CEO of Instablogs:

When Instablogs launched it received a great deal of criticism from various people (probably in part because they had very high, even unrealistic, expectations). What advice can you give bloggers and blog network owners in reference to dealing with criticism (seeing as it is inevitable)?

I honestly believe criticism helps you to improve. In fact we faced some pre-launch snags that somewhat diluted our initial claim of hitting the blogosphere with 50 blogs. But that’s an old story now. We have moved on from that stage. Our blogs are now getting regular links from A-list blogs. We have managed to become a part of the online community. People have accepted us. They like our stuff. Now our traffic is going up and up, everyday.

My advice to new bloggers and blog network owners is take criticism in your stride, because criticism will help your blog(s) establish better be it through good advices or the invaluable links that you get in the process.

Technorati Tags: blog network watch, instablogs, johnbattelle, performancing, fm

Blogebrity:

BlogMedia.biz, the folks behind the Blog Network Watch, are apparently behind this stealthy pre-alpha blog. Details are intentionally sketchy, but the ones that we know are interesting—this is where at least a couple of the Fine Fools defectors will be landing, including the one that used to write for us. As for when/where—we have no clue, and quite frankly are suffering from too much BNOS (Blog Network Overload Syndrome) to research any further.

Wired has an article & interview up with WIN CEO Jason Calacanis:

The friends partnered 50-50, using money from the Wicks deal to get Weblogs started. They set up shop in two home offices – Calacanis’ in Santa Monica and Alvey’s in White Plains, New York – and began wooing bloggers who could cover tech, media, consumer issues, and more. They worked from a list of 400 to 500 potential blog subjects, culled from studying the titles on magazine stands.

Calacanis and Alvey were not the first entrepreneurs to create such a network – Nick Denton had launched Gawker Media in 2002. But Weblogs took a different approach. Denton kept Gawker relatively small and focused, but Calacanis and Alvey went unabashedly for scale. “We set the goal to build a huge business,” Calacanis says. But the two had learned their lessons from the bubble, and huge meant something different this time around. Weblogs keeps overhead low, hiring just a handful of full-time staff and trading fancy headquarters for a confederation of home offices connected by cheap communications services like Gmail, eFax, and AOL Instant Messenger. Calacanis’ bloggers are freelancers; they buy their own computer equipment and pay for their own Internet connections. Most of them don’t earn much for their work – somewhere between a hundred and a couple thousand dollars a month. Calacanis and Alvey also didn’t get too wrapped up in venture funding, ultimately taking only a “modest” angel investment, from Broadcast.com cofounder Mark Cuban.

The strategy worked. Within a year of starting, they had about 50 freelance bloggers and solid monthly advertising revenue. They were profitable. A few of the blogs, including games-oriented Joystiq, car-focused Autoblog, and gadget-obsessed Engadget (written in part by Peter Rojas, whom Calacanis lured away from Gawker by promising equity), became immensely popular. Calacanis says he knew the company had hit the big time when Engadget snagged an interview with Bill Gates in May 2005.

Technorati Tags: blog network watch, weblogsinc

I’ve been promoted.