In the past days, the b5media network added four new blogs. Three of them joined the Travel and Culture Channel, while the last entered the Music Channel:

• Travel Product Guide—“will focus on all the products you’ll need for travel”


• The Phoenix Traveler—“There’s lots going on in the desert year round, so stop by to get some ideas to on how to add some fun into your trip”


• Travel Photo Daily—“will take you around the world in photos”


• Canadian Music News—“brings you the latest videos and news on artists from Canada”

The Blog Herald reports that in just two days, the Know More Media will cease to exist as a blog network:

Know More Media will be closing its doors as of August 1, according to editor Easton Ellsworth, who confirmed the open letter from b5media’s Jeremy Wright to the KMM bloggers.

Ellsworth confirmed this in his blog comment:

Unless something drastic changes in the next few days, the Know More network will be “no more.” The blogs will remain online and the authors may choose to continue to post, but we will no longer be able to pay them. We simply ran out of revenue.

We’re sad to see KMM go, but as Ellsworth says, “things are born, grow and die, sometimes giving birth to other things.” Best of luck to Ellsworth and all KMM bloggers.

Om Malik’s GigaOm network has acquired jkOnTheRun, a blog on mobile gadgets. jkOnTheRun becomes the sixth blog in the network.

In his announcement, the network’s founder and senior writer explains their choice of blog to acquire:

Strategically, it’s a publication that rounds out our existing areas of coverage. For instance, GigaOM tracks the world of web infrastructure pretty closely, but very rarely do we write about cloud client machines.

In related news, we’ve also added GigaOm (or Giga Omni Media) to our watchlist. We know, we know—we should’ve done this sooner. But as they say, better late than never.

Aside from jkOnTheRun, other GigaOm properties include:

• WebWorkerDaily


• NewTeeVee


• Earth2Tech


• OStatic


• GigaOm Jobs

That’s the question being asked by James Mowery on our sister site, Performancing.com. James says:

Many of these sites state that “you will be paid for your content” and similar. However, there are catches: for one, there is no guarantee they will actually feature your work, and I’ve seen sites that claim the rights to your content even if they don’t feature it (they essentially get your content for free without pay); next, these sites usually determine how much you will be paid on an article by article basis, and this just doesn’t seem right as the writer should set the rate; finally, many of these sites don’t have a chance of making it to the big time and won’t promote your brand in the process.

The article is a must-read for any blogger or writer about to get his/her feet wet with blog networks. James goes on to offer some tips, too.

Read or react to his post here.

We have added the Content Quake network to our watchlist. From their About page:

Content Quake was started by two bloggers. They realized that many folks could blog, if only they were given some help. Content Quake gives you the tools to get started blogging fast, in an area that you love.

Content Quake currently consists of over 50 blogs, spread over 15 categories such as celebrities, tech, family, and sports.

Visit the Content Quake network here.

We have added the Life Skills Network to our watchlist. From their About page:

We are an eclectic group of bloggers dedicated to helping you develop the skills needed to live life to the fullest. We cover a broad range of topics ranging from personal finance to green
living to frugality to motivation.

The network currently consists of four blogs whose collective purpose is to be a “one stop shop for getting the most out of life.”

Visit the Life Skills Network here.

The b5media blog network has been recognized as an industry leader in Backbone Magazine’s ‘PICK 20’, the first and only roundup of Canada’s Web 2.0 companies.

From the b5media press release:

Judges Sean Moffit, founder of Agent Wildfire, was quoted as saying, “Kudos to b5 for getting in early and creating something with scale” while Michael O’Connor Clarke added “…they’re just darn good at execution.” The article also noted that “b5 gets lots of points for being the best at what it does.”

The full list of winners and judges can be found here. Congrats to b5media!

Splashpress Media’s Blog Search Engine has partnered with IceRocket to bring readers better blog search capabilities. Quoting the official Splashpress release:

Over at Blog Search Engine, we’ve announced that BSE is now again powered by IceRocket’s search technology, after a brief switch to Google Custom Search.

While Google’s Custom Search functionality was, well, customizable, we found it limited in terms of focusing the searches on blogs. And so we found an opportunity to partner with IceRocket again, and here we are with them powering BSE’s search.

Visit the enhanced BSE.

The planned deal between Verizon and 1938 Media will not be pushing through, as announced by Loren Feldman yesterday:

Verizon Wireless has chosen to opt out of the distribution agreement with 1938 Media that was announced last week. They were wonderful to work with, and we respect their decision. We would like to thank them and our partners on the channel. We hope that Verizon Wireless might find a way to continue to work with them.

Read Feldman’s full announcement here.

The giant blog network takes to the skies with the return of the Flightnest, which the network describes as “considered to be one of the best blogs about our little flight industry.”

The blog was one of the first b5media properties way back in 2005.

Visit the Flightnest today.