Want to know what’s happening in the diamond world? Whether you are trying to get some engagement advice on the engagement ring purchase or you are simply interested in diamonds in world affairs, Abazias.com has a diamond blog that covers these topics and more. You can the latest blog posts via the website or use an RSS feed to collect all the articles that are of interest to you.

For the serious minded diamond purchaser or professional, you can get online and get an education on how diamonds are used in jewelry and many other industries. The fun thing about a blog is that it is an interactive forum. Have a question about an article? Just log in and add your comment. There are plenty of other readers who might be wondering too. And, you will find that a blogging community usually is very keen on sharing their knowledge with other commentators.

For all you fashion and gossip hounds, the blogs are a great way to spot some of the latest trends via celebrity and fashion show postings. You not only get the inside scoop, a blog post is typically accented with a relevant photo of the thing that has made the blogger’s tongue wag. Can’t wait to see the latest pooch jewelry? Find out about London’s Harrods pampered pooch fashion show. Take a look at some men’s diamond watches too. Maybe you’re just curious about what a Claddagh wedding ring looks like. You can find out under the Alternative Wedding Jewelry category. As they say: “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

When you think of the National Payday Blog, you may automatically assume that it only discusses the praises of payday loans and not much else. However, you may be pleasantly surprised when you visit and find news on the latest gas efficient hybrid cars or the latest news on mortgages across the country.

When it comes to the business of payday loans, it’s not necessarily about lending people money, but it’s about helping them get back on track with their finances. The National Payday Blog provides useful information and daily posts that are designed to help consumers with just that – getting the most out of their money and managing it wisely.

Whether it is the latest on the foreclosures taking place or the State of the Union, the National Payday Blog provides financial information that matters to all consumers. National Payday is not concerned with payday loans alone, but helps consumers make wise financial choices, whether they are doing their taxes, buying a house or paying through college. You’ll also find information on credit cards, insurance, shopping, retirement and monthly budgeting. All of these posts provide you with information you can use today and are not just focused on how to take out payday loans alone.

When you are able to budget your money and make smart choices, your need for payday loans greatly reduces. You’re on a monthly budget that covers your bills and feeds your family. This also allows you to save money and that’s when you need financial information on other areas of life, not just how take out a payday loan.

In only his first days as Blog Herald’s new editor, Thord Daniel Hedengren has already offered thought-provoking opinions in his post Federated Media Could Be The Next Big Blog Network. An excerpt:

Federated Media is connected to a lot of sites, all fairly big, and some being true hotshots, like TechCrunch, Ars Technica, GigaOM, Mashable, and Wikia. We’re talking serious names here.

These will not join a Federated Media blog network, other than for ad dollars.

However, there are others who would probably consider it, should Federated Media provide a package that more or less guarantees more money, traffic, and exposure. There are several sites and blogs in Federated Media’s portfolio that sport less than 1m pageviews per month. Those would benefit from joining the hypothetical FM blog network.

TD has a great point. Read his full article here.

The Blog Herald is advising its readers to keep an eye out for a blogging version of the infamous “Nigerian” 419 scam. Being hoodwinked by blog advertising deals that sound too good to be true might cost you a hefty $1000:

If you fall for the bait and sell something for $2000, you’ll receive a check for $3000. The perpetrator of the scam will then claim that a mistake was made and ask that you refund $1000 via money transfer.

So you send $1000 via money transfer, which cannot be stopped… and in the end when it finally clears, the $3000 check ends up being a fake.

Read the full article on The Blog Herald.

The Blog Herald reports that Six Apart’s Movable Type is now open source:

Licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2, the blogging community then is allowed to freely modify, redistribute, and use Movable Type for anything they want. This is going to be all good for the blogging community with both major blog platforms now openly available to everyone.

One commenter has an interesting take on the matter:

I guess losing ground to wordpress took part in the decision to move into open source?

Which is an opinion that can’t be considered as unfounded.

Corporate bloggers have launched The Blog Council, a professional community of top global brands dedicated to promoting best practices in corporate blogging, the Blog Herald reports.

From the Council’s official site:

The Blog Council exists as a forum for executives to meet one another in a private, vendor-free environment and share tactics, offer advice based on past experience, and develop standards-based best practices as a model for other corporate blogs.

Quite a big name for a community, no? The short name seems more apt to a community that encompasses the entire blogosphere, so hopefully the Council’s aims will prove to be a bit wider than the excerpt above indicates.

Wisdump’s Thord Daniel Hedengren has an insightful post on using sub-networks within a blog network, a tactic employed by BNW’s mother outfit Splashpress Media.

To quote Thord:

The benefits with sub-networks within a blog network are:

• More visible network linking to relevant sites, while still having the opportunity to do traditional blogroll-style links to the rest of the network.


• Borrowing reliability strength across the sub-network. A young and promising blog will have it easier if the first time reader sees one of his old favorites being closely networked with it.


• Branding the sub-networks helps when releasing new blogs into the network, it will immediately borrow from the sub-network’s established brand, and therefor seem more complete than it actually is.


• Better traffic opportunities between sub-networked sites (compared to a massive links list).

That’s as succinct as you can get. Head over to Wisdump for the whole post.

A guest post by Mike Rundle on Business Logs talks about 451 Press’ recent “Largest Blog Network” announcement, and challenges this quantity-based milestone.

An excerpt:

There’s nothing inherently wrong with having a large cache of sites at your disposal, but isn’t it easy to add more sites? The marginal cost of adding another blog is very low because you find a writer and pay them to start writing. You drop them into your default template with some colors switched out and away they go. You are now PREVIOUS_SIZE++.

But what about quality?

Mike goes on to compare 451 Press to another blogosphere heavyweight, b5media:

b5media is another traditional-type blog network, but they rank higher on the quality scale than 451 Press does because they’ve stopped adding “blogs every week” like 451 Press but seem to be working harder on the quality end of the spectrum instead of just increasing girth on the quantity end.

Read the full article on Business Logs.

The Syntagma network magazine has a great article on the business of blog networking, based on the insights of Gerry Reynolds, a “business consultant specializing in the retail sector”.

Several salient points:

The online content business is a small margin trade — unless you’re prepared to invest heavily ($20m). By that he means that there are few big payouts for individual sales — i.e. of ad space. Big bucks have to be accumulated over time from small sum payments…

Rarely will one site make a living salary for its owner. It does happen, of course, usually for quirky, semi-commercial blogs which catch on for reasons known only to visitors, or sites using below the radar techniques for hoovering up Adsense clicks…

The need, like corner shops, to work with low margins through quantity, while not compromising on quality. A hard call, and only for the determined.

Lay-bloggers, probloggers, and blog overlord aspirants alike will enjoy the Syntagma post. Read the full article here.

Jayvee Fernandez, b5media’s technology channel editor asks on his blog: If a network problogger left the blogosphere, would anyone care?

Jayvee compares network bloggers to editors of magazines. Jayvee comes from the print/publications industry (a fact I know), and I can surmise that he has quite some experience with the inner workings of print magazines. And in these, the editor in chief plays a big part in terms of the creative direction of the publication. So whenever there is a change in the editor, everything also changes.

So then the big question mark: what happens when the EIC leaves the magazine, taking with him all the personality and direction he set up throughout the many months, years and yes, even to the very point of taking the entire magazine staff with him?

The publisher is stuck. The staff becomes confused. Morale is low.
In the new media publishing business, can the same be said?

So same with editors in print outfits, many things change whenever a blog changes hands.

So when a problogger leaves the networked owned blog, the blog manager of the network has to find a new writer through word of blog, personal recommendations, advertising, and email blasts. A new blogger eventually comes who is fit to take over the content. Now here’s the thing. There are several things happening between the time the original blogger leaves and the time the new blogger makes his first few posts …

I have seen this happen myself, and not only with blogs of small audiences. I have seen quite popular blogs (like the Blog Herald and 901am, for instance; you can even include JOAB, Wisdump, and even this very blog.) go through a change in ownership and change in authorship. And in these instances, it’s the community built around the readership that notices the changes almost immediately.

So to answer Jayvee’s question, yes people would care. Some might even feel strongly against the change in authorship. I’ve quite a number of “I’m unsubscribing from your feed” comments on some blogs after being sold or after changing authors.

But then the point here is not to keep things static, is it? The great thing about a changing of the guard (so to speak) is that the incoming blogger or editor of a blog can make changes for the better. You don’t have to try too hard to become the blogger that once handled a blog that you inherit. You should establish your own voice and identity.

And to answer yet another question, yes network bloggers are sometimes like magazine editors.

One of the main differences between professional bloggers and journalists (and this is never highlighted) is that bloggers have that extra task of plotting a the direction, voice, and focus of his site. This is what differentiates a good problogger from a so-so one.

Whew, that’s a big responsibility!