By matt
b5media launched Simply Thrifty:
Simply Thrifty covers how to “live simply, wisely, and with frugality. Simply Thrifty is a blog that appreciates the important things in life.” Practically it talks about everything from how to save material and money on clothes to how to get free education to how to save money at Christmas, on your heating and lighting and all kinds of other things.
Originally posted on January 7, 2006 @ 11:55 am
By matt
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
Originally posted on December 30, 2005 @ 11:18 pm
By matt
The Washington Post is reporting that Ana Marie Cox is leaving the editor post at Gawker Media’s Wonkette:
Wonkette is getting a new identity. Ana Marie Cox, the voice behind the racy and gossip-filled political blog, is stepping down later this month after signing a second book deal.
Taking her place will be David Lat, a 30-year-old lawyer who anonymously wrote the irreverent legal blog Underneath Their Robes. Alex Pareene, 20, who has been a guest editor on the New York-based Gawker.com, will join Lat as coeditor.
Cox, 33, became known for her sometimes bawdy musings about goings-on in the nation’s capital. Her first novel, “Dog Days,” comes out this week, and she recently signed a deal with Riverhead Books for a nonfiction book looking at the next generation of political activists.
Technorati Tags: gawker, gawker+media
Originally posted on January 4, 2006 @ 9:10 pm
By matt
Instablogs has launched the Instablogs Community:
We are launching the Instablogs Community. We have been working for almost a month on this community project. We want to bring writers from all over the world closer to the Instablogs Network. Now you can write and get paid per post on any topic/subject you wish.
The idea behind this is to create a platform of informed opinion going beyond the usual newspapers and big portals. If you have a flair for writing, use the Instablogs Community platform to make yourself well-known and get paid for each post too! So either grab the leads given by the editors or choose any story you want to compose your post upon, and be a part of ever growing Instablogs Community.
We will be making our newsroom public in next few days. It would be the first public newsroom of its kind in the entire world. Here, anyone can come and see the stories our Editors and Writers are working upon.
Technorati Tags: blog network watch, instablogs
Originally posted on January 5, 2006 @ 10:14 pm
By matt
We’re dropping in a new design tonight. Pardon our dust and a couple errors. We’ll be up and running at full speed in a few hours.
Originally posted on January 10, 2006 @ 8:23 pm
By matt
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.
Originally posted on December 31, 2005 @ 5:09 pm
By matt
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
Originally posted on December 31, 2005 @ 4:44 pm