In a post titled 9rules welcomes its new overlords, Paul Scrivens has announced that the network has been sold to Splashpress Media (owner of 901am):
Over the past couple of months the Triad has been considering what to do with 9rules. If you have followed us over the years you know that we have no problems making big changes to our site and community with the chance of making it better. However, we came to the point where the ideas stopped flowing and we were stuck.
…we have decided to reach out to a company that knows a thing or two about blogs and could bring in a fresh new team of talent to take 9rules even further. Enter Splashpress Media. Why Splashpress? Because not only do they have the people that have a passion for publishing online content, but they also have the resources to make things happen without being too large as to forget the core of what makes 9rules special, the community.
Gorilla Nation has been selected to exclusively represent the online advertising inventory for Gawker Media throughout the UK.
Gawker publishes 12 media gossip and pop culture sites with a UK readership in excess of 3 million monthly unique visitors and over 10 million page views.
Boing Boing announced the launch of Offworld, a new gaming blog edited by Brandon Boyer with regular contributions from all of the ‘Boingers.’ Offworld aims to distill the fractured, esoteric world of gaming forums, academia, communities, websites and blogs, into an easily digestible feed of the most important and interesting developments in the gaming world.
Offworld covers everything from major mainstream gaming titles to the world of small, independent game developers. Keenly aware that most gamers don’t have the time to troll through all the scattered news sources and sample all of the new games, Offworld contributors will do all the heavy lifting for their readers and profile only the clever, innovative, interesting and fun games that get released.
Autoblog delivers cutting-edge news, commentary, rumors and images to a global audience of motoring enthusiasts. The site offers live, in-person coverage of every major auto show in the world, while always giving readers the opportunity to engage with the writers and contribute to Autoblog’s pages. By partnering with AOL Autos, Autoblog is a jumping-off point for in-market auto buyers who can combine a virtual window shopping experience at Autoblog with the comprehensive buying information at AOL Autos.
Each international site has a local editorial team that creates specialized content as well as syndicates content from the U.S. and the other Autoblog sites. In addition, standard and customized local advertising packages are available.
BlogHer announced the launch of its Reach Out Tour to take place in October 2008, stopping in six U.S. cities for lively one-day conferences that will bring highlights of its popular sold-out annual conference to a more local stage. The success of the annual conferences prompted BlogHer to embark on a two-week tour to meet the growing demands of its online community of women, and give local bloggers a more intimate environment to discuss blogging basics, lead sessions on local themes and network with their community.
The three BlogHer co-founders will kick off the tour in Boston on October 11 and then continue on to five additional cities. The tour schedule includes: Washington, DC (October 13), Nashville, TN (October 16), Greensboro, NC (October 18), Atlanta, GA (October 21), New Orleans, LA (October 25)
General Motors will be sponsoring this inaugural event by providing attendees within 200 miles of each scheduled city with Saturn hybrid vehicles for carpools to the event. Participating carpoolers will blog about their experiences with the vehicles on BlogHer.com. In addition, GM will bring back their popular “ride and drive” events at each tour location, where bloggers will have the opportunity to test drive varying cars on site.
The conference agendas will be broken up into three distinct sections including: blogging basics to help newcomers start a blog and figure out what their next steps are once they have one; custom topics per city based on themes that will resonate within existing local conversations; and a Geek Lab, facilitated by Sarah Dopp, a creative professional in the tech industry based out of San Francisco.
Instablogs is opening its blog network membership by launching the Instablogs Club. By opening its network, external blogs can now apply to become members of Instablogs Club and enjoy the benefits that its blog network members have been enjoying.
“We decided to open our network to external bloggers so that they can also enjoy some of our network benefits, including but not limited to traffic, ad sales, technology, and networking with our great members,” Ankit Maheshwari, CEO of Instablogs, said.
“The Instablogs Club consists of those who host and maintain independent blogs and would like to avail our platform and showcase their content to millions of Instablogs readers each month. Our aim is to showcase the best blogs on a variety of topics and help bloggers get more exposure,” he added.
The Club is looking for bloggers who are passionate about their blog– one that provides compelling content, consistent in his or her frequency of posting, and is willing to share their knowledge and expertise to other members of the Club.
Club members stand to benefit from Instablogs traffic, revenues, and a vibrant community of blog network members.
Launched in 2005, Instablogs Blog Network enjoys more than 2.5 million pageviews per month. The Club will work to drive traffic to each member and benefit from this attention.
The Club is currently accepting applications and will be announcing its first batch of members next month.
The three new blogs are edited by Susan Schrank (Mobile Marketing), Michael Gartenberg (Mobile Devices) and Todd Ogasawara (Mobile Apps).
Mediabistro.com also announced Mobile Content & marketing Expo, a new tradeshow – Mobile Content & Marketing Expo which will take place in San Jose, California on October 6-7, 2008.
“The launch of these three new blogs clearly makes Mediabistro.com a central source for daily news in the rapidly growing mobile sector,” stated Alan M. Meckler, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Jupitermedia. “We will continue to add content and services for the mobile community over the coming months,” added Meckler.
“This starts the 2.0 phase of our company ContentNext Media: we will remain a stand-alone business under GNM. This also marks a major expansion of Guardian’s U.S. presence….it already runs the Guardian America website, focused on U.S. audiences,” Ali said in a blog post.
Financial details were not disclosed but reports had it that ContentNext was bought for $30 million.
Either a crew at Gizmodo was possessed by evil spirits or simply not thinking straight when they pulled a really nasty prank during CES 2008. They intentionally fired TV-B-Gone remotes to turn off monitors displayed at this prestigious event, much of course to the detriment of exhibitors striving to promote their products.
And just to show how mental these guys are, they have the cojones to admit this very unprofessional act and post a video as a proof. Naturally, Gizmodo fanatics enjoyed and even worshipped the infamous gadget blog for this very special treat.
But here’s something that’s no laughing matter. Journalists, professional bloggers and marketing experts criticized this childish and insensitive prank for it seriously damaged some companies showing off their products, particularly Motorola.
To borrow the words of Jason Calcanis, they are “idiots on a grand scale”. I would not be surprised if the event organizer CEA and some exhibitors sue Gizmodo for this stunt.
Moreover, this could also backfire on Gizmodo for other organizers might ban this blog from any major events in the industry and consumer electronics company might pull out their support.
Sure, this might just be a glitch for a very powerful blog like Gizmodo. Then again, the message is really simple: think before you act.
BlogHer, Inc. announced that its network now receives more than 4.23 million unique visitors per month, making it one of the leading networks for women online. According to Nielsen Netratings, BlogHer.com and BlogHer’s publishing network of 955 blog affiliates achieved 4.237 million unique visitors and 17.7 million pageviews in September 2007. BlogHer.com’s 60 editors and BlogHer’s blog affiliates write across categories of interest to women online, including parenting, health, food, lifestyle, technology, business and politics, and all member blogs are continually vetted for content quality, category relevance, blog frequency and adherence to editorial standards.
BlogHer also brings its community members face-to-face by producing the world’s largest blogging conferences to mobilize, educate and inspire women. One thousand (1,000) bloggers attended BlogHer events in 2007, and the company recently announced expansion plans for 2008 that include the upcoming BlogHer ’08 in San Francisco (July 18-21, 2008), BlogHer Business ’08 in New York City (April 3-4, 2008) and the BlogHer Reach Out Tour, which will visit six different cities in the East/Southeast throughout October, 2008.
BlogHer began as a labor of love in February 2005, when Lisa Stone invited Elisa Camahort to launch a conference together for women who blog. Soon after, Elisa met Jory Des Jardins and invited her to join, too.
