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.

Sugar Inc., an online media network dedicated to women, has acquired Coutorture Media, an online fashion community of over 230 of the most insightful, inspiring, and well-read style websites and blogs. This blog network will continue to operate independently.

This acquisition further demonstrates Sugar’s commitment to create the best and most relevant online communities for women.

“The addition of Coutorture to our company will provide us with the opportunity to further integrate fashion and technology, while providing readers with access to a network of high-end fashion blogs,” said Brian Sugar, founder and chief executive officer of Sugar Inc.

“Today’s announcement begins a new chapter for Coutorture and our member blogs, enabling us to better serve our many talented independent publishers, strengthen our hold on the marketplace, and work closely with Sugar Inc. properties,” said Julie Fredrickson, founder and Editor in Chief of Coutorture Media.

b5media announced the launch of Spekked, an entertainment news gateway. Spekked is a destination for the latest information about television shows, from 24 to VH1, and other entertainment and movie news. Spekked consolidates the content from dozens of individual communities from b5media’s Entertainment Channel into one easy-to-navigate destination.

Maintaining Spekked are veteran b5media entertainment editors Arieanna Schweber and Leora Zellman. Arieanna notes that “Spekked blog communities are already some of the top destinations on the web for TV and entertainment enthusiasts. Spekked makes it quick and easy to discover what’s going on across all our sites.” Spekked will feature current news, spoilers, and analysis from Spekked writers, and will be a gateway to further participate in the communities surrounding each show.

Glam Media today announced the launch of Glam Search, a proprietary search tool aimed at delivering top quality and highly relevant content from Glam Media’s Publisher Network of 350+ lifestyle, celebrity and fashion sites, as well as its flagship site, Glam.com. Glam Search utilizes intelligent search, filtering and indexing technology to bring users comprehensive, relevant and timely results in a format not available from general search engines.
In keeping with Glam Media’s distributed media model, network publishers can add a customizable Glam Search Widget to their site or channel and configure results accordingly.

In addition to classic search and indexing technologies, Glam Search uses a proprietary “curated rank” algorithm, which assigns a weighting to a page based on relevance, timeliness and an editorial analysis of the content source. This gives Glam Search results a higher contextual relevance to the item being searched.

“Glam Media is about bringing together the most relevant voices and indie publishers in fashion, celebrity style and lifestyle entertainment,” said Samir Arora, Glam Media’s Chairman and CEO. “Glam Media knows women, and Glam Search helps them find what they want. Applying proprietary search technology to our network of publishers is a natural evolution for Glam Media.”

Splashpress Media announced the launch of its latest blog– Audival. The aim is straightforward– to help you record and make professional sounding podcasts. It includes tips, tutorials, articles on equipment and sound clips available for anyone to use in their own podcasts.

Audival is run by Stefan Hedengren, a professional musician and a crappy blogger more commonly known as Stiff.

Okay, here’s a piece from Stiff called “Distorted Strumming 1″

Editor’s note: Audival and 901am are sister blogs, both published by Splashpress Media

Entertainment, sports, and political personalities Al Gore, Al Sharpton, Alberto Gonzales, Alex Rodriguez, American Idol Judges, Ann Coulter, Barack Obama, Barbara Walters, Barry Bonds, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Bill O’Reilly, Bill Richardson, Bob Dylan, Brad Pitt, Britney Spears, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Walken, Courtney Love, Dalai Lama, Dan Brown, Dennis Kucinich, Dick Cheney, Donald Trump, Dr. Phil, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Flavor Flav, Fred Thompson, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Jared Fogle, Jayson Blair, Jessica Simpson, John Edwards, John McCain, Kate Moss, Katie Couric, Keith Richards, Kiefer Sutherland, Kim Jong-il, Laura Bush, Lindsay Lohan, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Martha Stewart, Mel Gibson, Mike Gravel, Mitt Romney, Mr. T, Nancy Grace, Olsen Twins, Oprah Winfrey, Paris Hilton, Pat Robertson, Pope Benedict XVI, Quentin Tarantino, Rachel Ray, Ralph Nader, Rudy Giuliani, Rupert Murdoch, Ryan Seacrest, Samuel L. Jackson, Scooter Libby, Sean Penn, Shaquille O’Neal, Shinzo Abe, Snoop Dogg, Ted Turner, Tim Hardaway, Tom Cruise, Tony Blair, Tyra Banks, Victoria Beckham, and Vladimir Putin are now bloggers. You can read their posts at the newly launched NewGroper.com.

NewsGroper is a collection of parody blogs, each written by an anonymous author as if they were an actual celebrity. A good read.

Contec Innovations Inc., provider of mobile infrastructure software, announced that UK-based Splashpress Media has mobilized dozens of blogs, feeds, and portal sites, using its BUZmob mobile publishing service.

Visitors to sites published by Splashpress Media can now push content to their mobile device directly from their web browser. In addition, a custom mobile portal has been created which aggregates the most popular Splashpress-owned content properties. Splashpress’ top sites include: The Blog Herald, 901am.com, Performancing and Business Logs.

“Mobilizing our content inventory provides additional value to both our readers and to our writers. By extending our reach into the mobile space we’re well positioned to grow our market position and tap new revenue streams,” said J. Angelo Racoma, a principal at Splashpress. “BUZmob’s ability to support the largest number of handsets was critical for us. Implementing the service across our multiple sites was quick and easy, and required no content change on our end.”

BUZmob, now in beta release, provides content publishers with a simple, web-based solution to deliver feed-based digital information to mobile users on any device, on any network, anywhere – without requiring the end-user to download software or to subscribe to any service.

Editor’s note: Splashpress Media is the publisher of 901am.com

b5media Inc. announced the launch of its new music channel featuring a wide variety of blogs focused on bands, genres and geographical locations. This is b5media’s 14th channel, bringing number of blogs within the network to 230.

“Since b5media first launched in September of 2005, we’ve felt the music scene was being vastly underserved by professional blogs,” said Jeremy Wright, b5media’s CEO. “We believe that by bringing together thought leaders in the music space, new music bloggers and plain old music phreaks that we can provide a real place where music lovers from around the world can find bands, music, reviews and content they’ll love!”

The music channel portfolio, headed by channel editor Mike Laba, features blogs focused on genres such as the metal, jazz, blues, industrial and crooner scenes, as well as hotspots such as Nashville, the U.K. and Australia.

As part of the music channel’s launch, b5media is giving away three iPod Shuffles, three Memorex MP3 players pre-loaded with MusicIP’s kick-ass music discovery software, and three $25 iTunes certificates.