Jumping into the Blogsphere with b5media

by Mark Evans on October 6th, 2006

A little more than two years ago, I wrote a column suggesting blogs were little more than online diaries for love-sick teenage girls. I was wrong. Dead wrong. As readers of my blog(s) have discovered, I’ve embraced blogs as an exciting way to deliver content and have a “conversation” (a word my friend, Shel Israel, frequently uses) with a lots of people that I would have otherwise never met. These are not only bloggers who have become friends such as Rob Hyndman, Stuart MacDonald, Mathew Ingram, Mike McDerment, Om Malik and Alec Saunders but readers of my blog who have enthusiastically and generously shared their ideas and insights.

Having taken a long, deep drink of the blog Kool-Aid, I’ve decided to jump into the blogosphere with both feet by becoming Vice-president of Operations with b5media, which just raised $2-million of venture capital from J.L. Albright Venture Partners and Brightspark Ventures. Without getting too gushy, b5 is an exciting opportunity to combine my passion for writing, communications and blogs. With little fanfare and a lot of hard work behind the scenes by Jeremy Wright, Shai Coggins, Duncan Riley and Darren Rowse, b5 has established an impressive new media network with more than 150 blogs that attract more than two million unique visitors a month. So what am I going to do? Well, given b5 is a start-up, it will be everything and anything to make b5 and its terrific group of bloggers more successful.

To be honest, the decision to join was easy. For someone who believes blogs have a bright future and blog networks are going to become important entities, b5 has all the right ingredients for success: a growing portfolio of blogs that cover a wide variety of topics from technology and sports to entertainment and health. And it has a group of engaged bloggers, which I see as b5’s most valuable asset. Most important, b5 has barely scratched its potential in terms of what it can do from a content, technology and business perspective. Now, that’s exciting.

I’m going to miss my friends at the National Post and being a reporter, which is one of the best jobs you could have. Hopefully, I’ll be able to keep my hand in the game. This isn’t the first time I’ve joined a start-up. Five years ago - just after the dot-com boom went bust - I co-founded Blanketware Corp. While Blanketware, which was a Web 2.0 company before there was a Web 2.0, wasn’t successful financially, it provided me with a lot of invaluable experience and lessons that I’m looking forward to applying to b5. Let the adventure begin….

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