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New Media News Every Morning

Weblogs Inc. now on its third year with AOL

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AOL is celebrating the third anniversary of its acquisition of Weblogs, Inc. this month. In 2005, Weblogs had a large portfolio of niche blogs targeted at business and professional users, in addition to a general readership. Since then, Weblogs has honed its portfolio to 29 blogs focused on major consumer passion points such as technology, autos, finance, video games and travel. Since 2005, Weblogs has seen worldwide unique visitors climb nearly 1,000% (122% annually, on average) and page views rise over 1,500% (154% annually, on average), according to August 2008 comScore Media Metrix.

In addition to Weblogs’ own growth, the acquisition was instrumental to AOL’s launch of successful sites such as TMZ, Asylum, FanHouse, BloggingStocks, and Spinner.

Over the next 12 months, AOL plans to launch of number of new blog brands in important consumer interest areas, as well as aggressively continue the expansion of its blogs internationally.

Originally posted on October 24, 2008 @ 11:26 am

Media Bloggers Association launches liability insurance and online course in media law

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The Media Bloggers Association (MBA) has launched a comprehensive program to provide bloggers access to the same sort of legal and financial resources long available to traditional media organizations including BlogInsure, a first of its kind liability insurance program for bloggers which provides coverage for all forms of defamation, invasion of privacy and copyright infringement or similar allegations arising out of blogging activities.

The cornerstone of the new program is an online course in media law developed by the Media Bloggers Association in partnership with The Poynter Institute’s News University. The course, Online Media Law: The Basics for Bloggers and Other Online Publishers, was co-authored by David Ardia of the Citizen Media Law Project, which is jointly affiliated with Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Center for Citizen Media and Geanne Rosenberg of the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism and Baruch College.

Because the MBA believes so strongly that all bloggers should take this course, it is made available at no charge and, although the course is an integral part of the new MBA membership application process, bloggers are not required to join the MBA to take the course. Payment of annual dues for MBA membership is not requested until after the course has been completed and bloggers may opt-out of the application process at any time.

After completing the exam, bloggers will be asked to take a course assessment; this exam is a prerequisite for individuals interested in joining the Media Bloggers Association so those wishing to join must opt to report their test scores to the MBA. It is also the basis for the significant discount on liability insurance available to bloggers through the BlogInsure program.

Originally posted on September 22, 2008 @ 11:54 am

Zoho launches Cloud Avenue

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Zoho announced the launch of Cloud Avenue, an independent blog focused on research and analysis of business applications on the cloud.

“Our goal is to provide online information workers, IT managers, and senior executives with insight to the technologies and services available for running a business online. Cloud Avenue addresses the concerns of both SMBs and enterprise organizations alike,” Zoli Erdos, editor of Zoli’s Blog and editor in chief of Cloud Avenue, said.

Cloud Avenue will include contributions from several authors with complementary backgrounds. In keeping with the site’s focus, contributors will post with less frequency, but with greater detail and analysis covering business applications on the cloud.

Originally posted on September 15, 2008 @ 12:25 pm

GigaOm acquires TheAppleBlog

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GigaOm has acquired TheAppleBlog making it the seventh property of its growing network of blogs.

Founder Josh Pigford will continue to head TheAppleBlog and will join the company remotely from Denver.

“I am a big believer in Apple and its ecosystem. The company has introduced a whole slew of products — including the iPhone, iPod and Apple TV — that are spawning an economy of their own, with hundreds of add-ons (and who knows, maybe even new products) coming to market,” Om Malik said in explaining the acquisition.

Details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Originally posted on September 15, 2008 @ 4:45 pm

BlogHer goes straight to bloggers with Reach Out Tour

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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.

Originally posted on August 26, 2008 @ 9:16 am