I saw the lineup of some of the new stuff that are going to be released, and it gives me a really wide geeky smile. Come one, come all!
I’ve attached the two event banners on top. Feel free to click on them and link to our press release.
Month: October 2006
Though I cannot quantify the quality of my one year stay with my cobloggers at b5media, the financial institutions have pegged it at $2 million USD. Of course, this invested money was meant to grow the business into something we vaguely describe to be totally awesome in the coming months.
Of course if it one thing we aren’t, we aren’t a dollar bill. We can’t please everyone and this is the reality of such things. We’ve been getting a lot of flack from 9rules as well as from Valleywag. But again, this is the blogosphere, and flack like this is expected.
On a personal level, our internal forums have been packed with replies after Jeremy announced his $2M birthday present. People have also asked me if this means that I’ll go full time pro. Well, the answer to that is still to be determined, but I assure you that going full time into problogging will have me consider more than just a capital infusion. A lot of it has to do with the learning experiences behind my job. So if going full time into this will help me grow professionally, then why not?
b5media has a lot of potential because of the people behind it. I would like to guess that the infusion will be used to grow and retain talent and find other creative means and ways of developing REACH. Of course, I could be wrong here but this seems like the logical step.
But enough of that now. It’s the weekend, and we’re still trying to overload our internal forums with rave spam. Hehe.
UPDATE: Aaron Brazell, our new Technology Manager has posted the roundup of the $2M buzz in his blog.
Categories
PhilMUG Meet at Teak Bistro
I’m here at Teak Bistro for the community launch of the Mac Pro, 500 inch iMac (I lost count already, the screen justgets bigger and bigger) and the new iPods.
Sadly I didn’t bring my camera to take traditional “unboxing” pictures of the new Macs.
You can view the full community thread at PhilMUG here.
Categories
INQ7.net: We’re still friends!
The online gossip is just too hot to handle. I deal with the people from Inq7 fairly often due to the online media group I’m building for Hinge-Inquirer Publications. Well, the rumors are NOT true. I repeat, NOT true.
I had a pitcher of mojitos with a good friend from the staff (partly to celebrate the $2M funding of b5media) just now and she told me that “we’re still friends! hindi pa kami nag-break!” (we’re still friends, we haven’t broken up!). This was in reference to the rumors that the breaking news media giant INQ7.net is breaking up the partnership – GMA7 and the Inquirer are no longer “sila.”
I asked if its OK to post this piece of PR and they said go ahead! Well, that’s that. The intrigues of the technology industry…
In the publishing industry, a magazine is usually killed if it has not turned profitable after 36 months in the business. First year gains visibility, second year makes up for year one and hopefully third year at least breaks even.
Case in point is GamesMaster strong yet unprofitable 3 year-reign.
So my question is, does the same apply with blogs? OK wait, I’m referring to blogs that are there to make money. If significant traffic cannot be generated after three years of posting, what do you do?
Again, if blogging is just a hobby, then it really doesn’t matter. In fact, if you’re earning “one mocha frap a month” from your site, then it still makes sense to continue.
I guess the best factor to consider would be that commercial publications have huge liabilities while blogs don’t. You can say that your blog is in the red, by losing the invested P2,000 per year on hosting and domain registration, but it’s also like saying that your multi million dollar company is losing one dollar a month. Blogs, at least independent non-network ones do not have huge liabilities.
Therefore, no, you should not kill your blog after three years. Maybe you should get writing lessons. Hehe.