Blogging

A recent post by Jason Calacanis reminded me that we don’t often talk about the b5media model.

Weblogs, Inc. and Gawker are the two biggest. Nothing else even comes close. I mean, B5 Media raised some money but can you name their top blog? 

Part of that is because the first year or so was spent largely just building the network, getting technology right, growing… Really it was all about making the model work. Then there was 3-4 months of raising funding. Since funding, there’s been 3-4 months of getting the foundational stuff in place: growing the team, doing legal stuff, administrative things like insurance and benefits and a thousand other things that happen post-funding.

Over the last month or so, we’ve started coming out of our post-funding shell. We opened our forums, launched our toolbar, brought in some new high profile blogs and a bunch of other little things.

Really what’s going on is we’re going from being slightly introverted in our focus to being more extroverted. So, it makes sense that we’d (once again) start to tell the b5media story a bit more, and why we structure the network the way we do. I won’t go into every little detail (what our VC’s might call “the secret sauce”), but I do want to delve into some of the original decisions we made, why we made them, and how those are reflected in how you see b5media today.

Before I get into why b5media doesn’t have big blogs, I’d like to note that we do, in fact, have several “big” blogs. Some are big in traffic (like Snarky Gossip). Others are big in influence (like gobs of our science blogs, as well as our beauty blogs… each of these channels have blogs that are featured more than weekly in various MSM sources). Others are big, but just outside the realm of what Jason sees. And still others are prominent blogs in their space that are joining b5 as external properties. I don’t want to make a big deal out of these, as I know Jason’s point is “company owned blogs”, but blogs like CopyBlogger, LifeDev, MyCrimeSpace, Deep Jive Interests and Slacker Manager (and others) are all recognized leaders in their industries that have come alongside to help us figure out how our model applies to external blogs.

That said, what Jason noted is true: we don’t really have very many truly big blogs. You won’t find more than a handful of b5media blogs in the Technorati Top 100 or the Alexa Top 1000. And the truth is, that’s by design.

Why b5media Doesn’t Do Big Blogs

Now, I don’t mean to say that we don’t go after traffic and we don’t pursue growth. We do. I’m a metrics-driven guy. As the team will undoubtedly say, we spend a rather large amount of time ensuring we’re defining and hitting our metrics, and writing software to track our core metrics. So numbers are important. We just approach the numbers game from the opposite direction as Gawker / WIN.

When the 5 bloggers behind b5 (get it? 5 bloggers? b5? We’re so creative with naming…) first started chatting about joining our blogs together, and first started looking at launching new blogs, and first started making decisions, we consciously decided not to go the WIN / Gawker route. That’s not to say those routes are bad. I have nothing but respect for both teams and the brands, profile, audience and value each company brings. They created the industry, and deserve high praise for doing that.

But the truth is that both Nick and Jason came at this as a publishing play. Which is fine. That’s their background. It’s how they do things. It’s worked in the past, and it worked this time around. However, when you do things as a publishing play you are forced to make decisions in a certain way. The recent restructuring at WIN to get rid of sub-1M pageview/month blogs is one example of this. Certainly it’s not what Jason would have done (judging by his offer to buy the blogs back from AOL), but pruning “small” blogs – because it’s difficult to sell adspace at AOL’s scale on them, is an example of a publishing play mentality.

When we started b5media, we didn’t do it as a publishing play. We did it as a community play.

What Being a Community Play Means

Before I jump into this, I want to note that a publishing play isn’t bad. It has some great strengths (like creating mega properties). It has some weaknesses too. Likewise, doing a network as more of a community play has some great strengths (which I’ll look at in a bit), but it also has weaknesses (like, by and large, not creating mega properties).

Also, I want to note that some smart people will likely read the below (assuming I write it coherently, which definitely isn’t a given) and think that I’m using wording and phrasing that’s similar to how bloggers contrast themselves against mainstream media (MSM). And while that wording and phrasing will almost certainly appear, in no way do I feel WIN / Gawker are dead or slow-moving or anything (as bloggers would claim to feel about the MSM). This wording and phrasing is really just the way I see our strengths and shouldn’t be construed as anything other than a CEO’s passion for his team, community, idea and industry.

When you’re a community play, one of the biggest questions that needs to be at the front of your mind is “what about the people?”. The problem with being a community play in a publishing world is that defining “the people” isn’t easy. When I used to be a youth pastor, “the people” were easy to define: they were the youth we were serving. Likewise when I used to run mega IT projects, “the people” were easy: the folk using the software and services and platforms we built.

But in a blog network “the people” are 3 distinct groups: bloggers (ie: internal community), readers (ie: external community) and advertisers (also known as the folk who pay the freaking bills).

When we were crafting b5, we had to create value in a distinct way for each of these groups. Now while I won’t go into a lot of details on the advertisers side of things, smart people will likely pick up on the fact that b5media is effectively a network built to target the mainstream by stacking niches together in verticals. And niches produce distinct audiences. And advertisers love distinct audiences. They also love reach, though, which is why we grouped our niches into verticals – and when we sell, we sell verticals just as much as demographics and just as much as psychographics. So for anyone thinking that fragmenting your network this way means you’re trying to pitch 10,000 pageview ad buys, don’t worry. Fuggetaboudid ;-)

The single biggest decision we made early in b5′s history was to go niche. We did this because we had all been readers of blogs and writers of blogs for several years, and while we recognized the value of mega blogs, we didn’t like being forced to “drink from the firehose”. We didn’t like being just one blogger out of a group of 20. We didn’t like not having a defined audience.

So when we created blogs, we almost always chose to go deep vs wide. Our first fashion blog wasn’t a general fashion blog, it was a fashion tips blog for guys by girls: She Knows Best. Our first gaming blog wasn’t a general gaming blog, it was a gaming blog by girl gamers: Play Girlz.

Later, when we had several of each type of blog, we split them into what we call “channels”. Others call them verticals, magazines, whatever. We split them into logical groups of blogs whereby a reader would be likely to find other blogs they liked in that similar grouping.

By going this route, we offered our readers choice. The example I use a lot is Joystiq. It’s a WIN blog. A fantastic blog. Others might use Engadget as their example. I don’t, because I don’t read gadget blogs. I’m a gamer, so I use Joystiq. Now, I love Joystiq. Hell, I even have 4-5 stars and 100-200 comments on the blog. I’m subscribed, and have been for at least 2 years.

But the truth is I also hate Joystiq. Reading Joystiq, I’m forced to wade through 20+ posts per day to find the 2 (ish) posts I actually like. And I know I’m not alone in that. The reality is that because Joystiq covers just about everything in the gaming world (and they do a damned good job at it), it’s unlikely that any but the broadest and least affiliated and most diverse gamers will find anymore than 50% of the posts actually interesting and useful.

As a reader, I’d rather read 4-5 smaller blogs that each have 1-2 posts per day on areas of gaming I’m interested in: Xbox 360, shooters, recent developments in the industry, etc.

In addition, as a blogger, I’d rather write on that kind of blog because it gives me a defined audience that I can really have a lot of fun with.

So it’s on surprise that when we chose how to craft b5, we did it using this “niche” model instead of the mega property model. It gives readers choice. It gives bloggers a more defined audience. And it gives advertisers the same thing.

Why Community Works

Ultimately what we’ve done is to value people first. In the early days of b5 we had a saying: if our bloggers are happy, they’ll write good content and so people will come and traffic will grow. This was totally true, however we eventually extended it to say that if our bloggers were happy, people would come, traffic would grow and advertisers would come. And this was also true.

End of the day, valuing people means you make some interesting choices. Choices like not accepting ads inside posts (should be noted that Jason made the same stern choice, so this post is in no way meant to say that he doesn’t value his readers, because I *know* he does). And not accepting gambling or non-family-friendly ads (even when we could just about guarantee the ads wouldn’t be seen by minors).

But these choices work.

They create a sense of valuing our bloggers, they create hugely passionate micro communities, and they create incredibly valuable demo and psycographic sets that advertisers just love. But it isn’t always peaches and cream.

Sometimes Community is Challenging

The truth is that sometimes, putting people first can be more than a little bit challenging. And going for niches can be even more challenging. I mean, yeah being able to read just the 3-4 business channel blogs you want to read is great. But what if you actually like the firehose? Well, that’s one of the reasons later this week we’ll be unveiling feeds for the entire channels (like this one for the Business Channel: http://feeds.b5media.com/b5media-Business-Channel-Feed).

Oh, there are quite a few challenges with the model we’ve chosen. Most of them revolve around the strengths of a publishing-centric model, namely Reach. Because while we have a decent reach now, capitalizing on it can sometimes be challenging.

The great thing about the challenges of our model (ie: gong after the mainstream via niches) is that we can come up with some really creative solutions. Over the coming months we’ll undoubtedly be showing some of those off, but the truth is that when you’re producing 200+ posts of content per day, there are a whole lot of ways you can use that content beyond just blogs.

Pa Rappa the Rappa

So, wrapping up, Jason’s largely right:

Weblogs, Inc. and Gawker are the two biggest. Nothing else even comes close. I mean, B5 Media raised some money but can you name their top blog?

Can you name our top blog? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean we’re as far behind as Jason might think. It’s easy to compare WIN and Gawker: just compare Joystiq to Kotaku or Engadget to Gizmodo. But how do you compare Joystiq to 15-25 medium-sized gaming blogs? Not being able to draw apples-to-apples comparisons, though, doesn’t mean we aren’t succeeding. And it doesn’t mean we aren’t enjoying some kick-ass growth, fueled almost entirely by our kick-ass bloggers I might add.

Not understanding the model isn’t Jason (or anyone else’s) fault. It’s almost certainly mine. Hopefully this first stab at explaining it provides some context and background. As in explaining anything that you feel truly passionate about, it often takes a dozen tries before you boil it down to an essence that both communicates your passion and makes it easy for someone on the outside to understand.

So, what do you think? Does the above explanation make sense? Do you agree with the model? What would you change? If you were a blogger / reader / advertiser, which model makes more sense?

We’re more than happy to have your feedback (constructive or otherwise). 50M million heads are better than 205, after all.