It was good to see Duncan Riley back at the Blog Herald, if only as the guest on Matt Craven’s podcast, which has become something of a “must-hear” item lately.

Naturally, the main topic of conversation was the recent VC funding and what b5 intends to spend it on. What emerged was very much in line with what we expected.

Essentially, the drive will be on pro-ing up every aspect of the enterprise, converting a small “family” firm into a real, meat-red business. The emphasis is on bringing in expertise across areas unrepresented in the starting lineup.

In terms of the product itself, though, it seemed a little hazy. Maybe Duncan was being cagey and not letting on, or there are some decisions which await agreement with the new corporate johnnies joining the board.

The nub was that they’d get through Christmas, concentrating on boiler room stuff, like project management systems and new designs, especially a fresh front page for the b5 blog, which will serve as a portal to the network. All very sensible stuff.

What I was waiting to hear, though, was whether they would separate the operator (b5media) from the product (the network) by bringing in a new name for their distributed publication : the 150 blogs. In my view that needs a strong identity, a brand, if you’d prefer. You can’t call any publication, even an online one, “b5media”. The Weblogs Inc model is not going to work here because they haven’t got an Engadget.

I was also looking for something on how the network will be developed as a publishing product. Is it just another dreary old blog network? Will young kids be asking their mothers : “Mommy, what’s a b5media?”

They need a strong ID for their product, because apart from Problogger.net which covers areas they are leaving behind, there is no single dominating entity that holds the whole together at the public coal-face.

I suppose what I’m saying is that they need to appoint someone to lick the product into shape. And by “product” I mean the publication and its content, not the back-end stuff.

The tech and business sides are well served in the new setup. They also have Mark Evans onboard, a journalist, but also with a strong technology bent.

If I were them I would bring in a top-flight editor from the world of print magazines. Not another of the tech-squad, but someone experienced in general serial publishing of mainstream magazines. There are many out there, and I’m sure they could find one of those brilliant New York types who would spend one day a week for them at a price they could afford.

If they go for the best, the jigsaw will be complete, and I might well want to invest some of my own dosh in their inevitable IPO.

So who’s going to be the Conde Nast of the native, online, network magazine industry? Answer coming up later.

With Syntagma’s first birthday rapidly approaching on October 21, we’ve naturally given a lot of thought to our second year. The target for Y1 of 50 websites up and going has now been reached, although not all of them are currently visible.

In that time, we’ve reshaped our inventory from a random “blog network” into a Network Magazine seeking print-quality topics and authors. Like all projects, we’ve had our failures and successes.

In a comment on Syntagma, Rick Segal, the VC investor and now Chairman of b5media, writes : “The interesting thing about this investment is the ‘because of effect’. As I’ve mentioned before, these are changing times and nobody has yet seen it all nor has it all played out.”

That’s true and Syntagma was always a work in progress, as is b5.

Ultimately, we discovered that 50 sites is the maximum manageable for a magazine format. Thirty is probably the optimum.

The wide-ranging sectors, or streams, that we cover are too varied for the kind of vertical-specific publication we have in mind for the future. Where does that lead us, then?

In effect, Syntagma is a seed-bed to see what works and what doesn’t. And this is the essence of our plan for Y2. We’ll spin off our most successful verticals to become separate magazines, each with around 30 sites.

Our publishing ethos of high-end, mature (not adult), non-divisive content will remain, as will our aspiration to finding the best authors on the block. Our overall direction, pointing to the retail sector for advertising will be our focus, although a professional and technical tributary may well emerge.

At the end of Y2, I hope to have at least three, and possibly six, Network Magazines in place. The newer ones will be well-funded and executed online publications, adopting cutting-edge technology without baffling ordinary non-geek readers. We’ll innovate but not obfuscate. The user-accessibility of quality print magazines will be our template.

So who will be the Conde Nast of the native, online, network magazine industry?

S……. It’s an open secret.

No sooner does b5media obtain VC funding (see here and here), than a full-scale crisis breaks out in the venture capital industry.

Today’s New York Times is reporting that highly respected VC firm, Sevin Rosen, is sending money back to its investors and closing its latest fund. The reason? “The high-risk, high-return venture capital business may have turned into all risk and no return.”

“The traditional venture model seems to us to be broken,” Steve Dow, a general partner at Sevin Rosen Funds, said in an interview.

The Times reports : “In its letter, it bemoaned what it described as ‘a terribly weak exit environment,’ a reference to the dearth of initial public offerings and to a market for acquisitions at valuations that it considers too low to deliver the kind of returns that venture investors expect.”

And this is more forward-projection than now-based : “In many ways, Sevin Rosen’s decision is based not on where the market for public offerings and acquisitions is today, but on where the partners in the firm think it will be in five or more years, the typical life of a venture fund.”

When a bubble reaches the stage that the feet on the ground start sending back cash rather than invest it, can the bubble still be called a bubble, or a deflating balloon?

Ye Gods! Have you read the latest public relations excercise for IE7 (Internet Explorer) on Microsoft’s IE blog?

You would think we were being asked to prepare for the second coming of Jesus Christ. When I finished reading it I was almost shaking in my boots.

What is this phenomenon rapidly approaching our shores? Hurricane Browser?

The list of Things-To-Do to prepare for the deluge include downloading a previous “release candidate” to make sure it doesn’t zap your system (too late if it does, no doubt) and downloading a special “Readiness Toolkit” to ensure you have no lurking enemies of IE hanging around.

But it doesn’t end there. These guys are really motoring now. “Download and use the Application Compatibility Toolkit”. When you’ve finished messing about with that : “Visit the Microsoft Internet Explorer Developer Center”.

There’s more : “Use the Information Index for Internet Explorer7″ and : “Read the IE Team Blog”.

Worse, you’re going to get it whether you like it or not — if you’re on automatic Windows update.

I can’t recall jumping through so many hoops when I downloaded Firefox.

This is a good example of what I call The Leviticus Strategy, after the Old Testament book. Reduce your punters to submission with an list of instructions so long they naturally assume you’re a great authority on the subject.

C’mon Microsoft, you may be paranoid, but why should you infect your customers as well?

And what on earth is it going to be like when Windows Vista, the greatest juggernaut of them all, hoves into view next year?

I think I’ll book one of Richard Branson’s flights to the moon. The vista may be calmer there.

We’ve had a day now to digest the news that a couple of venture capitialists have put $2m into a content company, b5media. Apart from the congratulatory posts and comments climbing up the ladder of Techmeme, there have also been some very negative ones.

On reflection, my own views have firmed-up a little since yesterday when the sheer audacity of the move left the jaw hanging lower than is comfortable for any extended period. The jawline is now back in shape and the move looks a little different today.

It’s always important to see the counter-arguments in these cases because that opens your eyes to other possibilities. So lets look at a couple of them :

Nick Douglas at Valleywag (a Gawker product and rival to b5):

“The whole point of blogging is that it hardly costs anything, so it’s easy to pull a profit within a few months. Why would these two take funding that beholds them to investors? [...] But hey, if someone wants to throw $2 million at the most overhyped of the dozens of small-time blog networks, at least it’ll make it more fun when the company implodes.”

Mike Rundle, of 9rules, and another rival in the space, comments on the same post :

“These investors must be living in a timewarp, one where arts and crafts blogs written by stay at home moms and 20 blogs on crappy TV sitcoms can return on an investment. Gawker has various uber-successful blogs, WIN has Engadget and Autoblog, what does b5media have? … I’ll tell ya. Sacred Dolls and Bears.”

Syntagma Media’s point of view on VC funding has been expressed in this publication many times, but in the past month here and here. A quick glance tells you we are very sceptical about taking on so much funding and obligation while expanding fixed-costs so fast. But that was written before the news broke so can’t be seen as a criticism of the b5 position.

One of the reasons I’ve billed Syntagma as a magazine rather than a “global media network” is that the latter makes it sound like NewsCorp, the megabillion-dollar property of the Murdoch empire. Mike Rundle’s rather sharp critique above shouldn’t detract from the accuracy of his point. There is a weakness in the new b5media Inc and it’s summed up in one word : gigantism.

From the word go they set out to be the biggest “blog network” out there, without questioning the nature of the product itself. Jason Calacanis’s Weblogs Inc. cast a smokescreen around networks of this type because Engadget and Autoblog (the hard core of the business) appeal to readers way outside the blogosphere and merit the mainstream label by their reach alone.

As Mike says, Sacred Bears and Dolls is not in that league, so needs a more modest environment to thrive in — a magazine, perhaps.

Magazines are small, familiar objects. They are also a massive mainstream business, with a proven track record. But no-one would talk in megaspherical terms about them. Magazines online have a global reach and can be packaged as distributed websites, or even blogs. Quality of content is the main reckoner here. Mags have to deliver the goods, as all content-rich businesses have to.

To compare blog networks with print publications therefore is about the right scale to my mind. To lift Sacred Bears and Dolls and a rash of derivative celeb blogs into a “global media network” is a giant step too far.

Our aim has always been to reach for professional standards in content provision and allow the result to grow organically along its natural pathways, while thinking through the next step to spot the pitfalls, especially bubblemania.

Driving a simple blog network, without a distinctive brand, into the highly sophisticated world of big mainstream media is asking for trouble.

Forced plants in a glasshouse lack all scent and flavour. What is the flavour of b5?

Update: Mike Rundle has just written a more considered piece on b5 funding over at BusinessLogs. There’s also a clarifying comment by the VC concerned, Rick Segal.

Reuters is reporting today that Penguin has bought the content of Catherine Sanderson’s blog, La Petite Anglaise, to publish it in book form. The acquisition is now the most hotly-discussed topic at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Penguin’s publisher, Katy Follain, commented: “The blogs should be almost incidental to us as publishers. We need to look at the writing itself. Her writing is so strong we signed her for two books.”

A mid-six-figure sum has been floated as the advance on Anglaise.

Rival publisher, MacMillan’s Chief Executive Richard Charkin writes on his own blog : “I’m not quite sure what a mid-six-figure sum is, but let’s imagine £500,000 ($942,700) and let’s assume that non-UK rights are about the same. It means that the book will have to sell around a million copies to earn back the advance.”

Reuters reports : “Some blogs-turned-books have been hits with readers, but publishers could not recall any that had reached such a lofty sales tally.”

Indeed many have had disappointing sales because the immediacy and transient nature of blog posts don’t sit well with the permanency of the book format. Blogs that translate successfully into books, are usually written as books by book authors, or at least rewritten for a different medium.

It’s interesting that Penguin’s publisher says that the blog is irrelevant, it’s the quality and strength of the writing that counts.

Blogs have a very different presence to that of books. In some cases, they’re closer to newspapers. Reportage blogs do very well if written by a well-informed and intelligent journalist. Most blogs, though, more easily resemble magazines, having content that’s useful and less transient than the newsy outfits.

The big publishers clearly know what they’re doing here — more so than the bloggers. They will have to invest a significant sum of money to publish a blog in print. They can’t afford to be impulsive amateurs.

As I’m often saying these days, blogs can be many things. It’s important to know what.

Syntagma Media is delighted to launch the latest title in our 50-site Network Magazine : Brain Boomers — Activating the Brains of Baby Boomers.

Our author is Dr. Ellen Weber, Director and CEO of the MITA Brain-Based Renewal Center in Rochester, New York, who knows a lot about the functioning of the brain. Her purpose in Brain Boomers is to show us how the brain can be kept active and flexible into old age, mainly on the principle, “use it or lose it”.

Ellen begins by setting up a competition :

What advice would a ten-year-older-you give to increase your quality of life ten years from today? Squeeze your answer into 250 words … increase our quality of life through your wisdom or wit and you win! The winner gets the game, Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day, a game that keeps your brain sharp, and which can be quite addictive. This popular game is inspired by Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, a well known and respected Japanese neuroscientist.

Sample Brain Boomers here.

It’s been announced today that b5media has secured US$2m from Toronto VC Rick Segal and Brightspark Ventures.

Well, they were never going to fail, were they? They had too much talent at the top and too much energy to sink slowly into the quicksands of the blogosphere.

Although I must say, when I read this on the b5 blog, my first thoughts were : two mill will quickly be spent, especially if salaries are to be paid for the first time and new high-powered staff taken on.

We hear that Rick will become Chairman, Brightspark will have a member on the board, a new Head of Sales will be taken on, and that Shel Israel has been advising them since the beginning of the funding project. He will join the business in an advisory capacity. Aaron and few other b5 stalwarts are going fulltime in the business. Darren is to be VP for Training and Development, eventually in a fulltime capacity.

According to the press release, b5 has now badged itself as a “new media network” targeting the mainstream via vertical-specific content. So they too are dropping the “blog network” tag and looking beyond the blogosphere to mainstream commercial publishing in sector-specific areas. If the endgame is creating a serious business, this is the first step to make. Well done them.

I would personally like to congratulate Jeremy on his coup, and wish the other three founders — Darren Rowse, Duncan Riley and Shai Coggins — a fair wind on their new ocean voyage of discovery.

I was reading a post over at The Register titled: “Chip sales enjoy record growth in August”.

Someone looking over my shoulder said: “What about fish?”

Well, I thought it was funny.