The Bloggy Network has unveiled a new design:

As you can tell we’ve decided to incorporate a snazzy new design thanks to our wonderful designer Elena. Anyway, as you can tell we’ve improved the image here quite a bit. That really wasn’t too hard since there wasn’t much to see here before. Now there’s something a little bit nicer to look at.

Anyway, we’ve got a couple of big sites joining the network very soon. We’re growing a lot faster than most people would think. We’re getting it done slowly but surely. I look forward to sharing the good news of the new joins to the network soon

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve acquired the Blog Herald from Duncan Riley.

Our official press release reads in part:

BlogMedia, Inc. has continued the growth of its online services division & blog network by acquiring The Blog Herald from Duncan Riley.

This is BlogMedia’s first acquisition of 2006 after launching its blog network in early January.

“The Blog Herald, “ said BlogMedia Senior Vice President Matt Craven, “has a well-established history and reputation within the blog and technology communities. This acquisition allows BlogMedia to become the news destination of choice for readers seeking technology news & information about blogs, blog networks, and professional blogging.”

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

For us, this acquisition only made sense. We already own and operate a site for bloggers to find jobs (BloggerJobs), a site that ranks and measures blog networks (Blog Network List), a snarky opinion site about blogs (Jack of All Blogs), another blog about blogging (Blogger Idol), as well as Blog Network Watch. Not to mention that we’ve quiet launched Problogging.

Our intent is to operate the Blog Herald in much the same manner that Duncan has since its founding – reporting on news around the blogosphere and commenting on the technology that drives this strange new medium we find ourselves in.

I do want to mention that Duncan has been nothing but a class act throughout the negotiations and sale process. Also a big thanks to Aaron Brazell of b5media who assisted with the site transfer and setup. We wish Duncan the best in his future endeavors, we’ve no doubt that he will be successful. He will be a hard act to follow…

What’s going to change? Well, we plan on launching more interaction and connectivity between our various blogging sites within our network in the days and weeks to come. This will enable us to leverage the strengths of each of these sites. We also have our crack design staff looking at a facelift for The Blog Herald. In the meantime, we’ll be off blogging!

Coverage: Blog Herald, Problogging, Jack of All Blogs, College Startup, Technosailor

Updates (2/26): Chartreuse with an interview with me, Blog Critics, Syntagma Media – including an interview with yours truly, Work Boxers

Instablogs announces a few more design changes. Designblog, Planetoutsourcing, and Instafinance all have new designs.

Duncan Riley writes of jumping fish and the blogosphere:

For those of you who have never read Hitchhickers Guide to the Galaxy before, it is truly the pinancle of absursidisty, or some would say comedic science fiction, and yet Adams had a knack for inserting moments in his works of great philisophical value. The most famous of these being the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, which a race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings who built a computer named Deep Thought asked to calculate this answer. The answer, of course, was 42.

The blogosphere is no longer the domain of geeks and political junkies, in its totality it’s richness and diversity reflect all of humankind.

I’m often asked to explain what blogging is, what’s it all about, why do it, what does it all mean. Given that many would argue that we are alone in the Universe, then I provide this answer. The meaning of the blogosphere is indeed 42.

There is no other answer, and there never will be, because there is no other way to describe all that is life, as there is no other way to describe the blogosphere.

This is my last post as the owner of The Blog Herald. At some stage within the next 24-48 hours the site will be residing in its new home, for its new owners to love, cherish and feed (and she is often hungry, so take note!). I’ll be posting for roughly the next two weeks, but I won’t be doing any commentary, only news posts, whilst the new owners settle in.

It’s been a magical experience, and there are so many people to thank.

Duncan has much more to say, be sure to read the rest….

John at Syntagma Media interviews Duncan Riley of The Blog Herald, on the eve of his sale:

Lessons from The Blog Herald sale …. without being publicly critical of anyone involved in the sale (particularly the first aborted sale attempt), I wouldn’t do it the same way again. I’d rather not rehash the whole thing but I would give this advice:

* Sites like Sitepoint are full of people who will only consider revenue and are incapable at looking at the bigger picture, they really don’t get blogging.

* Keep your sale time short, and make it public. I honestly believed that selling The Blog Herald publicly would be damaging to the brand itself. There is little doubt that there has been some damage (and hence it didn’t make $72k the second time) to the brand, but a lot less than I expected. If I regret anything it’s that I didn’t just go public with it in the first place. I know talking to some people that they feel that the trust I had built up through the site was damaged by the secrecy, which is a fair call.

* Always insist on a non-refundable deposit from American buyers upfront on a big sale. When I first put The Blog Herald on the market, my father said to insist on getting a deposit because “American’s can’t be trusted”. Sure, it’s probably a little bigoted but as with the first sale attempt he was unfortunately right.

I can’t reveal the identity of the new owners at the time of writing this (they did pay a deposit I’m happy to say), but I can say that they are American, and the experience in dealing with them has been first rate. Great group of people. First class professionalism without any of the hype or marketing-speak you often get out of professionals (particularly in my field of marketing).

Instablogs has launched India Blog Watch:

We are happy to announce that we are launching our Indiablogwatch Blog today. Indiablogwatch will cover the latest action on the Indian blogs. It is one of our pet projects and Indian bloggers are talking about a lot of things. You have indian films and the latest in song and dance. Then there is the system which, if you go by the word, sucks most of the time. And of course there are the good old politicians. What else can there be said about them? They are like that only.

In Indiablogwatch, we will experiment with various styles of coverage. Please do let us know about any special indian blog or india-specific writing you come across online. And as always, your suggestions for improvements are welcome.

Blogebrity reports that 9rules has booted Gadgetopia and Om Malik’s Gigaom:

Gadgetopia and Om Malik are officially gone….still waiting for a full manifest of the departed from 9rules, who first delivered news of the 9rules weight loss plan just over a week ago.

Gadgetopia has this to say about their departure from 9rules:

We got tossed out of The 9 Rules Network this morning, which is disappointing. We couldn’t stay because we belong to FM Publishing. It was one or the other, and we chose to stay with FM.

[...]

And this morning, the email came. It’s too bad — I liked being a part of 9 Rules. But this is probably the future of blog networks. We’re going to descend into tribes, with each one jockeying for position. You belong to one or the other.

Duncan Riley writes of his three years writing at The Blog Herald:

I’m not quite ready to post my final farewell yet as the site transfer is slated for this weekend, and I’ve agreed to stick around for a couple of weeks whilst the new owners get settled in (but I’ll be obviously restricting my comment pieces…I don’t want the new owners to start off with legal threats ). But before I bid adieu I wanted to indulge in a little bit of reminisce. I’m not quite at the thanking people stage yet, that will be my last post before handover

My favorite part comes near the end – because in the end, this great experiment we call “blogging” is really about connecting with people:

I could continue writing this post all day, however I’ll finish it before it gets too long by saying the best thing about having established, owned and written at The Blog Herald is the amazing variety of people I’ve gotten to know in varying degrees through this blog, and from all over the world. You know who you are My life is so much more richer today (personally) because of it.

Blog Network Instablogs celebrates reaching 10,000 posts:

This is the 10,001st post of Instablogs Network. We are proud to announce that with humble beginnings in October 2005, we have crossed this milestone today.

In the coming days our number of posts are going to increase many folds and the next 10,000 will be reached in one-third of the time it took for the first ten thousand.

Darren reports at Problogger that 9rules member site Unmatched Style is up for auction at Sitepoint:

Another blog is up for auction at SitePoint Forums – this time the blog is Unmatched Style and the bids are at $12,500 so far. It’s a blog with $500 – $900 monthly revenue and 850,000 monthly page views.

Looks like the site has been sold for $12,500. An interesting deal considering that the blog has around $900 in monthly revenue at the high end – that’s a pretty high earnings multiple for such a site.