The Blue Fish Network has added 5 more sites:

OblivionFlavoredLambanog is written by Dereck and is a seventeen-year-old’s chronicled pursuit for power, money, fame, and sex. Dereck is a postmodern, narcissistic, Chinese freshman at the Ateneo de Manila University. He loves parties, films, philosophy, and Korean food. His goal in life is to change the world and to believe in the existence of love again.

Visual Grammar is written by Jerome and is ‘a place where news items that are of interest to Maverick gets picked up. It is sometimes poignant, other times insightful, but its always entertaining. At least we try to be.’

Living on a Whim is written by Josh, who says ‘Living on a Whim discovers spontaneous living outside our normal responsibilities, such as work, and focuses on having fun, exploration, and creativity. I cover interesting ideas from around the world. Since I live in DC, I cover the nightlife their and good eats.’

Kim Rom writes on various topics including personal stuff, gaming and sci-fi.

Beyond Guitars is written by Riz and features guitars, contemporary Christian music, Gospel artists, gigs, and everything in-between.

The girls over at Girlspoke are seeking a few good boys. See the posting at Blogger Jobs.

Metroblogs launches Metroblogging Chennai:

Continuing our theme of cities that have been recently renamed, we’re happy to introduce Chennai which used to be called Madras. Wikipedia says that Chennai is called “the Detroit of South Asia” because of the auto industry focus there, but we’re happy to call it the 44th Metroblogging city. It’s also our second metblog in India – stop by and check it out.

Earlier this week Gawker Media’s Valleywag took some shots at Yahoo’s Jeremy Zawodny:

Could the father of podcasting (one of so many — it takes a village) and famed Yahoo blogger be related to Kevin Covais, the bookish little American Idol star nicknamed “Chicken Little” (because “Harry Potter” is so 2004)?

Jeremy apparantly didn’t like it and fired back today:

Seriously… While I admire your attempt, you really do need to try harder. A quick survey of friends and co-workers found that most weren’t terribly amused. I also wasn’t amused. But more importantly, you didn’t even come close to offending me.

You call yourself a “tech gossip rag?”

I think we’re all really hoping for something that’s more like a cross between the Weekly World News and The Onion.

And yes, it’s a slow news day…

The Directors of b5media take some time to reflect on their 6 month anniversary.

From Jeremy Wright:

Wow, time flies when you’re busy, eh? It was 6 months ago that we first launched b5media. About 10 months ago that the idea was formed. On that fateful day, Duncan (or was it Darren? I think it was Duncan) emailed 4 of us in the blogging world who had some sites and basically said “I think we can make more money by selling ads on our sites together instead of separately.”

Ironically, we haven’t made any more money off of our sites, really. But, through the discussions that email fueled, we realized that there was a lot of space left in blogging. Yes, Weblogs, Inc. and Gawker led the way, but not only is there a lot of room for innovation in the blog network space, we also believe that blogs are set to change the way the mainstream populace looks for, finds and consumes information – particularly non-newspaper information on areas such as health and beauty, fitness, hobbies, etc.

There’s much much more from Jeremy along with some great conversation in the comments.

Darren Rowse writes:

A friend recently reminded me that throughout all history people have clustered together to have conversations. Over the ages a lot of these conversations happened at the end of the day around a campfire where extended families would come together to tell stories, debate issues that impacted them and to entertain each other.

Over the centuries the locations of where these conversations took place changed with in more recent history us moving towards methods of communication that relied upon paid centralised experts to inform and entertain us.

With the advent of new media, like blogging, we’re seeing a move back to the days of people informing and entertaining themselves. In a sense what I see b5 (and other blog and podcast networks) doing is creating spaces for these conversations to happen.

Congratulations to b5media on their sixth anniversary!

NYC Girl Site Girlspoke has joined the up-and-coming Glam.com Network, which was described to us tonight as a “9rules for Girls” style of network.

b5media’s Duncan Riley was featured this week in the Bunbury Mail:

MEET one of the blogging world’s A-listers – local man Duncan Riley.

Late last year Mr Riley sold his web blog, The Blog Herald, for a “healthy five figure sum.”

And he recently joined b5media – a powerful blogging network that has 60 writers under contract and is growing into a multimillion dollar corporation.

Blogs – websites where items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order and can result in anything from an online diary to a newspaper-style site – have become a big business, with more than 750,000 Australian ones in cyberspace and plenty being snapped up by big business.

An early adopter of the craze, Mr Riley began blogging in 2003.

At the time, there was no one talking about blogging and be created The Blog Herald.

Update: Spelling corrected. Thanks Duncan!

UK Blog Network Shiny Media has inked a content distribution deal with US Based Glam.com:

As regular Shiny readers will have already noticed we have done a deal with the US based Glam.com. The site, which is kind of a younger funkier version of iVillage or Handbag, now takes feeds from all our fashion blogs which you can find here. We have been keeping our eye on Glam for some time and we are really pleased we are now working with them.

Congrats!

Weblogs, Inc. has reorganized itself into a new set of verticals, each with an Associate Producer:

Weblogs, Inc. (WIN), in its fifth month as ”an AOL company”, now has three full-time, Associate Producers: Barb Dybwad, Brad Hill, and Sarah Gilbert – all former WIN lead bloggers who bring a tremendous wealth of talent to the Weblogs team. This team is focused on supporting our bloggers in all things connected with blogs and blogging here at WIN.

This support includes everything from launching new blogs and contracting new bloggers to ensuring that bloggers are: properly welcomed; fully enabled in their daily utilization of our blog post authoring system; and compensated, in a timely manner, for their posts. There are many moving parts involved in keeping this organization – of over 80 blogs and 170 freelance bloggers – running smoothly. Barb, Brad, and Sarah are dedicated to choreographing communications and support for our bloggers, our readers, and our various cohorts in the Blogosphere, at AOL, and all points beyond.

b5media has launched two new blogs:
Tops2Bottoms:

I am so excited to announce that Tops2Bottoms has joined the Women’s Channel at b5media. I have thought for a good long time now that fashion was something we were obviously missing here, and Tops2Bottoms fills the gap perfectly.

Sasha Manuel is our resident stilleto-addict fashionista and will guide us through the maze that is ready-to-wear and couture, showing us the lastest in fashions, talking about designers, and always sharing her experiences with fashion with a charm and humor that you don’t want to miss. Go visit Sasha at Tops2Bottoms, say hello and welcome her, and keep an eye on her every day to see what is new and haute!

CFS Squared:

Mothers and daughters have a special relationship, but none more so than Adelle and Grace Tilton. They are the talented writers of the newest blog in the b5media Science and Health Channel: CFS Squared.

Adelle, a former nurse, has had chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) for a number of years. For the first time, she is going public so that she can help change people’s perceptions of this potentially debilitating illness. Fifteen-year-old Grace was diagnosed six months ago and had to make the difficult decision to study at home because a regular school schedule could not accomodate her condition.

As many as half a million people in the United States may have a CFS-like condition. Thanks to Adelle and Grace, there’s a welcoming place where they can find much needed information, support, and encouragement. No one is alone, especially at CFS Squared.