Shiny Media

Well I always hoped that going on tour would involve being ferried around the US in Lear jet. Ahh well. Anyhow almost as good (well nowhere near as good actually) is the Shiny Media PR tour.

In March Katie and Ashley are lining up a series of dates when we are going to visit UK PR companies and host discussions on blogging, new media in general and Shiny in particular. So far we have lined up ten companies, but if any other PR companies want to book us in to give our little presentation to their staff contact Ashley here

How many British blogs can you name? Well if you have only been reading the UK papers and magazines recently not many. It seems that everyone has an opinion on blogging. In fact this week alone there have been features in The Sunday Telegraph, New Media Age and PR Week. The odd thing is that the articles hardly reference any UK blogs at all.

It is all very interesting pontificating on how blogs might kill the PR industry, prove enormously beneficial to cutting edge companies and re-define newspapers. But to share your views without mentioning a single UK blog as a case study seems very lame.

So how many British blogs can you name? It seems that most journalists are only aware of the ones in The Guardian, Telegraph and Times. The British blogosphere may be under nourished compared to its US and even European counterparts, but there are still some wonderful blogs and bloggers out there, some of whom, for example Treonauts , Blue Fish and This French Life are starting to make a lot more than pocket money out of their endeavours.

Ashley

I never ceased to be amazed by quite how well the indies in the UK website sector (that means Shiny Media, The Reg, Magicalia, Pocket-Lint) are doing. The Reg is way ahead with at least five million unique users per month.  Shiny Media has over a million users, Hecklerspray has over 300,000 and you’ll have to ask Stuart how Pocket-Lint is doing. There are games sites that have massive online readerships and Popbitch's reach is astronomical too.

To put that in some kind of perspective I read in Media Week the other day that FHM.com was very proud to have hit two million users per month. A good figure – but that’s from a global brand (FHM is big in the US too) backed by a major publishing company and after five years of investment.

In a profile of Rupert Murdoch recently in The Economist it was claimed that The Sunday Times, The Times, News of The World and The Sun between them reach six million unique users per month. Admittedly this sounds on the low side, but it is bizarre to think that Shiny Media's network of blogs, the oldest of which is barely two years old, are not far behind the online audience of some of the world’s oldest and most respected newspapers. Some of the bigger US blogs attract nearly two million users each day.

Does this mean that established old media brands are going to struggle against upstarts like ourselves in the new media era? Not necessarily, but it is clear that the old media brands that have ‘got their heads round’ blogging and seriously invested in it, that’ll be The Guardian then, will attract the young, tech-savvy audience that they desperately need. As for newspapers like this one who dabble in blogging but, judging by their first efforts don’t really have a clue how it all works, Murdoch’s pronouncement on the future of print might start haunting them a little sooner than they expected.

I like Future Publishing I really do. Over the years they have developed a stable of innovative and dynamic magazines. They have also helped pay my mortgage too and I do recall at one time writing for six of their publications in the space of a week.

I’ll even forgive them for launching against us in the girl's gadget space.

What I do find unbelievable now though is that in the consumer electronics magazine space in the UK they have a virtual monopoly. Cast your minds back to when they bid for Highbury Publications in 2005. One of the reasons the deal nearly stalled was because the Office of Fair Trading felt that if it went through Future would have a near monopoly in the games magazine market. The games mags were then taken out of the package and Future went on to snap up Highbury.

The arrival of the old rump of WV titles, which are staffed by some very talented and knowledgeable journalists, then gave Future a formidable stable of CE magazines. The result is that the company now has a virtual monopoly in the consumer electronics magazine arena. Apart from two mags at Haymarket and some smaller players, when it comes to AV, gadgets and TVs if you want to buy a magazine it will be a Future one. Surely there is something wrong when on press trips representatives from Future and their freelancers massively outnumber everyone else?

Given that Future has websites up against us it is becoming increasingly hard to find a freelance consumer electronics writer to work for us that doesn’t get at least half of their salary from the company. I just find it bizarre that the company were able to absorb all those tiles and that the OFT did nothing.

At least in the online space, and that’s where it really matters now, they have competition here, here and here. Unless of course they snap then up too. Btw hilariously if you type Future Highbury Games into Google  you get Games Digest’s story…

Shiny Media gets down in the dirt with Scrumbag

The UK's first and largest commercial weblog publishing company, Shiny Media (www.shinymedia.com) is very proud to announce the arrival of its latest blog - that's 17 if you are counting - Scrumbag (www.scrumbag.tv)

Dedicated to the favourite sport of at least half of the SM team - Rugby Union - Scrumbag is a sharp, pointed and often very witty look at men, their odd shaped balls and the culture that surrounds them. But in true Shiny tradition it is written by a largely female team with ace blogger Toni Kelly, a rugby fanatic for many years, at the helm. Launched days before the start of the annual Six Nations competition Scrumbag will go where traditional rugby sites don't dare venture offering forthright and controversial opinions on the game's key issues.

Toni and her team will also keep Union fans up to speed on where they can watch the games - both live and on TV - what the latest gossip on the players is as well as in true Shiny style offering the odd Rugger fashion tip and spotting the best Rugby bargains on eBay.

'We are really excited about both Rugby and Scrumbag' says Shiny's Creative Director Ashley Norris. 'The southern hemisphere teams might have had it all their own way recently, but there's a real buzz around a couple of the European sides and by the time the World Cup starts next year anything could happen.' 'With a really knowledgeable and enthusiastic team of writers in place Scrumbag is fantastically placed to capture the excitement of the international game as well as keep hardcore fans abreast of what is happening domestically.'

About Shiny Media
• The UK's first and largest commercial weblog publishing company
• Attracts over a million visitors a month to its network of 17 blogs. To put that in perspective The Times Online and The Sun website combined only get two million a month, while FHM.com, which has been going five years and has seen serious investment only gets two million.

Shiny Media's blogs have been featured in newspapers and magazines on both sides of the Atlantic including; The Guardian, USA Today, International Herald Tribune, The Sun, Daily Mirror, Vogue, Elle, Time Magazine and the Financial Times.

For more information about the new blogs or Shiny Media contact Ashley Norris on +44 7900 244815 or info@shinymedia.com