Shiny Media

Yesterday Chris and Ash both went to The Guardian’s Changing Media Summit in Victoria, London. Chris was a member of a panel discussing the commercial implications of blogging, while Ashley tried not to get into a scuffle with a BBC journalist who said he had issues with bloggers getting paid. Perhaps all BBC staff should work for free too.

Anyhow scribes from theThe Guardian's media blog, OrganGrinder, wrote the conference up as it happened and you can find a really good summary of the day’s events here. Chris has promised to add his twopenny worth on the conference here tomorrow.

Interesting to read an article in a national newspaper about gadgets for girls that doesn’t actually mention Shiny Shiny. Rebecca Armstrong, who is one of the Indie's games journos, wrote a piece in today's paper highlighting the growing trend of girls getting into gadgets, yet managed not to plug Shiny or  the hundred or so other gadget girl sites.

Instead, in what is a major coup for the PR who sold the story, she takes figures from Stuff Magazine which says its female readership has quadrupled in the last year. Stuff is a really interesting mag at the moment as, unlike a lot of tech titles, it has bucked the downward trend and is putting on readers. It now has nearly 100,000 a month. Its publisher Haymarket has assembled a really good team and the quality of the editorial of the magazine reflects this.

Nevertheless even if we assume that 10-15,000 of Stuff’s readers are women that’s actually minuscule compared to 300,000 unique readers (of which around 80% are female) who visit Shiny Shiny on a monthly basis.

Shiny Shiny is that rare thing, a British commercial blogging success story. It was the first women's gadgets blog, is the most widely read and influential and has spawned many imitators. How many other British blogs have broken new ground and attracted a worldwide audience? Can’t think of many…

Ashley

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.

Well Ed Caesar over at the Indie can name more than many journos. Yesterday he listed fifteen top blogs and managed to mention a grand total of three British ones. That’s better than some commentators who wibble on about blogs without actually bothering to name a British blog, but still pretty poor.

So why the low number? Is it really because the British bloggers have nothing to say? Or did the fella simply not bother to spend much time researching the feature choosing instead to focus on the big US blogs? Given that Ed thinks Pete Rojas is the CEO of Weblogs Inc I suspect it is the latter. Also seems odd that he chose the big traffic US blogs, but two of the three Brit ones on his list almost certainly get less than 1000 users a day.

Ashley

The Shiny team has just landed a regular weekly slot on BBC Radio Birmingham talking about blogs. For the first week I am going to bang on about newspapers and their blogs especially given the Guar’s incredible Comment is free project. I’ll also mention this blog and this blog which are fast becoming two of my favourite UK blogs.

After that  it’s up for grabs and even I can’t get away with talking solely about Shiny's latest projects. So if you have a new blog, or even an old one, get in touch here and tell me about it. And the good ones will get a plug. Thanks

Ashley

Owing to some serious expansion we have a large number of vacancies for bloggers across almost all our titles. You should be a top notch writer/blogger who can spare the time to post at least ten times a week on the blog. You’ll be working for the UK's leading blogging company whose titles are read by over a million people each month.

All you need to do is to pen a post or two for the blog you want to work on and email it/them here. Also let us know a bit about yourself; where you are and what you do. Also point us in the direction of any blogs you currently write for. We have vacancies on the following blogs TV Scoop HDTVUK Trashionista Tech Digest Shiny Shiny Games Digest PopJunkie Bayraider

Thanks Ashley

Shiny Media's been at it again - making new blogs to thrill and delight. This time it's brides-to-be we're out to impress with our wedding blog, Bridalwave (crazy Muriel types are more than welcome too).

Edited by sometime Trashionista writer, Camilla Chafer, Bridalwave will see you through the highs and lows of wedding planning, checking out the best of bridal fashion, venues, jewellery, stationery, beauty, floral, cakes and anything else wedding-related - and all without a single gush, twitter, simper or smirk in sight.

So if you're a real life bridezilla, or if you're just planning on a small wedding in the local pub, head over to Bridalwave.tv for a spot of off-white marriage guidance.

Bridalwave

Attention all sports fans. The Googly, Shiny Media's latest sports blog, has just gone public. Being the clever souls that we are, we've launched it just in time for England's first Test against India so you can find out all about just how badly it's going for England already.

Edited by Will Luke, creator of The Corridor of Uncertainty cricket blog, with regular contributions from sports writer extraordinaire, Gideon Haigh, The Googly is just the place for a bit of cricket chat during your break for lunch or tea.

This is Shiny Media's second foray into the world of sports bloggery, the first one being our rugby blog, Scrumbag. So if you're that way inclined, you can now get your daily fix of sporting news, reviews and gossip in handy bitesize chunks.

The Googly
Scrumbag