Jeremy Wright is stepping down as CEO of blog network b5media, effective immediately, according to a press release. The new CEO is Elaine Kunda, presented as an “experienced entrepreneur”.

“Elaine is exactly the right leader for b5media, with her strong leadership and proven ability to lead top performing teams,” said John Albright, managing partner of JLA Ventures.

Kunda herself said this in the press release:

“I believe there is an extraordinary opportunity to create additional value and new possibilities for our customers, partners and employees. The Company has accomplished a great deal in its relatively short history and I look forward to working together to take it to the next level.

Wright will stay on the board of directors, but why do this now, and make it effective immediately? read more

The times are changing and so are the blog networks, something that appeared to be a solid business model a couple of years back, but now deemed a rough one if you want to succeed. One company above others are being mentioned whenever blog networks are branded as a failed idea, and that’s b5media. Not because they have failed or anything, but rather because they have all these blogs, and no real focus.

Well, that’s about to change, and starting today at that.

The first big change is Splendicity, something of a portal page for the beauty and style channel at b5media. It’s not a new site, but with the redesign, b5media not only aims to bring something new to the table, they’re also reshaping the logistics of their blog network.

Or, to put it frankly, they have taken their 32 blog strong beauty and style channel, and converted them all to one big site: the new Splendicity.

32 blogs, becomes 1 site. That brings a lot of questions, doesn’t it? read more

Brian Gardner announced that b5media will use one of the Revolution themes as the base theme across the network, and CEO Jeremy Wright confirmed that it is indeed so. The theme will apparently roll out in a network redesign due next year, and not a moment too soon if you ask me.

While I have nothing against the Revolution Streamline theme, which will be the basis of the new design, I’m a bit surprised to see b5media going with something that is a premium theme available for all. Or is it? I can’t seem to find it on the Revolution Two website, so maybe b5media bought the rights to it? I’ve contacted Brian and Jeremy for a comment on this.

Check out the Revolution Streamline demo if you want to know what the basis of the new b5media base template will be in 2009.

There is no doubt that the current financial situation is hitting the web as well as the rest of the media industry. This is certainly one of the reasons why we’ve seen blog networks close, cut costs, or rationalize their portfolio. So is the blog network business model in trouble, and what does the established blog network hotshots thing about these things?

I decided to find out, in the first roundtable discussion here on the Blog Herald. That’s why I invited these fine blog network heavyweights to participate in the discussion.

• Jeremy Wright, CEO of b5media
• Collis Ta’eed, CEO of Envato
• Mike Rundle, triad member of 9rules

So let’s get started and see what they have to say! read more

Blog network b5media is revamping their pay scheme, and that means a lot less money for the bloggers. More or less every blog within the network will see a drop in revenue because of this. TechCrunch broke the story by posting a memo from CEO Jeremy Wright, in which the following is key:

I’m sure by now you’ve run your blog through the system above and realized that (with a handful of exceptions), due to the change to Omniture as a stats package, your pay will go down. For some it will go down significantly. Obviously this isn’t the intent of the new pay system, it was just the flaw in the previous stats package. For the last two years, b5 has been effectively paying bloggers 2-3x more in traffic bonuses than they were actually getting. While, again, this isn’t a blogger’s fault, neither is the new pay system about “cutting pay”. Any reduction in pay is due almost exclusively to the reality of using an inaccurate pay system in the past vs an industry standard third-party audited system going forward.

Jeremy Wright has tried to respond to the post, but his comments are apparently getting caught in moderation, so he posted it on his blog for now. He points out the obvious culprit: read more

Know More Media will be closing its doors as of August 1, according to editor Easton Ellsworth, who confirmed the open letter from b5media’s Jeremy Wright to the KMM bloggers. Still no official announcement on the Know More Media blog though.

Jeremy pitches the KMM bloggers, asking them to join b5media by buying their blogs. It is all very tactful, I think. He also has an offer to the founders. read more