Confirmed: Shiny Media To Make A Comeback

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shiny-media-logoStraight from the Unconfirmed Department comes the news Managing Director and Co-Founder Chris Price confirmed to us that Shiny Media will make a return to the blogging stage. Shiny Media went spectacularly in to administration little more than 2 weeks ago and the blogosphere quickly filled with good old fashioned blog drama.

Today Sheldon Daniels announced on Tech Digest that normal service will be resumed tomorrow morning. No announcement has been made so far on the Shiny Media news page at the moment of writing and we could not reach anyone at Shiny Media. A trustworthy little bird told us that Managing Director and Co-founder Chris Price back at the office is. [Read more…]

Exclusive: Shiny Media goes into administration

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I’ve just had word that UK new media/blogging network Shiny Media has gone into administration.

Despite this year’s cutbacks and new additions, it doesn’t seem to have been enough to save the company.

Bright Station Ventures ploughed $4.5m of funding into the company in 2007 (Update: apparently the self-reported news that Shiny Media received $4.5m in funding was incorrect but was never retracted.). There’s no official word yet on how the relationship between the two companies stands, but I’m sure you can speculate on that. [Read more…]

Shiny Media reinstates trio of blogs: Pies, WiiWii, Dollymix

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In what may mark the beginnings of a turn of fortune, Shiny Media has announced that three sidelined blogs have been relaunched.

Who Ate All The Pies stopped being updated in September last year, but now Ollie Irish has retaken his role as editor-in-chief, with Anorak handling content production but (at present) with the blog still very clearly branded as Shiny Media’s. Details of the deal aren’t known (and probably won’t be made public) but I’d imagine some sort of revenue sharing and pay-per-post deal is in place to keep both the writers and companies happy. [Read more…]

Shiny Media hires Mike Poole as creative consultant

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UK-based new media network Shiny Media, currently undergoing significant transformation, has announced that it has hired Mike Poole as creative consultant.

Mike has previously worked on projects for a number of UK companies including retail store Debenhams, hairdressing salon Toni & Guy and supermarket giant ASDA. [Read more…]

UK’s Shiny Media cuts staff; co-founder Katie Lee leaves

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Shiny Media is to cut back on staff, including editorial director and co-founder Katie Lee, according to an official press release initially sent to TechCrunch UK & Ireland. Chris Price remains in place as the last of the company’s founders.

The full statement, copied below, talks of the current tough financial climate and the toll it has taken on the new media company. Shiny Media has “held on as long as [it] could without restructuring the business” but that long-term stability has now forced its hand. [Read more…]

Shiny Media to sell off hard-to-monetize football blogs

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UK blog network Shiny Media has officially announced that it will no longer be regularly updating its Who Ate All the Pies English football blog, and is actively looking for a buyer.

Several of Shiny’s other sports blogs have been retired over the past year, with the main reasons being the difficulty of monetizing them, when compared to Shiny’s core technology- and fashion-related sites, and various administrative strains. [Read more…]

Shiny Media offering six-month video internship prize, courtesy of LG (again)

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Apologies to my US friends peeking over from above a turkey-laden table, but here’s some more indulgence for us Brits.

Shiny Media has launched a second competition in association with LG, this time offering two lucky people a six-month video blogging internship.

If presenting is your thing, then simply shoot some footage of you at your best. If you prefer video editing, no problem. Take some of the supplied raw footage and turn it into a masterpiece.

You’ve got about three weeks or so to submit something, with the competition closing on 14th December.

The two lucky winners will receive training by top talent in video blogging, the opportunity to contribute to videos that are watched by a daily audience of thousands, an all expenses paid trip to Barcelona to cover the 3GSM World Congress next year, a blog on which you can share your experiences, and a new LG Viewty phone.

Unfortunately, it’s only open to those in the UK (you’ll be working at Shiny HQ in London). For much more information about the competition, visit the official competition web site: LG Video Media Talent Award, or visit the YouTube channel to view the videos and vote.

Disclosure: Andy writes for several of Shiny Media’s blogs

Shiny Media gives its tech, fashion, sports sites a makeover

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Over the past couple of months, Shiny Media has been rolling out a new, slick design across a number of its technology, fashion, and sports sites.

They all now feature slick new headers, cleaner layout, and more prominent access to the most popular stories, email and RSS feed subscriptions. In addition, the sites feel a lot more “connected” together, with header links to other sites in the same subject area, drop-down menus to different channels, plus the latest headlines from selected blogs across the whole network at the bottom of each page.

In addition, the technology sites (Tech Digest and Shiny Shiny being the largest) now prominently feature Shiny’s self-hosted video player, offering up “Shiny Tech TV”, a collection of tech and gadget reviews, previews, live product launches, and opinion.

(Disclosure: Andy writes for several of Shiny Media’s technology sites)

Shiny Media launches US fashion blog network

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London-based Shiny Media has announced the launch of a US-based fashion-focused blog network, kicking off with two blogs — Shiny Style, about fashion, and Shiny Gloss, about makeup — and coinciding with New York Fashion Week, which starts today.

Though it may seem strange for a British blog network to target its sites specifically at a US audience, Shiny’s CEO, Ashley Norris, explains that a couple of their existing fashion blogs already have a strong following in North America.

“Brits launching US-only blogs might sound as daft as trying to sell ice to the Eskimos. However, our existing London based blogs — Catwalk Queen and Shoewawa — are already in the top ten fashion blogs read by Americans [source], so we do have a good track record across the pond.”

Shiny Media already has a number of talented American writers. Shiny US’s Editorial Director, Andrea Thatcher, explained: “Shiny Style and Shiny Gloss will keep all that’s great about Catwalk Queen and Shoewawa like the quirky stories, videos and focus on affordable fashion, but the blogs will written by Americans for Americans, and will major on what’s hot in US fashion stores.”

Shiny Media plans to roll out up to ten fashion blogs in the US over the coming months. Run from the East Coast, freelance bloggers will be sought from all major US conurbations.

[Andy Merrett writes for several of Shiny Media’s technology blogs]

Shiny Media launches four new UK-friendly blogs: reality TV, finance, festivals, travel

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UK-based Shiny Media has launched four new blogs, all with a strong British flavour and usual blend of news, opinion, and humour (spot the Brit reporting this news and ‘misspelling’ two words!)

Available for Panto is Shiny’s take on the now global phenomenon of reality television. It focuses particularly on the current crop of UK fly-on-the-wall and popularity contest shows, including Any Dream Will Do (BBC’s search for a new ‘Joseph’ in the West End musical), X Factor, and Big Brother.

It’s the first Shiny blog to be sponsored from launch by a major company – in this case, Virgin Games.

[Read more…]