Shiny Media

Shiny Awards 2007: LG Chocolate takes WAG gadget, Samsung K5 is ASBO gadget and the SlingBox is officially 'boring but useful'

Once, not too long ago, LG was best known for its washing machines and rather rubbish mobiles. Not any more though. For after an amazing year the Korean company has scooped no fewer than three Shiny Awards.

It took top slot in... WAG gadget of the year - LG Chocolate KG800 phone Best Fashion Mobile - LG Shine KV 4200 Gadget Icon of the year - LG Chocolate KG800 phone

To find out who won ASBO gadget, Green gadget, boring but useful gadget and much more check after the turn.

Shiny awards 2007: Nintendo Wii wins Euro blog gadget poll

Cue fanfare for the results of the first European Gadget of the Year award. In case you missed our previous post it is like EuroVision for gadget lovers, except of course without Terrry Wogan's irritating commentary or strangely-clad Scandi metal bands. We teamed up with the top European gadgets sites, namely Xataka (Spain), Daily Gadget (Germany), Journal du Geek (France) and GamesBlog (Italy) to ask our combined readership exactly what is the continent's favourite gizmo? And the winner is, you guessed it, the Nintendo Wii games console which attacted over half of the votes cast in every country apart from Italy. Second place went to the Apple iPod nano (which oddly enough polled better in Italy than anywhere else), while Nokia's N Series phones, which are vey big in Spain, finished in third. Thanks to all who voted and to everyone who blogged about the contest.

Shiny Media Awards tomorrow night

Katie has had her haircut, Gemma is out trawling designer stores for dresses and Chris is clipping his nasal hair. Yep it can only mean one thing - the Shiny awards are tomorrow night.

Just like previous years we have a glitzy London venue (this year it is Soho House), loads of top journos, bloggers and hangers on the guest list and some funny looking statuettes to give as prizes.

The awards are in association with mobile phone network Orange.

We also have the mother of all goody bags courtesy of our sponsors; Vonage, Spinvox, Firebox, Logic3, Kensington and Knightsbridge based hair and beauty salon Paul Edmonds.

So thanks to all, and to those who are coming, don't forget your goodie bag.

Coming soon - the Shiny Awards

The Shiny boys’ tuxes are back from the dry cleaners, while the girls are fending off calls from major Italian fashion houses. Yep the awards season is on its way. And up there with the Globes, the Oscars and the south Suffolk Marrow growers' Vegathon is the annual Shiny awards.

Each year Team Shiny, in conjunction with a crack possee of gadget know-it-alls from The Sun, Guardian, Q etc get together to vote for the best and worst gadgets of the year. Among the categories are serious stuff like Green Gadget, Best Smartphone and Web 2.0 innovation as well as a few more entertaining contests which we’ll let you know about very soon.

Sorry to say that the Chav Gadget award, won so spectacularly by the Apple iPod shuffle last year, is no more, but we have come up with a suitably cheesy replacement. We are also teaming up with several European blog networks to launch the first ever Blog readers Euro-Gadget of the year. You’ll get your chance to vote on that very soon too.

Over the next week or so we will also be posting the nominations on Shiny Shiny and Tech Digest. The awards will be held in a swanky central London venue on February 21st. Now where did I put that satin sash belt…

How to spend $4.5 million

I'd like to say a Baby Bentley or a box here, but that money has been earmarked for one thing - developing Shiny Media into the UK's premier new media company.

In case you are new here the blogosphere has been buzzing all day with news about our deal with Bright Station Ventures. You can find a list of the links here.

So why does a blog company need all that cash? Without giving too much away here are a few reasons.

1 We are competing with mainstream media - As we have grown we have edged more towards the mainstream. In fact some of our readers probably don’t realise that they are actually reading a blog. At the same time, in the UK at least, almost every newspaper and magazine has started their own blog. Whether we like it or not we are competing for eyeballs not just with fellow bloggers but also with online offerings from newspaper and magazine publishers. So far we have come a long way on our creative ideas and passion for the web. Now we have financial resources not only to mix it with the big media players, but also to take Shiny from start up status into a mature business.

2 We need to develop the commercial side of our business - So far we have attracted adverts from a large number of blue chip companies including Nokia, Sony, Philips, Gillette, Dyson and many others. In fact we have probably had more blue chip advertisers on our sites than any blog network other than the big two Weblogs and Gawker. And this has largely been a case of the agencies coming to us. Our limited resources have so far been very focussed on the creative side of Shiny. Now we have the investment and the contacts to seriously monetise our business.

3 We see video as the future for blogging - In the past few months over a million people have watched our videos either on our sites or at YouTube. We have also lent one of our presenters to the BBC. The investment will enable us to develop more creative uses for video on blogs.

4 We are expanding our range of blogs - We see blogs as the specialist magazines of the future. And we Brits love our specialist magazines. There are many niches which we are going to launch into. We also hope to acquire a few British blogs along the way.

5 We are eyeing up new horizons - Here’s where it gets interesting. The money will enable us to work on new, exciting and innovative projects? In an age of Digg and social media ranking sites can publishers still deliver their own blog aggregators? Will ‘how to videos’ work in vertical channels. Can a UK media company deliver a truly global website? We’ll find out soon enough.

At our heart though we are still a blog network. We love the immediacy, openness and flexibility of both blogs and the blogosphere and that will never change.

Why Bright Station Ventures? Well we have worked really hard to develop Shiny and we wanted like-minded entrepreneurs who were prepared to ‘sweat’ with us, not just look over our shoulder. Shaa and Dan are both dynamos who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. They don’t just bring the backing of an exciting new fund to Shiny, they also bring experience, contacts and the kind of commercial nous Shiny needs to achieve its goals. We are very excited to be working with them.

Shiny Media secures $4.5 million worth of funding

Well the rumours on this occasion turn out to be true. Shiny Media, a company that until a year ago was headquartered in three London bedrooms, has secured $4.5 million (US) worth of investment.

The money comes from a new firm called Bright Station Ventures and you can read about the deal in this Sunday Times article.

I don't have a great deal to say at this moment other than to state the bleeding obvious that we are hugely excited about how we can use the cash to develop Shiny.

We started Shiny with nothing other than some great ideas and a passionate belief in the potential of blogs. We now attract almost three million readers each month to our 22 sites, employ over thirty bloggers (some full-time, some freelance) and regularly attract big name advertisers.

We have come a very long way in a short space of time with no money.  The investment will help us make some of more ambitious dreams realities.

If you have any queries contact Darika.

Ashley

Shiny Media launches Techscape

Shiny Media launches Techscape.tv

The UK’s biggest blogging network unveils its latest technology blog.

TechScape is Shiny Media’s sideways look at the wonderful world of the web, or web 2.0 to be precise, from a UK perspective. It isn’t all about UK start ups, and it isn’t just reviews of social networking sites either.

Instead TechScape will bring you

• Interviews with the main movers in the UK’s web 2.0 world
• Reviews of the key new web 2.0 projects
• Daily round ups and comment on the big stories
• An examination of how brands are engaging with the new generation of websites

Most important of all we’ll be tracking the journey all those amazing innovative web 2.0 sites (YouTube, My Space and many others) make from the PC to the mobile phone.

All this plus a dollop of traditional Shiny Media tomfoolery.

Techscape is edited by Stuart Dredge, who has been writing about both the web and mobile phones for many years now. He’s ably supported by Andy Merrett, Dep Ed of Techdigest.tv and owner of the innovative Blue Fish Network and Shiny’s CEO and mobile phone-aholic Ashley Norris.

About Shiny Media * The UK’s first and largest commercial weblog publishing company * Attracts 2.8 million unique visitors a month to its network of 22 blogs. * 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 blog or Shiny Media contact Ashley Norris here.

Shiny tech sites hit one million unique users in November

Shiny has had its best month ever in November with over 2.3 million people visting our sites during November. There has been a massive growth in our technology blogs in particular with over one million people checking them out.

The figures for the unique visitors in November (with one day to go) are

Shiny Shiny 362,000
TechDigest 331,000
Shiny YouTube tech video channel 192,000
HDTVUK 108,000
WiiWii 51,000

There has also been strong growth on Bayraider and Brandish.

The figure for TechDigest is actually down as we moved the site to UK-based hosting which obviously affected traffic for a week or so.

The video channel has done spectacularly well, especially given that a dedicated video site like Videojug, which has had a large amount of investment, only does 3-400,000 uniques per month.

Shiny tech sites on course for one million users in November

Apparently a couple of big UK publishers are about to unveil gadget websites. Well they have a long way to go before they can catch up with us.

For in November we are on course to hit over one million unique users on our Tech blogs (in other words, Tech Digest, Shiny Shiny, HDTVUK, WiiWii and Tech Reviews).

The entire Shiny network of 25 blogs attracted 2.1 million readers last month and will probably go as high as 2.3 this month.

Brands go mad for Tech Digest

Well we have some very exciting news, which sadly we can't announce until next week. Until then  this post is to flag up the blue chip advertising we have on Tech Digest at the moment. Check out the newly re-designed site and you'll see campaigns for Dyson, Sony PS3, Philips Ambilight TVs and Gillette.

It is clear that brands are realising the huge influence of blogs like Tech Digest which are attracting readers many of whom aren't watching TV, listening to the radio or checking out more traditional sites.

Also worth investigating is a very interesting article here on the death of the page impression. Like other bloggers we think page impressions are a dreadful way of measuring a site's importance (and even worse buying them for advertising). Surely the number of unique users is a far better guide to a site's performance.