ReveNews
ReveNews in the PlanetBeta Era
ReveNews is now a part of PlanetBeta. This is a joint venture between Vinny Lingham of incuBeta, Wayne Porter and myself. You can find more info about PlanetBeta here, here and here.
We’re in for some rather big changes in the coming days and weeks at ReveNews. I’d like to introduce myself to those of you who don’t know me and make five points about the future of ReveNews in its new role in the PlanetBeta orbit.
In general, the best place to get a feel for who I am, where I’ve been and where I see ReveNews heading is to look over my LinkedIn page as well as my opinions over on my previous blog, CostPerNews and my personal blog (which is an aggregator of my activity on Twitter, Flickr, Digg, BUMPzee, Last.fm, etc). I look forward to the opportunity to be the Community Steward here and thank Wayne and Vinny for the opportunity to function in this capacity and as CEO of PlanetBeta.
First, I want to thank Jim Kukral for his amazing work at steering this ship over the last couple of years. Jim is an amazing person, thinker and blogger and ReveNews would not be where it is today without his leadership and care. He has been an incredible help with the transition to the next iteration of ReveNews and I cannot thank him enough for his help and friendship (and late night emails to calm my caffeine soaked nerves during this transition). I look forward to Jim being a continual presence here at ReveNews as a content creator as well as following him on his own blog, JimKukral.com.
Second, it is my hope that we keep the incredible community and spirit of dialogue and debate that has made ReveNews the preeminent collection of thought leadership and discussion in the new media space.
So, to all of you who blog here, please keep doing so. The main change will be a move to WordPress (we are currently running MovableType). I’ll be notifying you all when and how the changes in the interface will occur and what that will mean for you separately. We’ve spent countless hours over the past three weeks ensuring that your data and past posts will follow you over to the new interface in order to make the transition as seamless and painless as possible. There, of course, will be some hiccups along the way, but this is a transition that has to happen.
Third, we’re going to be addressing issues beyond just affiliate marketing in the new media space using mediums beyond blogging. If you all have read my thoughts on CostPerNews, you know that I am a proponent of seeking out the best mediums to create conversations and reach people. Blogging does a wonderful job of that, but it’s not the only game in town anymore.
We’ll be opening up avenues of micro-blogging, nano-blogging and alternate modes of content creation for inclusion onto the site and platform. The issues we will be addressing and covering will of course include affiliate marketing, but we don’t want to avoid or look past the vast range of exciting new connections that exist and are developing between all the other forms of online and new media (RSS, mobile, video, viral, SEO, organic, etc). If you were around in the early days of ReveNews, you remember that the discussions ranged from more traditional online marketing to micro-payments to drop shipping to indy video creation to affiliate marketing that was on the cutting edge at the time. We are going to recapture some of that energy and spirit that was so tangible and electric and harness it for the next iteration of ReveNews.
Fourth, changes seem non-existent on the front end. If you know anything about databases CRM’s, you’ll understand some of the trials and tribulations we are going through as we move the backend of this large machine over to a new system. We have, literally, thousands and thousands of posts going back to the early part of this century along with forum posts and archived content going back into the 90’s to contend with. Keeping everything in communication and working while making back end moves is a delicate process. My wife is a physician, so I explained this to her as a bypass surgery where we are grafting parts of this large body of ReveNews content from one place and putting it in another to keep the bloodflow of traffic and content moving in their right directions. The changes on the front end will be changing quickly when they start coming, however.
And lastly, we are moving away from the idea of a publisher position here at ReveNews. Instead, I’ll be acting in a “Community Steward” role. That seems like a silly matter of semantics, but in reality it expresses a general belief that the role of leadership here is also the role of a servant. Rules and guidelines will be set in place to steer the ship as we move forward, and I will be enforcing them. However (and more importantly), I will be serving you to help you make the most of your experience here at ReveNews and within the PlanetBeta galaxy as both a content producer and a reader.
So, it is going to be an exciting couple of weeks ahead of us as we get ReveNews into its next phase. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me either through email , instant message (sbharrelson22 on AIM or samharrelson on Skype) or call me (my numbers are easy to find on CostPerNews). See you in the spheres…
Sounds good, Sam. My only suggestion would be to rethink the “Community Steward” title as it might sound too obscure for some people, a disadvantage if ReveNews wants to attract a larger audience. I always thought “Publisher” was a great title and certainly not disrespectful to any of the bloggers.
Sam, thanks for the kind words. Right back at you. ReveNews is in good hands, the right hands. Looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with. Again, thanks.
Oh the woes of migration!
Good luck with everything, I’m looking forward to seeing where we stand a year from now.