ChasNote

TechCrunch reports on two advertising networks for independent blog authors, first Sam Sethi’s BlogNation and then BlogCharm, both apparently stiffing their publisher partners. In the case of BlogNation, former US editor Oliver Starr published an open letter in which he includes IM transcripts in which Sam Sethi confirms payments have been wired; Starr says this turned out to be a lie. The situation at BlogCharm is arguably worse. Member sites aren’t being paid, and it’s not even clear who owns and operates the firm (from TechCrunch):

“Ownership of the site isn’t immediately clear. BlogCharm has a powered by Blog Explosion badge on it, there are no contact details aside from an online form located on Blogexplosion and the registration details for the site are hidden by a private proxy service. Blog Explosion on the other hand is registered to West Hollywood based Live Universe and sits on the same server as BlogCharm so it would be reasonable to suggest that Live Universe may well be the owner of both sites. Having said that BlogCharm (along with Blog Explosion) has changed hands at least once, having sold in June 2006 for a reported ’six figure’ sum, then at least according to the BlogExplosion forums, someone called Chris was tasked with ‘fixing’ BlogExplosion (and we’d presume the other related sites) in November this year. Whether Chris is a new owner or simply an employee given management of the site was not detailed, indeed there was no details other than a name and a promise to fix the mess. Live Universe was founded by Brad Greenspan, best known as one of the founders of MySpace and in more recent years for his opposition to News Corps acquisition of MySpace. Live Universe runs sites including LiveVideo.com, a top 1000 site online (according to Alexa), BlinkYou.com, Lyrics Download and acquired Flurl.com in October 2006.”