BlogForward : Money

Welcome to the redesign of VentureBeat.

You’ll see a number of changes to the site, which we’ve made in order to respond to our recent growth. I’d also like to formally introduce VentureBeat’s core team, which has fallen into place over recent months.

With the new redesign, you’ll see that we are now mostly running full stories on the home page, instead of forcing people to click through. We found that people weren’t clicking through, because clicking is a pain. Since you scroll down the front page anyway, all you have to do now is scroll a little further.

We’re introducing a number of other improvements as well, including a single river of content. Guest columnists (we’ve changed their name from contributors) no longer will be placed on the right hand side. They’re in the river with everyone else, but will be labeled as guest columnists. Our VentureBeat Wire stories, the funding news alerts that once ran in the left-hand column, are also in the river, but are clearly designated as a “wire” item. Also, below the advertisements on the right, you’ll now find links to top stories and recent comments.

The second major change you’ll see is that we’ve introduced some tabs to our navigation bar. We’ve found that certain cleantech fanatics love our coverage of green-oriented start-ups but have been requesting a way to read only those stories. Our new CleanTech tab gives them an easy way to do that. Likewise, you’ll also find tabs for LifeScience, Mobile/Comm and DigitalMedia.

The DigitalMedia tab is probably the most significant addition. It marks a real boost of our coverage of the revolution happening in digital media. Dean Takahashi, who will be our lead writer in this area, just wrote about the DigitalMedia tab here.

Here’s a bit more about why we’re giving digital media special focus: First, most companies, large and small, are grappling for ways to create their own compelling content. Second, they’re trying to make sure their content is distributed in the most efficient ways possible (via widgets, SEO, cleaner or more efficient user-interfaces using AJAX or Flash, for example). Finally, they’re trying to figure out which business models will best help them. A host of new advertising networks and other technologies are emerging to cater to these needs. Our digital media coverage will focus on these three core concerns: creation, distribution and monetization. (Bookmark it here).

While CleanTech, DigitalMedia, LifeScience and Mobile/Comm remain tabs for now, we hope they will emerge into separate properties over time. We’ll update you as we go forward.

We’d love to get your feedback, both on the site redesign and on our new digital media coverage. So please leave us your comments. I’m sure there will be some bugs as we test this out.

Next, a few words on the team.

Dean Takahashi just joined VentureBeat, after leaving the San Jose Mercury News, where he was the newspaper’s lead technology columnist. This is a huge coup for VentureBeat, because Dean brings with him a vast contact base as well as many years of experience covering cutting-edge technology.

Next, I’d like to introduce Eric Eldon, who helped forge the idea for this new digital media offering. He will be editor of the DigitalMedia coverage going forward, working closely with lead writer Dean and MG Siegler. Eric, a Stanford grad, worked at the Stanford Daily, and then two years ago founded a start-up called WriteWith, which built software for news organizations. He started writing for VentureBeat mid last year. Eric has been indispensible at VentureBeat, proving his leadership role in breaking stories about Facebook and other social media companies regularly. He’s in LA this week, and will be making the rounds in New York, as he sources for this new assignment.

MG Siegler is the most recent to join VentureBeat full-time. He’ll also writing for DigitalMedia. He’s been writing about media and tech since 2004 on his blog ParisLemon. He is quick and voracious on issues related to Apple, Google, film and social media, and was hitting Techmeme so often, we had to hire him.

Upon graduating from the University of Michigan three years ago, where he studied film, MG moved to Los Angeles and worked in Hollywood for two and a half years. The majority of that time was spent as head script reader for Ben Stiller’s production company, Red Hour Films. He also knows how to code. He’s currently based in San Diego, but expect to see him around Silicon Valley and LA on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, Anthony Ha, Chris Morrison, David Hamilton and myself, along with other contributors, will continue to deliver on the bread-and-butter coverage of technology startups and innovations that VentureBeat is known for.

Anthony Ha joined a few weeks ago, having worked as an editor at the Stanford Daily and then for more than a year in Hollister at the local newspaper. He’ll be filling out general coverage, with a focus on enterprise technologies, startups, and some of the core app dev technologies that Adobe, Microsoft and Google are pushing. I’m expecting great things from him as he adjusts to his new role. He’s got a tech background and knows code.

Chris Morrison began writing for VentureBeat mid last-year, and he’ll be leading our clean-tech coverage, helping Dean with games and also looking at other areas, such as semantic technology.

He worked earlier for Business 2.0 until it closed last year, and brings a magazine-like flair to VentureBeat. He enjoys writing quirky stories, so if you’ve got something off the beaten path, send it his way.

David Hamilton, a former Wall Street Journal reporter with experience in Japan as a correspondent and leading its biotech coverage, started writing VentureBeat LifeScience mid last year.

He’s written early stories on companies like 23&Me. His sub-blog has been somewhat of a hidden gem at VentureBeat to date, and now the tab at the top will give him more exposure. He’ll cover the personal genome and consumer health stories, as well as the fortunes of hard-core lifescience start-ups.

Finally, Jacob Mullins is our director of business development and sales. He graduated from Yale two years ago and launched a drug company before coming our way.

He’s now helping VentureBeat grow its business and will help us think through partnership opportunites, conferences and such. He brings a palpable enthusiasm and energy with him, and I’m delighted to have him on board to run the business side of VentureBeat, as the rest of us focus on editorial.

I’m really proud of this team. I look forward to your feedback about our coverage as it evolves.

Source: VentureBeat