Hello Everyone,
Once again we want to thank all of you for your contributions and the continuous support for the blogpaper. The pre print (check out: http://bit.ly/tTuak ) wouldn’t have been so successful without you guys submitting all your great articles, photos, notes and more. We distributed the first issue on the 25 of September in various areas around London and we are happy to report that we received some excellent feedback (check Huffington Post Article; http://bit.ly/rNyMZ ). The public in general seemed really intrigued and excited at the prospect of a new and free user generated newspaper filling the void of the londonpaper. So all in all it was a very welcoming reception and a great debut for theblogpaper.
It was brought to our attention that many members are confused as to how theblogpaper will proceed from here. We apologize for this lack of communication but during the last three weeks we have been fully occupied finding the right financial and strategic partners for the blogpaper. We are happy to announce that we have found two partners.
The first partner, John Forch, is heavily involved in the www.blogcatalog.com, www.broowaha.com, www.bloggersunite.org among various other companies. Forch will actively promote theblogpaper on these platforms to his world wide community of approx. 300,000 bloggers especially focusing on the UK bloggers. We hope that this will bring more users to the site, increasing the debate, and getting more people posting quality content.
The second partner is the Austrian business angel Rudi Kobza www.firstlovecapital.com. First Love Capital focuses on early stage financing for business start-ups in the media and internet industry. One of Rudi Kobza’s (CEO of LOWE Advertising) main roles is to help us generate enough launch partners to financially support the community and eventually allow theblogpaper to print an initial circulation of 20.000 to 50.000 newspapers on a monthly basis.
It is highly important for us that to our community agrees with our choice of launch partners and accepts their role as the main supporters of theblogpaper community. We want to introduce each potential launch partner to you and encourage you to critically debate the brands suitability as launch partner and its future role in the community. In a nutshell, our aim is to get the community more involved in the decision making process, we really want to give you guys the possibility to be an active part in the development of this project. Therefore it would be fantastic if you would critically contribute to the discussion about the content, its look and the format of our first issue (pre print) by sending us your feedback, check ; http://bit.ly/WXigK. Can’t get enough of that feedback!
Regarding the printed newspaper, our plan for the next few months is to continue the beta version of the blogpaper with a circulation of approx. 8.000 -10.000 papers. The next issues will be distributed on Friday 20th of November / Friday 18th of December and Friday 22th of January around central and east London (for further details on locations see http://bit.ly/13GdTi ). If everything goes according to plan we will hopefully have generated enough launch partners to officially start theblogpaper between January and February with an initial circulation of 20.000 to 50.000 newspapers on a monthly basis.
Additionally we will be introducing a new feature: Reviews. Within the Reviews section we will organize free exclusive events for interested community members for example sending you to press screenings of new movies releases, organizing free access to big events and happenings (for e.g.: fashion shows, exhibitions, film festivals, etc) in London and so on. Furthermore we give away special prices for the highest rated reviews. We hope that we can open doors for our community members to get out there and see things first hand, write about it for their own personal blogs as well as theblogpaper.
Last but not least the most important factor is that you guys keep posting content on to the site and actively interact (comment, rate and discuss) with the community. Only you can make this project work.
In case you have any questions don’t hesitate to drop us a line on feedback@theblogpaper.co.uk. Thanks again for your time and help and we are looking forward to flicking through your content.
Take Care,
Anton Waldburg and Karl Jo Seilern