Seed Media Group, publisher of the Seed Magazine and the Seed Scienceblogs (the site you are on right now), made an announcement last week (PDF) about its new international partnership with Hubert Burda Media conglomerate:
The partnership will initially lead to the European development of ScienceBlogs, the largest online science community (www.scienceblogs.com). Since its launch in January 2006 by Seed Media Group, ScienceBlogs has grown to include 65 blogs across all areas of science, and attracted more than 1.7 million visits in August (Google Analytics), its twentieth straight month of growth. ScienceBlogs has seen its traffic grow by more than 500 percent since launch, with 30 percent now coming from outside the United States.
“We are excited to be entering the European market with Hubert Burda Media, a company that shares our values and that we consider to be among the most visionary and forward-thinking in the media industry,” said Adam Bly, founder and CEO of Seed Media Group. “Today marks an important first step in Seed Media Group’s international expansion.”
“We see this partnership as a chance to help grow a global digital community of high social relevance. We share Seed Media Group’s belief that ‘Science is Culture’ and are delighted to now be associated with an organization at the forefront of this cultural shift,” said Dr. Marcel Reichart, Managing Director, R&D, Marketing & Communications, Hubert Burda Media.
This is great news! First – don’t worry: nobody is getting fired or “downsized” and you will not see any obvious changes here any time soon. But there will be great changes in the future, i.e., more European blogs (perhaps even in languages other than English at some point in the future) and even more European readers. Stay tuned.