"Duncan, Jeremy and I have been in discussions with Shai about the possibility of joining together for a couple of weeks now and we've gradually pieced together an agreement that will see About Weblogs join b5media under the name of b5media. The agreement will see Shai take a stake in b5 as a partner to Jeremy, Duncan and myself and see b5media grow to 50 active blogs.

I'll let Shai talk about why she and her bloggers decided to join b5 - but speaking for myself here I'm excited by the merger for a number of reasons:

International Flavour - the AboutWeblogs team of bloggers have a very international flavour to them. This is one of the aspects of b5media that we are most proud of and to enhance it in this way just seems to 'fit'."