Wow Duncan, Jeremy and Darren consolidate the market faster than I can update my bookmarks - this weeks acquisitions includes venerable About Weblogs:

"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'."

Congrats!