Brian Alvey

Since the first story out there was that Valleywag one, I’ve gotten a bunch of email asking for the real Blogsmith details.

Here goes:

When Jason and I decided to create a blog network, I came up with two names: Weblogs, Inc. and Blogsmith. I registered both domains on the same day, June 15, 2003.

“Weblogs, Inc.” summed up “professional blog publishing company” really well, so Blogsmith (like blacksmith) became the name of our publishing platform. I built the first version of the platform myself in ASP, what I knew best at the time. Then I brought on a guy named Dave to help with development. We spent one summer dabbling in ASP.NET with another developer. I had high hopes for that and it seemed like the right thing to do next, but in the fourth month of a three-month project we figured out that was a disaster. Dave and I had recently built a publishing system for the Kansas City Chiefs in ASP that was scaling quite well (and still does), so we cranked out Blogsmith 2.0 in regular old ASP in time for AdJab to cover the commercials of 2005’s Super Bowl.

That Fall I hooked up with Gavin and we started building the Linux and PHP version of the platform, Blogsmith 3.0. (I think you can tell that I just skipped over a story that I’ll revisit out some other day.)

Later that Fall we sold Weblogs, Inc. to AOL. They did not buy Blogsmith, which was a separate company. They bought Weblogs, which was effectively a profitable magazine company that published in blog format. If I had to guess at why they didn’t buy Blogsmith, I’d say that they must have reasoned that they only had to buy Weblogs to hire Jason. The quality of that insight and the way I was giggling when I typed it should be an indication that I can’t tell you what goes on in the mind of AOL — especially back before we were a part of it.

So Blogsmith continued to run outside of AOL and we continued to expand the team and planned for rolling it out to more customers than just Weblogs, but I became busier than ever — mainly integrating Weblogs with AOL. Jason was put in charge of Netscape in the Spring and we ended up raiding my Blogsmith team to build the new Netscape social news platform that went live in June. The Blogsmith team members we didn’t hire onto Netscape I loanedto Netscape.

At the same time, the demand for Blogsmith was heating up. We were struggling to keep up with requests for blogs as our remaining two-man team was building out features for TMZ so they could go live on Blogsmith — also in June when Netscape launched.

June sucked.

Then AOL launched two music blogs in Blogsmith: AOL Music News Blog — which is better than you’d expect from the name — and Spinner.com, an older domain reborn as a great indie music news blog. Following that they launched The Fanhouse covering NCAA football and the NFL and an elections blog which features Sam Donaldson’s Ask Sam column.

That brings us to November and Blogsmith — like Weblogs a year before it — is now owned by AOL.

Obviously AOL likes our enterprise blogging platform, but I think the quality of Blogsmith’s versatile team factored into AOL’s decision — maybe even in equal parts. I reclaimed the team members who had been on a “Netscape detour” and we’ve kicked off some major upgrades. We moved to a multi-city version of the platform. That was both the largest and smoothest server move I’ve ever been a part of. Right now my team is in Florida without me working on an overhaul of the publishing tools.

So what is AOL going to do with Blogsmith? Whatever they want to do with it.

Is AOL going to release Blogsmith to the public as a Typepad/WordPress/YouTube/Wal-Mart/Starbucks-killer or not? Yes.

I hope that clears up all of the questions surrounding AOL’s acquisition of Blogsmith and the product’s history.

If you have any more questions, leave them in the comments and I’ll reply if I can.

There’s a great recap of Lou Reed’s private Web 2.0 show on SFGate. I’m a big fan of his bass player, Rob Wasserman, having seen him play the “Bob and Rob” shows with The Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir in LA and Dallas in the 80s. His Duets and Trios discs were amazing.

Lou Reed started out with some guitar warm-up noise, but it was all pretty quiet. After Life’s Good and Gassed and Stoked, people were still standing and talking in the back and sides of the room and it angered Lou. He told us we had 20 minutes and if we wanted to talk through it we could. Then he asked if we wanted him to turn it up and hurt us and soon it was too loud for anyone to talk. Next he did Dirty Boulevard, which was the one song I was looking forward to. After that was Sweet Jane and Lou ended with an unreleased song called Gravity that will be appearing in an AOL-related movie soon.

He told us that this was the moment he’d been waiting for his whole life — that sitting on St. Marks Place that he hoped someday there’d be a cyberspace and an Internet and that he’d be playing for all of us. It was touching to know that this was a dream come true for Lou Reed and that I was there for it.

Really I think he just wanted to jump off the stage and start slugging people.

The deepest coverage of the Web 2.0 Summit isn’t by Forbes, it’s by Valleywag. Maybe it’s not the deepest, but it is the most colorful.

I heard from several people yesterday afternoon that Valleywag broke the news of AOL buying Blogsmith. I didn’t know if it was a friendly post or a mean one so I didn’t know whether to thank the little bearded guy who runs Valleywag or curse him. I expected to read that “entrepreneur Calacanis sold another company to AOL,” but they had a different spin on the deal. I still think they should have worked in that thing where I own Web 2.0 Summit host John Battelle’s domain name.

One correction: Blogsmith has always been a separate company. So Weblogs, Inc. didn’t sell anything to AOL, Blogsmith did. AOL acquired Weblogs over a year ago. It would be odd if Weblogs sold them something new today.

Wag on.

[More information on Blogsmith and AOL is here.]

If you have DirecTV, you have access to a couple of dozen XM satellite radio stations. My favorite one is Flight 26. They play pretty much everything The Peak plays, but with no DJs or commercials. The rare exception is a promo for something going on live on another XM station.

We had a friend over recently and left the sound on with the screen off. She asked if it was “that Westchester station,” meaning The Peak, but our FM tuner doesn’t work so I only listen to The Peak in the car. Inside the house, we listen to Flight 26.

They play healthy doses of Evanescence, Nickelback, John Mayer, Jack Johnson, KT Tunstall, 3 Doors Down, Rob Thomas, No Doubt, the Dave Matthews Band, Fall Out Boy, Keane, Snow Patrol and the Raconteurs, but what really impresses me is that they aren’t ashamed to add Kelly Clarkson to the mix. Come on, she rocks and you know it.

Can you love a DJ-free radio station that you only listen to on your television?

I have a four-year unbroken streak of Fall San Francisco trips that was in danger of not making it to year five, but AOL came through with a Web 2.0 Conference ticket for me.

In 2002, I did one of my Meet The Makers events in SF.

In 2003, I ended up out there doing some consulting work for the company that bought Jason’s VentureReporter product. They were SF-based and wanted to move the web app out there and I was the one-man tech team who created it, so Niki and Jack got to tag along and explore while I worked in their server room.

In 2004, Jason and I took a trip to the Valley to visit Google, Yahoo and a few other places and tell them about the wonders of Weblogs, Inc. Ah…good times. I have a nice Google beach towel from that trip. I kept all the good loot for myself.

In 2005, I abandoned Gavin and Mike in the middle of a CodeJam trip in White Plains with no warning to head to the Web 2.0 Conference. AOL was announcing the Weblogs acquisition and as I was getting on the plane I IMed Gavin the link of PaidContent breaking the news and didn’t give him an indication of whether it was a rumor of the truth. For the next 6 or 8 hours our blogger mailing list was abuzz with hundreds of “is it true?” messages. Yeah, it was true.

I was afraid that I wouldn’t get to see the cold, rainy San Francisco I’ve come to know and love again this year, but AOL got me a last-minute ticket to attend and I’m heading there tomorrow. I don’t foresee any Weblogs-level surprises, but you never know. I’ve got at least one announcement I’ve been sitting on…

If you’d like to get together with me and I haven’t already emailed you, please write me — or use my contact form — so we can meet up.

Victor is just over one now and he says a few words that we can make out: ball, good girl (for doggy), cookie and a bunch more. For “kitty cat” he makes kissing noises. He must have seen his grandma Jackie doing that.

Going up the stairs the other night he put together his first sentence. I yelled goodbye to our cat and he looked over the steps, made kissing noises and waved goodbye.

This kid is going to rule at charades!

I’m not a Colts fan, but I have to love how Peyton Manning obsessively prepares for games.

Passion + preparation + execution.

The AP recap of their victory over a Denver Broncos defense that was specifically designed to stop Peyton’s Colts included this quote about his off-season work ethic:

“When you’re throwing against Bailey and Williams, that’s why you work in April, May and June,” Manning said. “That’s why you throw a lot in the offseason, with nobody covering. You pretend it’s Champ Bailey covering. You have to throw a perfect throw and run a perfect route.”

As Gene Simmons would say, “Nice.”

There was a touching moment at breakfast the other day when I explained to Jack how we love his cousins and we’re good to them, but not to worry because we love him and Victor more and that all parents love their own kids the most.

I asked him if he understood what I meant and he replied, “If you spray water on my feet under the table, then my magic dogs will appear.”

I think I’m really getting through to him.

We lost a great cat yesterday, the best black cat that ever crossed my path.

Hah, he would have gotten a kick out of that. He loved my puns. All of our pets do, but Jordan had a real soft spot for them.

Jordan was 16. He lived a good, long life. He wasn’t thrilled with the additions of three dogs, another cat and two baby boys, but he remained a blue ribbon cuddler and didn’t fear the brush like some other pets I know.

Victor was born on September 12, one year ago. That’s month 9, day 12.

We went to the Yankees game last night. They scored 9 runs in the first inning and they added three more for an even 12 in their rout.

In the middle of the sixth inning, they flashed a happy birthday message to Victor. What time was on the scoreboard? 9:12pm, of course.