Update from Ming

Last night, Ming sent out an e-mail to all the bloggers that have so far joined Nuffnang.

He has since received many e-mail responses.

Let me share his e-mail with all of you who haven't had the chance to read it yet.




Dear Bloggers,

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Ming Shen or Ming, and I am the "co-founder" of Nuffnang.com.

I used the inverted commas because even though Timothy and myself initiated this network, every single one of you who is reading this email is a founding member of what we hope will be Malaysia's biggest and most influential Blog-advertising community.

Herein lies our philosophy. Being young and green internet Entrepeneurs, we want to run things differently.

1st principle

We want to be a network By Bloggers for Bloggers. How do we propose to achieve this aim?

Well, for a start, Timothy and myself are avid Bloggers. But to tell you the truth, before I started this project, I had very little idea why people Blogged. Now, I find myself having difficulty going anywhere without a camera, and hear myself saying alot more, "Hold on! I want to take a photo for my blog!" We hope, that through our own experiences, and our interaction with fellow bloggers, we will always be aware of what your needs are.

Secondly, for a while now, we have been identifying bloggers of certain repute and specialties to take a stake in our company, in most cases for free. One thing we realised almost instantly from our many meetings with bloggers are that they are a very talented mix of people! Why not make them partners, and make use of their skills to make a stronger network? We are talking about photographers, consultants, programmers, graphic designers, and the like.

They are also our ambassadors. They will help bridge the gap should ever we miss the small picture (which we will try our best not to do). Over time, their identities will be revealed to you (We have not approached all of them yet, so hold your breath!)

If you feel you are a possible candidate, then do drop me or Timothy an email. We would be more than happy to consider it. A word of warning though, being a business partner in this network means high levels of commitment and contribution in the company's workings.

2nd Principle

Bloggers of all sizes, shapes and colours

You are not merely a statistic. No matter how small your Blog, you are important to us. And we mean it.

We have tried as far as economically possible to include Blogs of small sizes (20 daily unique visitors). We are looking to build a community here. And as long as you are part of it, you are important to us.

3rd principle

Technology is important.

We hope you agree that Nuffnang.com is a solid and powerful platform. However, we promise to never stop improving and innovating.

What this means is that you will see interesting and engaging facets of our product come to light in the following months. Some will be brand new and never seen before, others will not be.

We are interested in getting the basics right. With a solid foundation, we can move on to greater things that the marketplace demands. And we will.

As we are in the Beta testing phase, some things may not run as smoothly as we might hope. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for your understanding.

4th Principle

We aim to raise the profile of blog advertising

We set up Nuffnang.com because we felt Bloggers and their readers deserved better! And they do!

We hope you will see RELEVANT advertisments on your blog. From CREDIBLE bluechip advertisers.

These advertisers are demanding, as they pay top dollar. Therefore it is imperative we have a strong set of credentials before we approach them. We need to fully understand what we are marketing before we can do the marketing.

How many blogs? How many readers? What kind of readers? Which kinds of ads? These are some of the statistics that we will have to gather in the next two weeks, before we can approach the RIGHT advertisers for you.

Therefore, I reiterate that the whole process might take at least one month before advertisements are served on your blog and you are payed!

Not to worry, over the past months, we have already created inroads and networks which we will be looking to exploit once we have the necessary information.

It could be sooner rather than later. But we want to be realistic and manage expectations.

5th Principle

Community and relationships first

Nuffnang.com is a community. In the future, functions will be added to emphasize that fact.

We will be organising exclusive parties, outings, to forster relationships between our members. These events will either be fully paid for by us, or heavily subsidized.

The generosity and friendships me and Timothy have encountered over the past few months have been simply amazing. We hope to grow these friendships and create new ones.

These principles will and more will in the near future be released on our website as a reminder to ourselves and to you of what Nuffnang stands for!

Thank you so much for your support! My email is always open for suggestions, or anything related to the Nuffnang community.

Humbly yours,

Ming Shen