Weblogs, Inc. Co-Founder Brian Alvey To Launch Crowd Fusion

Weblogs, Inc. co-founder and CTO Brian Alvey is preparing to launch his new startup – a content management and hosting system called Crowd Fusion. From what we hear (I haven’t been able to speak to Alvey yet), the company will provide a hosted all-in-one platform for blogging, wikis, podcasting, standard web pages, forums, etc., and will also allow management of a variety of properties under a single dashboard. It will compete directly with blogging platforms like WordPress.com and Typepad, as well as more industrial strength CMS systems that large publishers use.

If anyone can build it, Alvey and co-founder Craig Wood (also of Weblogs, Inc.) can. Alvey has been building content management systems since at least the mid nineties, including systems for Business Week and TV Guide. He was also the architect of Weblogs, Inc. and their associated CMS, Blogsmith. AOL acquired Weblogs, Inc. in October 2005.

Crowd Fusions seems to be the next generation of Blogsmith, since it includes lots of content types other than blogs. The company, which is based in New York, hasn’t launched yet, but we hear they’re busy raising a first round of capital.

Alvey co-founded Weblogs, Inc. with Jason Calacanis. Calacanis launched his new startup, Mahalo, in May 2007.