Virgance, the unique ‘Activism 2.0′ startup that is looking to improve the world while making money in the process, has announced the latest addition to its portfolio of campaigns. The company has revealed that beginning six months ago it began quietly acquiring a number of blogs, namely the Green Options Media Network – a collection of 15 blogs, each of which is focused on a different portion of the environmental space. Since the acquisition the blog network has managed to become profitable despite the floundering economy, and has seen its writing staff grow significantly. But according to Virgance, they’re just getting started.
Green Options was founded back in 2007, and has grown to around 2.5 million monthly unique visitors. The network’s most popular blogs include Gas 2.0 (a blog focused on alternative fuels) and CleanTechnica, a blog that examines the latest trends in clean tech. The network sees around 30-40 new blog posts a day, though some of the niche blogs are updated less frequently than the others.
Since acquiring Green Options, Virgance has largely been concentrating on revamping the network’s backend, which had previously been unable to cope was huge rushes of traffic (the blog network is regularly seen on Digg and even the Yahoo homepage, and has previously had issues with downtime). Virgance was able to tap into its resources to sovle these issues, and Green Options articles have been recently featured on the Yahoo homepage without a hitch. Now that the blogs can keep up with traffic, Virgance CEO Steve Newcomb says it’s time for ‘Phase Two’.
Virgance is looking to turn Green Options Media into something of a media empire akin to the Huffington Post, featuring frequent submissions from notable politicians, executives, and celebrities. At the moment most of the site’s content is written by a handful of staff writers and a over 100 citizen journalists and reporters. And it already has some impressive contributors, including San Francisco Mayor Gavin Gavin Newsom, who writes an article every two weeks. Newcomb says that we probably won’t start seeing too many more well known authors sign on until the summer, but the blog is already seeing steady traffic regardless.
Beyond that, Newcomb says that he’s looking to extend the company’s blogging properties beyond ‘Green’ and into other fields. Of course, this is all easier said than done – it probably won’t be easy to recruit all of these politicians and executives, and even if Green Options can create a sizable audience, it’s going to be difficult to convert them into readers of unrelated news (building the next Huffington Post isn’t going to be easy).
Aside from Green Options, Newcomb says that Virgance has more campaigns on the way, some of which will be unveiled at the company’s next Equinox Event on Tuesday.
I need to start a network of blogs on the economy right away.
Sounds like an interesting project.
Very good strategy
Oh gawd, what if they censor me and I have to be nice to the Girl Scouts?
Announcement here: http://greenopt...-options-media/
Congrats to David, Clayton, Jeff and the rest of the crew at GO. You guys worked your asses off for it and I’m looking forward to watching the network grow at Virgance. Well done!
Great company great blogs about cleantech
Congratulations to everyone at GO and Virgance. And big thanks to the hundreds of talented and dedicated writers who have published mountains of high quality green content. Without that resource, GO would never be where it is today.
Congrats Jeff, I remember GO on blog #1
Congrats David, Clayton, Jeff & Virgance… huge GO fan from very beginning & can hardly wait to see this dynamic duo take off! Its brains, but also a bold dedication to preserving our envirornment!!
Green Mom
If anyone is looking to do this and has money, hire Clayton. He made this happen and educated the writers, Tim Hurst knows
The key take away is how great it is to have money right now. Virgance signs paper to buy GO, raised a small amount, placed it into servers for GO (the Virgance backend magic) and bam!
Congrats, GO! It’s been fun to watch the growth this year.
Congrats guys. Looking forward to the Equinox celebration.
Congrats!! Isnt it fantastic!
Kensington lab provide automation products for worldwide semiconductor and other industries Semiconductor, automation equipment, Robotics, motion control and precision linear.
Dude I think you might just be onto something here!
RT
http://www.anon-tools.cz.tc
Congrats! You guys have produced amazing quality and output with limited resources. It’s nice to see somebody noticed and will now provide you with what you really need.
Although we have always felt that the Green Options team has been generally forth-right and commendable, we are reluctant to applaud this latest facet in their history. We await with some reluctance the final outcome of this predicament. Your Friend, Rick Hewitt
Sound Great! Go green Blogs…
Congratulations to both the Virgance team and the GO Media team. Virgance is a near incubator if you think about it. The CEO’s philosophy is help out the entrepreneur similar and make businesses that give back to the community and environment.
As one of GO’s network partners, I can say that it has been a pleasure to work with GO and we look forward to the future ahead.
I think David should write a blog entry on how he and his elementary school friend, Clayton, took the jump and made GO what it is today. It is a great story.
Congratulations to both the Virgance team and the GO Media team. Virgance is a near incubator if you think about it. The CEO’s philosophy is help out the entrepreneur similar to a first round VC, focusing on businesses that give back to the community and environment.
As one of GO’s network partners, I can say that it has been a pleasure to work with GO and we look forward to the future ahead.
I think David should write a blog entry on how he and his elementary school friend, Clayton, took the jump and made GO what it is today. It is a great story.