Ok, so I don't want to labour the point, but... I went back and checked our traffic figures for six months ago in February.

Unique visitors - 1,754,954 Page impressions - 2,619,855

compare this with August

Unique visitors - 3,521,976 Page impressions - 5,379,535

Which in my book means that we have doubled our traffic in six months. Ok, so we have launched several new blogs in that time, but most of the growth has been around established blogs like Catwalk Queen, TechDigest and Who ate all the Pies? What could be really exciting is that if we double our traffic again (and given that we are approaching the busiest web months of the year this is a strong possibility) we will have hit 7 million readers per month. This is an astounding figure for a UK company, especially given that we didn't really exist two years ago and also that we haven't spent a penny on buying Google Ad words.

August is usually a bit of a rubbish month for websites as many would-be surfers are otherwise engaged basting themselves on European beaches. So it is a tad amazing that in August Shiny posted its best ever figure of 3.5 million visitors to its sites.

To put that in some kind of perspective that's up 700,000 readers on July. If we keep up this level of growth those BBC online execs should start to worry sometime around 2011.

There are some obvious reasons for the growth. We have had a few technical problems of late most of which were resolved in July. Also we launched five new footy blogs and have seen some wonderful organic growth on sites like Bridalwave and Kiss and Make Up.

So let's hope that four million user figure isn't too far off.

Also we have also just signed a huge sponsorship deal (our biggest yet) and seen ad revenues start to rocket. Good times indeed!

Britain in July was a pretty miserable place. Rubbish weather, Biblical style floods, and nothing else on the TV other than the never-ceasing freak show that is Big Brother.

Fortunately it is now August, the sun is back (for a few weeks anyhow), and best of all the new football season kicks off this weekend. Never one to miss a bandwagon Shiny is celebrating 2007-2008 with the launch of no fewer than five new football blogs. Actually we do have a little form in this area. Our World cup blog Who ate all the Bratwurst was a huge hit last summer and its bastard premiership offspring, Who ate all the Pies has gone from zero readers to over 300,000 in less than a year.

So we are now expanding our Pies range by adding blogs for the big four football teams, Arsenal (arsenalpies. tv) Manchester United (manunitedpies.com), Chelsea (chelseapies.tv), Liverpool (liverpoolpies.tv) oh and come other north London chancers  too (spurspies.com). All the blogs stick to our winning Pies template of incisive opinion, quirky stories, the best of YouTube and, err, WAG profiles. They will also be updated between 10-5 timers per day, so each time you check back there will be some news snippet, mini rant or video to check out.

They are also the first blogs to feature our brand new Shiny template which, as I hope you’ll discover, makes it much easier to find your way round our sites. There are going to be a few additions to the design over the coming month including a video player and some interesting community elements. But that’s for later. For now rejoice in the fact that from here on in Saturday afternoon trips to Ikea are totally off limits. Football is back and if you are a fan of the big four (cough), big five, then it is time to chomp on our new pies.

Ashley

Over the past few years we have dipped our toe in the gaming blogosphere with Games Digest and Wii Wii. Emboldened by success with those titles, especially the Wii blog, we are set to jump right in with a whole slew of games titles. We actually launched our PS3 blog pspsps.tv (geddit?) a few weeks back and it has been going really well hitting figures way beyond our expectations. It has now been joined by an Xbox blog Xboxer.tv and there will be at least three or four more Shiny games blogs before the month is out. We also have a Shiny Games YouTube channel with Shiny’s very own Mark Kermode, Simon Munk, loving or dissing the new releases.

Shiny Media launches Techscape.tv

The UK’s biggest blogging network unveils its latest technology blog.

TechScape is Shiny Media’s sideways look at the wonderful world of the web, or web 2.0 to be precise, from a UK perspective. It isn’t all about UK start ups, and it isn’t just reviews of social networking sites either.

Instead TechScape will bring you

• Interviews with the main movers in the UK’s web 2.0 world
• Reviews of the key new web 2.0 projects
• Daily round ups and comment on the big stories
• An examination of how brands are engaging with the new generation of websites

Most important of all we’ll be tracking the journey all those amazing innovative web 2.0 sites (YouTube, My Space and many others) make from the PC to the mobile phone.

All this plus a dollop of traditional Shiny Media tomfoolery.

Techscape is edited by Stuart Dredge, who has been writing about both the web and mobile phones for many years now. He’s ably supported by Andy Merrett, Dep Ed of Techdigest.tv and owner of the innovative Blue Fish Network and Shiny’s CEO and mobile phone-aholic Ashley Norris.

About Shiny Media * The UK’s first and largest commercial weblog publishing company * Attracts 2.8 million unique visitors a month to its network of 22 blogs. * Shiny Media’s blogs have been featured in newspapers and magazines on both sides of the Atlantic including; The Guardian, USA Today, International Herald Tribune, The Sun, Daily Mirror, Vogue, Elle, Time Magazine and the Financial Times. For more information about the new blog or Shiny Media contact Ashley Norris here.

Oh how I love the Daily Mail. What a splendid newspaper. No really. Its online offering is now very good to the point where a US-exiled liberal friend of mine confessed to me the other day that after the Gruniard, it is his first online stop for UK news. If the Fleet St gossip is right too the Mail's site is really starting to take off and could well become one of the biggest UK online portals.

So the paper does itself no favours when it lets its columnists write utter shit like this. Yep, Keith Waterhouse, a man who is guaranteed a place in heaven for penning the wonderful Billy Liar, has a pop at Googlers (whatever they night be) and Bloggers who he argues don't have an original thought between them.

Mmm odd that when there is a great deal of talk in PR circles about how blogging is setting the news agenda and it is national newspapers who are pinching all the blogger's stories.

Another priceless classic is '

'They never acknowledge original authorship, believing as they do that googling has outmoded the law of copyright.'

Which paper do you write for Keith? is it the Daily Mail which very rarely links out to stories on other sites yet quite happily claims them as its own?

Like the story it ran the other day on the Fembot for sale on eBay. A story which first appeared on our blog Bayraider and was the result of our journo spending hours trawling the site looking for goodies.

Ultimately with Keith it boils down to the fact that the number of people who are interested in his tablets delivered from on high, is dwindling.

Personally I prefer to read opinions that aren't just ill-informed rants (which ironically he says is true of bloggers) but Keith everyone has a right to an opinion, even you.

Who Ate All the Pies – the new football blog with a great engine and sweet left foot 'I know what is around the corner -

'I just don't know where the corner is. But the onus is on us to perform and we must control the bandwagon.' Kevin Keegan

Now that the domestic football season is under way, Shiny Media would like to remind you about its new website devoted to British football, namely Who Ate All the Pies. Shiny enjoyed great success with its World Cup blog, Who Ate All the Bratwurst, and now it's turning its attention to the Premier League (we'll also cover the big news from Scotland and the lower leagues too).

We have no Russian billionaire to help us, but with a little bit of luck, Brian, we can dominate the game for many seasons to come.

The other day I spent an hour or so looking for some British gadget blogs. This was kind of inspired by the odd break in posting (it went dark, as the Americans say, for two weeks) on the otherwise excellent GadgetSpy. Sure there's Red Ferret, Gizmodo (UK version) and the big publishing companies have their own titles, but there wasn't as many as I'd expected, and certainly a lot less than there was this time last year.

Anyhow save me from spending more hours on Technorati and let know about yours. We need more UK blogs to link to on our titles.