As a general principle, if you’re open about your business you’ll always get detractors as well as supporters. The detractors generally write out of their own psychological flaws, so are not really addressing the issues at all. If they were truly interested, they would make helpful suggestions. But they’re only venting a spleen that really has nothing to do with you.

Ideal response: Ignore them. Stay open. Be brave. Your supporters will soon outnumber your detractors.

The travails of b5media are well documented and are really based on the growing pains of a Web 2.0 startup that’s expanded a little too fast for the capacity it has available. Hey, where have I heard that before? Technorati, Google, BlogPulse … and many more. The b5ers are in good company. If the fate of their capacity-lite colleagues is anything to go by, it’s a badge of success, rather than failure.

As I write, this topic is zinging around Tech.Memeorandum like a cat on a hot pizza griddle. Dark news always plays well.

I have to declare an interest here. I write two blogs for b5 : Windows Vista Weblog (.com) and Microsoft Weblog (.com). My overall impression is a mixed one. At heart b5 is a strong concept. Many of the blogs are highly promising (I’m not including my own here). Some of the more frivolous ones that have sprung up recently are good in their genre, others are trite and poorly executed. But no media outlet gets everything right first time. The froth will subside, the chaff will be winnowed out, and the strong and the excellent will emerge.

Any major project works like a musical octave. The eight notes of the octave have seven intervals. Five are full, two are half intervals. In any project, when you hit a half interval the note sounds strange, energy dips, doubt sets in. You just have to work through it and push on to the next where energy and faith are restored.

The b5ers have hit their first short interval. Nothing more.

Update: Duncan Riley has announced that b5 is not taking any more applications from bloggers, except from gamers.