We’ve had a day now to digest the news that a couple of venture capitialists have put $2m into a content company, b5media. Apart from the congratulatory posts and comments climbing up the ladder of Techmeme, there have also been some very negative ones.

On reflection, my own views have firmed-up a little since yesterday when the sheer audacity of the move left the jaw hanging lower than is comfortable for any extended period. The jawline is now back in shape and the move looks a little different today.

It’s always important to see the counter-arguments in these cases because that opens your eyes to other possibilities. So lets look at a couple of them :

Nick Douglas at Valleywag (a Gawker product and rival to b5):

“The whole point of blogging is that it hardly costs anything, so it’s easy to pull a profit within a few months. Why would these two take funding that beholds them to investors? [...] But hey, if someone wants to throw $2 million at the most overhyped of the dozens of small-time blog networks, at least it’ll make it more fun when the company implodes.”

Mike Rundle, of 9rules, and another rival in the space, comments on the same post :

“These investors must be living in a timewarp, one where arts and crafts blogs written by stay at home moms and 20 blogs on crappy TV sitcoms can return on an investment. Gawker has various uber-successful blogs, WIN has Engadget and Autoblog, what does b5media have? … I’ll tell ya. Sacred Dolls and Bears.”

Syntagma Media’s point of view on VC funding has been expressed in this publication many times, but in the past month here and here. A quick glance tells you we are very sceptical about taking on so much funding and obligation while expanding fixed-costs so fast. But that was written before the news broke so can’t be seen as a criticism of the b5 position.

One of the reasons I’ve billed Syntagma as a magazine rather than a “global media network” is that the latter makes it sound like NewsCorp, the megabillion-dollar property of the Murdoch empire. Mike Rundle’s rather sharp critique above shouldn’t detract from the accuracy of his point. There is a weakness in the new b5media Inc and it’s summed up in one word : gigantism.

From the word go they set out to be the biggest “blog network” out there, without questioning the nature of the product itself. Jason Calacanis’s Weblogs Inc. cast a smokescreen around networks of this type because Engadget and Autoblog (the hard core of the business) appeal to readers way outside the blogosphere and merit the mainstream label by their reach alone.

As Mike says, Sacred Bears and Dolls is not in that league, so needs a more modest environment to thrive in — a magazine, perhaps.

Magazines are small, familiar objects. They are also a massive mainstream business, with a proven track record. But no-one would talk in megaspherical terms about them. Magazines online have a global reach and can be packaged as distributed websites, or even blogs. Quality of content is the main reckoner here. Mags have to deliver the goods, as all content-rich businesses have to.

To compare blog networks with print publications therefore is about the right scale to my mind. To lift Sacred Bears and Dolls and a rash of derivative celeb blogs into a “global media network” is a giant step too far.

Our aim has always been to reach for professional standards in content provision and allow the result to grow organically along its natural pathways, while thinking through the next step to spot the pitfalls, especially bubblemania.

Driving a simple blog network, without a distinctive brand, into the highly sophisticated world of big mainstream media is asking for trouble.

Forced plants in a glasshouse lack all scent and flavour. What is the flavour of b5?

Update: Mike Rundle has just written a more considered piece on b5 funding over at BusinessLogs. There’s also a clarifying comment by the VC concerned, Rick Segal.