We are about to unveil our long-awaited new design for the Syntagma network, following on from the launch of our three network magazine portals late last year.

Thord Hedengren, who designed the portals, is also producing our new network look. The idea is to carry a similarity of design features from portal to site, creating a distinctive Syntagma style. As a network that started out on the Wal-Mart principle of “pile ‘em in ‘n’ stack ‘em high”, this will be a major departure for us.

But then, Petticoat Lane to Bond Street was always our secret trajectory.

We’re getting a draft of the designwork this week, so it shouldn’t be too long before Syntagma joins the fashionistas at the top of the style league.

Watch this spice [sic].

I’ve sometimes thought that Google’s great project of delineating and mapping the entire internet was time-limited and would some day explode in its face.

The fact is, no matter how much they expand their datacenter infrastructure with cheap Dell computers, the number of pages on the net will grow faster — probably exponentially faster. The question now exercising us is : has the process of melt-down begun?

A few days back I wrote about the current PR regrade and described it as “weird”. Many of our Wordpress sites have remained untouched at PR0 despite clocking around 500 backlinks on Google’s own link: operator. Other, very successful sites have lost PR for no apparent reason.

At first I thought we were being penalized for some factor hidden away below the radar. But others are complaining too, including The Blog Herald and some SEO experts.

I won’t repeat the two examples I gave before, but take our three magazine portals. The first launched, Allusionz, has many more backlinks than the second, Phi. Both sites have been ignored. However, the last site launched, LifeTimes, with fewer backlinks, has been given a 4.

I could go on. Frankly a system with this number of anomalies is worse than useless, it’s positively harmful. Content businesses need to plan ahead. If a crucial metric goes haywire it makes it much more difficult. Better that Google admits it’s overwhelmed and either sorts the system out or withdraws the PageRank measure altogether.

So I ask again, has Google botched this regrade, or has the famed algorithm become so overworked it no longer functions logically?

Has Google suffered melt-down at last?

Royal Anecdotes was one of the first three sites launched by Syntagma Media in October 2005. It has been our top traffic site consistently ever since, except when overtaken temporarily by its sister site, Aristocracy Anecdotes.

Now we are pleased to launch another in the line, Royal Marriage 2007, in response to the imminent engagement announcement of Prince William and Kate Middleton, scooped by Royal Anecdotes itself. The site will be part of our LifeTimes network magazine.

Royal Marriage 2007 will track the events, occasionally getting the scoops, and keeping you in touch with the ups and downs of the occasion.

Put it into your social diary for next year, and make sure your top hat is in good order.

Lots of juicy chatter around the zlogosphere* about portals and platforms right now. Even Dave Winer is confused so it’s got to be getting serious.

* zlogs are blogs that have outgrown the common or garden blogosphere.

Keith Teare at edgio thinks the big portals, like Yahoo and Google, will gradually retract back from their Himalayan heights to the great wodge in the middle, while the outer edge, comprising small to medium publishers, will become relatively more important. His touchstone is the reported $180,000/month made by TechCrunch.

Scott Karp, who wrote something similar a week ago, believes platforms are the new portals.

Well, it’s old ground here in the zlogosphere as I’ve been banging on about content platforms for quite a while. Mathew Ingram questions the terms used in this discussion. “It’s just the language that is making things difficult. What is a ‘gateway’ or a ‘portal’ or a ‘platform?’ ”

Well, for what it’s worth, here’s Zyntagma Syntagma’s definition of a content platform — or network magazine, as we call them : “A network magazine is a content platform that brings together a range of websites on multi-domains from the same network and which are of interest to a similar readership.”

So the platform is the total distributed inventory within the unit, defined and networked as a magazine, or some other term. The portal is the place where it’s promoted as a single entity. The platform is the whole, the portal is the front page and contents list, to use print terminology.

To clarify that, we have three content platforms and three portals where they receive their organization and package branding.

Scott’s suggested receipts of $180,000/month per platform would give us an annual income of $6.5 million.

Long live the zlogosphere.

We’ve now completed our reorganization plans and will be implementing them across our three network magazines this weekend.

Basically, we are archiving some underperforming sites and we’ve let go eight wonderful one-site authors. This was a difficult decision, but they used up as much admin time as those with many more sites under their belts. With reducing the workload as the main objective, this was painful but necessary.

We have now stabilized to around 35 sites, plus the experimental ones under Syntagma Confidential. With my new contract there’s a distinct possibility of the big retail project going ahead under a different banner, and that will impact favourably on Syntagma too.

We’re now leaner, better organized and much more profitable than before. At the end of my one-year contract with a much larger outfit, Syntagma will be the best li’l network business on the Web.

You’d better believe it.

As I look through our stats for November, one thing is clear, they have increased threefold since the introduction of our network magazine format.

Although November was a good month overall, by interpolating a little, I’ve been able to calculate roughly the effects of the new organization.

Our top two sites have notched up over 50,000 unique visitors, and even the slower ones have more or less tripled their October performances.

The reason is fairly clear : with a more organized structure, traffic is moving along pathways not previously available, and flows from the centre are adding to the “own traffic” of each site.

Moreover, intersite traffic has increased substantially too. And while it’s not quite exponential, it’s still rather remarkable.

So, far December is following the same path, and while much can be put down to the Christmas spirit, the new network factor is accounting for the bulk of the improvements.

Syntagma Media is delighted to launch the latest in our financial series of information websites : On the Money, which will be part of our LifeTimes network magazine.

The site will cover what is usually called Macroeconomics, or fiscal and monetary trends.

Our authors are the Boston Bloggers, Andrea Paulsen, whose career is in insurance underwriting, and Clive Allen, who has a particular interest in the greenback.

On the Money supplements our two microeconomics sites : Money Finesse and The Money Blog, plus our eye on the consolidation of the world’s stock markets, LSE Latest.

After the successful launch of all three of our network magazines, I’ve now had some time to assess their functions and advantages better.

Today, I’ve been able to go around the Syntagma Media network of 50 sites, selecting pieces to be showcased in the mags. What immediately struck me was the fantastic range and depth of interests the network covers. Even I was impressed, and I put it all together in the first place.

My point is that the three mags throw a sharp focus on the sites and their content in a way that a sprawling array of 50 domains can never do. Judging by the remarkable stats we’ve had for Allusionz and Phi, many visitors think so too.

Another advantage is that they give a big boost to less trafficked sites, which of necessity all large networks have. In a magazine portal presentation, your least visited site can be seen sitting alongside your most visited, benefiting in the process. Each magazine, although wide-ranging in terms of topics, attracts a similar kind of reader, and connections will be made and traffic driven that wouldn’t happen otherwise. It really does work.

So, what is a “network magazine” and how does it differ from other magazines online? Here’s my definition :

A network magazine is a content platform that brings together a range of websites on multi-domains from the same network, and which are of interest to a similar readership.

They also aspire to adopt print media values and quality, mainly through using experts in their field with a track record of writing offline. No publication can survive with a bunch of duffers.

I’ve no doubt there are many other subtle advantages with the format that I’m not seeing just yet. The only disadvantage is that it adds more work to an already crowded day.

But, to paraphrase the ads : I do it because they’re worth it.

The three Syntagma Network Magazines are :

Allusionz (Arts and Philosophies)
21st-century Phi (Sciences and Future Technologies)
LifeTimes (Lifestyles and Celebrities)

Syntagma Media is in lunar orbit at launching the third (and final) network magazine in the current series.

LifeTimes packages all of our Lifestyles and Celebrities sites under one roof, with an editor’s pick of posts and a rolling feed from around the mag.

As ever, it’s been designed by Swedish superstar, Thord Hedengren, who has woven his usual miracles of speed and panache.

We’ve introduced another feature in the form of an Editorial box to bring you the latest news from the network magazine world. At present, of course, that just means Syntagma.

Don’t think we’re lonely up here. We enjoy being in lunar orbit.

Can’t think of anything that rhymes, so just curl up with LifeTimes.

Damn, that doesn’t scan!