Keynote by Pete Cashmore, founder and CEO Mashable

Pete starts with his main mantra to “build something you love” which not only applies to forming a blog but to any successful company. He uses the Waybackmachine as a resource to show screenshots from Mashable’s history and talks about its development over the years.

People spend many weeks on tweaking their blog to look really professional but according to Pete it’s a waste of time. To prove the viability of a blog you just have to sit down and blog. Just do it! was Pete’s slogan before some sports company ran off with it. Blog, eat, sleep and repeat. Don’t mess with templates and funding and waste your time.

Start at WordPress.com and if you have the skills install WordPress on your own server. Pete is obviously a member of the WordPress fan group and slightly bashes the Six Apart products and Blogger.

So what is important when building a blog empire? Stats. Find what your readers want and give them what they want and then monetize it. When asked, hardly anyone in the rooms actually wants to monetize its blog. Pete is kind of surprised, especially if he asks the same question in the US where everyone raises their hands.

Q&A: Apparently blogging is dead, it’s all about microblogging. Blogging is hard now. How do you compete with blogs created by established media empires who create blogs? Find a niche. What’s the future of blogs? According to Pete it is about how do you aggregate the dispersed conversation that’s on FriendFeed and Twitter, or do you want to completely distribute content as a brand?