As the owner and founder of Orato.com it is my pleasure to formally announce and endorse editorial and design changes now live on the site. The changes have been made to:

• further professionalize the site
• focus its newsworthy content
• create and enforce a viable business model
• and keep pace with Web 2.0 standards.

In May we will actively advertise for and recruit veteran, amateur and citizen journalists alike in addition to reaching out to the thousands of contributors who have already registered.

Joy Gugeler as Publisher/Editor-in-Chief, with 15 years experience in the industry, was hired in January to execute the above mandate, and has assembled a new professional team with Lisa Manfield as Managing Editor, Mike Small as Multimedia Editor, Jason Hendry as our Technical Director and Francois Renaud as our Creative Director. I am thrilled to see Orato reinvent itself according to this plan and look forward to watching our rise to fame and fortune.

As with any commercial entity that evolves to suit a constantly innovating format, we invite our new and loyal writers alike to embrace recent changes to our guidelines that follow typical publishing practice. Most importantly these revisions are specifically designed to garner more readers for their articles, pay all our valued contributors a share of their ad revenues, and to follow industry standards long-documented by tech media.

As we are committed to empowering and enriching writers’ experiences, we are confident that this evolution will allow Orato to establish itself as an ideal platform for showcasing writers’ work. Orato remains true to my original vision of a place where you can read stories from those closest to the experience of an event, and citizens can exchange knowledge of value to all.

We are also newly committed to compensating our talent while offering larger audiences trustworthy and reliable articles that answer questions, share the most relevant information, and stand the test of time.

The blogosphere allows individuals to post material that is more personal, opinionated, or narrow in appeal, but Orato now needs to serve a larger purpose and to be exemplary in its ability to supplement the offerings of traditional media. We are set to rise to that challenge and look forward to having you on the journey.

Sam Yehia, Owner and Founder