1938 had a video on the Federated Media blog-plosion this weekend. It's a pretty cynical look at what happened, but still worth checking out. I'm still trying to get a handle on the whole situation- there is a lot more to it than a few banner ads...

It looks like Federated Media's newest move is the creation of a graphics arts page. There is no word* if this is the official creation of a new federation (like tech, small business, or parenting) or just another partnership mini-site launch (like the Holiday Gift Guide), but it is worth checking out. The site's involved are Zoom-in, Notcot, Core77, Laughing Squid, Mojizu and a few others and it features links to new content as well as links to some content from HP, which is the sponsor. HP apparently has a graphics arts portal that people can join, but it's not entirely clear why you would want to. The site looks great, as is befitting a graphics arts page, and the designer really did a killer job. There are no credits listed but I would definitely be interested in learning who put it together. Each of the sites involved, including very popular ones like we-make-money-not-art and MocoLoco have a FM Graphic Arts banner running that links to the page, so it should be getting decent traffic. There is no word if all of these sites are signed on to FM, but if they are it there would be a lot of great pickups there. I know that Laughing Squid and Notcot are officially with FM, but can't speak as to the others. The creation of a graphic arts federation is not something I at all expected, but if they could pull in sites of this caliber, it could be quite a success. Edit: I totally missed this when looking yesterday. So FM does, in fact, have a graphic arts federation. It's a great group of sites! My favorite is notcot though, I have been a subscriber for a long time now... Thanks for the comment John.

Some communication wires were crossed last night and the end result was TechCrunch was offering up some serious misinformation when they posted that Federated Media was looking to sell. Apparently there was some confusion after FM COO Jason Weisburger was quoted by MergerMarket. From the article:

Weisberger said “If Federated Media keeps performing the way we’ve predicted in 2007, it would be a really ripe time for a media player who understands this space to buy us now rather than having to buy us for a whole lot more later.” The article also said “While he was unsure how much Federated might sell for, Weisberger said similar companies have gotten 8x to 10x gross revenue…Another possible valuation for a sale of the company is a multiple of 25x EBITDA.”

John Battelle eventually weighed in and set the record straight, after which TechCrunch revised the post, but the headlines were already all over the blogosphere.  There is an official response on FM's blog. It would be an interesting move for FM to sell right now, but I think they are doing too well to sell at the moment. They are handling their growth pretty well and, I don't mind saying, that they have an incredible list of publishers. Their's is a new model for advertising that is not only off to a great start, but one that is not well suited to a large company like some of the prospective buyers listed in the article (AOL, CBS, Google, IAC/Interactive, Fox, Yahoo, Universal McCann, Ogilvy & Mathers, aQuantive, Saatchi & Saatchi, and TBWA/Chiat/Day). There were a few interesting comments at the TechCrunch article. Many disagreed with Jason's valuation numbers and others complained about FM's high CPM rates (those people clearly do not understand FM and don't see it as any different from the competition). All told, a pretty interesting start to the day...

Its been two weeks since the last installment of Federated Media news so this post will be making up for the period we missed. Even so, not that much exciting has happened since that last big announcement.

• Where did that photo of Battelle giving the finger come from?
• Even FM's temps blog
• Chas Edwards is talking at FOOA
• New FM property- New World Notes
• The Business Week article (they didn't even mention me)

There's more, but it's mostly boring or things we have heard before. Sorry for such a half-hearted post... I am just glad this week is over...

FM issued a monster news release a few minutes ago. This was something us authors learned about last week, though without some of the specifics. It's a really long release so I will cover the high points: Federated Media Publishing Cements Relationships with High-Quality Authors in Sports, Travel & Leisure, and other Federations

• FM has been doing extremely well over the past year. It has grown tremendously. They are now showing 365 million pageviews a month.
•  FM wil continue expanding and is developing a strategy in which their federations (how topic segments are grouped, ie. tech, parenting, business, sports, leisure) are lead by large anchor sites. These sites are leaders in their respective segments and will bring in lots of attention and advertisers. Some examples are Ars Technica, Ask A Ninja, Breitbart.com, Wikia, YTMND, Instructables, and PROTRADE.
• FM's expansion is not limited to pageviews and publishers- it been hiring rapidly. The sales staff alone is up to 18 people.
• FM is developing a partnership with comScore, the goal of which is to help comScore better develop metrics for conversational media, like blogs. This should ultimately mean FM's publishers are more accurately represented by comScore's ratings and will be more appealing to advertisers.
• FM will be working with a number of new sites. Here they are:
  • Ask A Ninja – http://www.askaninja.com Ars Technica - http://www.arstechnica.com Baseball Reference - http://www.baseballreference.com Breitbart.com - http://www.breitbart.com CoasterBuzz - http://www.coasterbuzz.com HockeyBuzz - http://www.hockeybuzz.com Instructables - http://www.instructables.com Laughing Squid - http://www.laughingsquid.com LifeClever - http://www.lifeclever.com RealTravel - http://www.realtravel.com Rocketboom – http://www.rocketboom.com ResourceShelf & DocuTicker - http://www.resourceshelf.com and http://www.docuticker.com PROTRADE - http://www.protrade.com Sweetney - http://www.sweetney.com Sweet Juniper! - http://sweetjuniper.blogspot.com Textually - http://www.textually.org Trend Hunter - http://www.trendhunter.com Wikia - http://www.wikia.com Wil Wheaton dot Net - http://wilwheaton.typepad.com YTMND - http://www.ytmnd.com
• These sites range from what will become anchors, like Ars Technica, Ask a Ninja, Breitbart, Wikia, Trend Hunter, and Rocketboom to smart pickups like Textually, Lifeclever.com, LaughingSquid.com, to the obscure, like sweetney.com and sweetjuniper.blogspot.com.

It's time for another installation this blog's weekly FM coverage.  Here goes... The first big story was Forbes' Web Celeb 25. This article, pure linkbait, got lots of press simply because everyone mentioned on it is very influential and felt obligated to write about it. The connection to FM is that considering that FM has just 100 authors right now, a tiny portion of all the bloggers/sites on the net, their authors dominated the list. Out of the 25 people chosen FM works with Markos Moulitsas (#3, SportsBlogs Nation), Jeff Jarvis (#6, BuzzMachine) Michael Arrington (#10, TechCrunch), Jimmy Wales (#12, Wikia), Cory Doctorow (#15, Boing Boing), Xeni Jardin (#16, Boing Boing), Merlin Mann (#18, 43Folders), and Om Malik (#24, GigaOm) . As for the "Near Misses" there was also one person, Heather Armstrong of Dooce.com. OK, this list was linkbait, but Forbes has a very influential readership and is going to be driving a lot of traffic to these author's sites. Plus, any way you look at it, 8 out of 25 is incredible. Also, a number of FM' hires were made official this week. Most have to do with sales, but there was also a manager added to the southern CA office, and a major accounts director. One person even came from my local newspaper, the (practically unreadable) Asbury Park Press. Despite these hires FM is still looking for a VP of author services and a a Bus Dev director. Links (18th-25th) :

• Advertisers avoiding blog networks? Chas sets things straight.
• Poking fun at /Message
• Something in German

That looks like it, at least of what is worth mentioning. This was a pretty slow week concerning online news about FM. I'll check back in next week with more developments.

XYZ Computing has been working with Federated Media for about 10 months now. It's been a very positive experience and despite XYZ not being very "bloggy" our two organization are perfectly matched- I need more a "boutique" ad agency who can get higher CPMs regardless of the number of pageviews and they need high quality content providers (preferably ones with a recognizable name at them helm). OK, I am not exactly internet famous, but I guess I am getting there... Anyway, regardless of me working with FM, the companies story has been on of the most interesting on any internet company in 2006. They have had explosive growth in the past few months and have snagged some great sites as well as some great people. There have been setbacks, but overall the company seems to be doing about as well as possible. Personally I try to keep on FM news but it's not easy, so I am going to try to post from time to time with weekly highlights.

1. Federated Media is expanding rapidly. Nice to see that they are advertising with their own authors.
2. Federated Media in Facebook NewsFeed? Not sure I understand what's going on here, and I don't see it in my Facebook account, but could be something big.
3. Federated Media is helping sites that get hundreds of thousands of visitors make money.
4. FM and Pajamas are doing well, but are not going to take down Adsense any time soon.
5. FM's making a million bucks a month
6. Blogvertising is growing fast. (Although there is some confusion about networks at the end)

That's it for now. Pretty slow week I guess.