Valleywag
great moments in journalism
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online advertising
The death of conversational marketing
An unproar in the world of tech blogs is uncovering a broader fault line between writers and advertisers. Om Malik's GigaOm and his other blogs have dropped their outside ad-sales firm, Federated Media, a startup run by John Battelle. Federated isn't just another ad network, nor is Battelle just another entrepreneur; he helped start Wired and The Industry Standard and an author of a book about Google, thinks that the future of marketing is conversations. And he launched Federated around that notion. Rather than shouting at readers with ads, marketers will use blogs to engage with their readers — and pay handsomely for the privilege. That's his theory, at any rate, which he is expounding in a forthcoming book. More » -
online advertising
Federated Media slashes rates to $5 CPM
John Battelle has his own plan for riding out the holiday ad-buying slump. The founder of online-advertising network Federated Media, which brokers ads for sites like Boing Boing, GigaOm, and Dooce, can't fire writers, but he can cut the price of their ads. John, be careful. Your inbred network is made up of bloggers who are also endorsers, who also shill their own products. Your list of clients is months out of date — it includes Digg and Fark, who long ago dropped Federated. Cut ad rates too carelessly and your Rube Goldberg business model may backfire. I mean this as the highest compliment: If anyone can lay himself off by accident, that someone is John Battelle. Here's the spam that Federated sent to bloggers this morning: More » -
mark frauenfelder
Boing Boing founder's directory of wonderful ads
Mark Frauenfelder launched bOING bOING, an ink-on-paper zine, in 1988. He did the artwork for Billy Idol's 1993 Cyberpunk album, using a Mac instead of a photo studio. Frauenfelder joined Wired when that was considered a foolish move by media professionals. Later he resurrected Boing Boing as a website, then again as a blog in 2000. He's now editor-in-chief of Make magazine. Does this guy have an unlimited supply of cool? Not unless he learns to say no to advertisers who co-opt him. More » -
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nowpublic
Robert Scoble, other Valley bon vivants subject of latest ego-stroking linkbait
Vancouver-based NowPublic is ostensibly all about citizen journalism. But since Guy Kawasaki sold Truemors to it and signed up as an advisor, it's becoming better known for publishing flattering lists of "influencers," supposedly ranking them according to various social media metrics. The first "Most Public" list focused on New York, but a new list for the Valley and San Francisco is "coming soon." And by virtue of being included in the latest edition, we received an early copy as a press release. Who comes out on top? Ubiquitous attention slut Robert Scoble, naturally. Full list after the jump. More » -
100-word version
Boing Boing's unapologetic eleventh-hour apologia
Boing Boing's readers, hopped up on free-speech rhetoric, continue to find the tech-culture blog's act of unpublishing unspeakable. Hoping to put the Internet's most enduring drama llama this month to bed, the Los Angeles Times rounded up four members of Boing Boing's staff yesterday for a late-night confab. The result is transcribed here and there, but for those about to launch into a three-day weekend, we salute you with only the most wonderful bits, perfect for around-the-barbeque reblogging. It is at once brilliant and brain-numbing in its inconclusiveness. But if the answer to bad speech is more speech, why not answer an act of unpublishing with more nonwords? More » -
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jackpot
John Battelle takes $22 million in fuck-you money
Anyone telling you that Federated Media, the online ad network which reps Boing Boing, GigaOm, TechCrunch and other blogs, has raised $50 million from investors is dead wrong. It's true, Oak Investment Partners and others paid $50 million for shares of Federated. But only half of that went to the company, we're told; the rest went to founder John Battelle and other employees. According to our source, Battelle's take was roughly 90 percent of the insider shares sold, or about $22 million. More »
1:00 PM on Wed Apr 30 2008
By Owen Thomas
4,020 views, 4 commentsLatest by moore850: Word on the street is, he'll lose most of that in one incredibly bad hand of poker at a suitcase more »
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marc andreessen
Why Marc Andreessen should stick to his keyboard
Every time Marc Andreessen steps away from his desk, disaster abounds. For the father of the Netscape browser, the creator of the Web as we know it, the legendary barefoot geek from the magazine covers, expectations are way too high. And so the disappointments pile up. The Andreessen of today is not the Marc we remember. His pate has gone from mophead to Klingon; his wardrobe, inevitably a tracksuit with leather shoes, is an utter disaster. And when he speaks, he says absolutely nothing. John Battelle, the slickster salesman-interviewer of bubbles past and present, tried to get some fighting words out of Andreessen on stage at Web 2.0 Expo. He failed, utterly, epicly. Andreessen praised Bill Gates, said competing with Microsoft was interesting, described Microsoft-Yahoo as "a good deal." More »
9:40 AM on Fri Apr 25 2008
By Owen Thomas
1,816 views, 12 commentsLatest by flyover: @broozier: Males shouldn't be jealous that's a female trait Watch you mad 'cause you push dimes and he sell weight? more »
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jackpot
John Battelle raises $50 million as AOL snatches away his prize
For once, tech publisher John Battelle has timed a bubble just right. With Wired, where he was a founding editor, he was too early; with The Industry Standard, the tech weekly which crashed and burned early in this decade, a bit too late. But with Federated Media, he's proved his dealmaking prowess. He's all but nailed what we hear is $40 million to $50 million in venture capital for the online-ad network , on a $200 million valuation. And this right before AOL bought Sphere, a blog search engine which, by a rough count, serves more than half of the pageviews Battelle sells to advertisers. More » -
venture capital
Federated Media to raise as much as $50 million in VC round
Federated Media is close to announcing it has won between $40 and $50 million in funding from Oak Investment Partners and others, including Omidyar Network, the investment vehicle of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. The Series C round sets the value of the blog-friendly online-ad network at $200 million. Insiders have said past reports of Federated's fundraising were premature, but we hear the news is for real this time. At this point, we'll believe it when we see the term sheet. Do send us a copy? [PeHUB]
