John Battelle's advertising rep firm is to expand, beyond its existing stable of tech and parenting sites, into the travel category. Federated Media has been wooing travel writers so indiscriminately, in fact, that a letter, republished below, went to Gridskipper, Valleywag's sister site. Oops. But the most interesting line is the pitch for Federated's founder. John "Searchblog" Battelle founded the ad network, we're told, "to help bloggers like himself." Such a man of the people! Oh, please: Battelle, a Silicon Valley fixture who made a killing on the sellout Web 2.0 conference and hired a chauffeur to whisk him round the elite Davos conference, is as much a blogger as George Bush is a good 'ol boy.

—-—Original Message—-—
From: Melanie Colburn [mailto:mcolburn@federatedmedia.net]
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 12:47 AM
To: chris@gridskipper.com
Subject: Great site —

Hello, Chris —

I work with authors at Federated Media, the company John "Searchblog" Battelle (www.battellemedia.com) founded to help bloggers like himself and his friends at Boing Boing get appropriate advertising, technical help and other services.

FM exists to bring quality advertising to quality blogs. Advertisers know they can trust FM blogs, and so are willing to pay more to associate their product with our authors.

Business is booming at our Tech and Parenting Federations, and now we're starting to develop a Travel & Leisure Federation. We're working with some excellent sites, and would like to talk with you, as well.

If this sounds interesting to you, please send over your monthly unique visitors and how many pages they view each month. Hope to talk with you soon.

Best,

Melanie

Melanie Colburn | Federated Media | 123 Second Street, Sausalito, CA 94965 | 415.332.6955 .112 | f:
415.480.1337