Chas Edwards Steps Down From Federated Media To Join Digg

Chas Edwards was the Chief Revenue Officer at Federated Media up until now.  He has quit to become the Chief Revenue and Strategy Officer at social bookmarking website Digg.com.  Digg hired Thomas Shin from Yahoo! recently and he will be reporting directly to Edwards.

Mike Maser, the current Chief Revenue and Strategy Officer at Digg will become the Chief Strategy Officer.  He will control the marketing, community management, and business development at Digg.

Federated Media founder John Battelle plans to start looking for Edwards’ replacement.  This past January, Federated Media cut their staff and decided to start focusing on conversational marketing.  Federated Media and Microsoft also recently started a project together called ExecTweets which I thought was a terrible idea.

Two of Federated Media’s biggest publisher partners GigaOM and TechCrunch recently cancelled their agreements.  GigaOM decided to sign with a different ad partner and TechCrunch decided to sell ads directly themselves.  Digg themselves left in 2007 after a partnership with Microsoft.

Edwards joins Digg at a time where the company has decided to find additional revenue streams.  Digg is also focusing on directly sales and is pushing for profitability.  Digg made about $8.5 million in revenue in 2008 and they will probably need to make double that amount in order to become profitable.

[via TechCrunch]

Related posts:

1. Rumor: Federated Media Raising Second Round of Funding
2. Federated Media Loses GigaOm and Drops CPM Rates
3. Federated Media Hires An Investment Bank
4. Federated Media Explores “Conversational Marketing,” Cuts Traditional Ad Staff, Expanding Strategic Programs
5. Ad Brokerage Company, Federated Media Rumored To Have Raised $50 Million