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]

Microsoft, Federated Media, and Twitter have partnered on a website that I think is a pretty lame concept here.  The concept is that Twitter aggregates tweets from business executives and puts it on the homepage of this website.  The service is called ExecTweets.  Some of the technology executives who they track include Sam Decker, Craig Newmark, Jeffrey Hayzlett, Padmasree Warrior, etc.

Twitter gave the site their blessing and accepted the site to use their logo.  There is a revenue sharing partnership between Federated Media and Twitter for this website.

Personally I think that this service is a terrible idea.  This experience takes away from the whole Twitter environment.  What makes Twitter so great is that you can choose to follow people that have similar interests as you or is the exact opposite as you.  Regardless you customize your experiences but in the ExecTweet world, everything is preset.

That is the same reason why I did not like AllTop initially.  It is just a bunch of RSS feeds that was preset based on what Guy Kawasaki thinks should belong there.  The user cannot customize anything.  Ask anyone at the big 3 search engine companies and they can tell you that everyone wants their homepage customizable.

Some people are claiming that through this website “Twitter has found a business model.”  Clearly a revenue sharing agreement isn’t a revenue model because they are not utilizing their entire user base.  They’re just allowing themselves to receive money from a website that anyone could recreate and not share money with them.  Want an example of a site that aggregates users from Twitter and doesn’t give the company royalties?  Kevin Roses’ WeFollow.com.

Federated Media has built their reputation for providing blogs and other content websites with high CPM display advertisements.  However they have lost several partners through acquisitions or by others leaving voluntarily.  Ars Technica was with FM before they got bought out by Wired.  GigaOm switched from FM to IDG.  And Microsoft even poached an advertising deal with Digg.

In June 2007, Federated Media took some heat for making bloggers recite a Microsoft slogan in several conversational campaigns.  Valleywag exploited the bloggers for doing this.  Founder of Federated Media John Battelle wrote that he wished all of the blog authors disclosed that they had a relationship with the advertisers.  TechCrunch author Michael Arrington wrote that FM Publishing threw bloggers under the bus for writing that statement.

Ever since those times, the U.S. economy has been in a struggling economic state which led FM Publishing to question their current marketing practices.  Basically FM Publishing wants to displaying more engaging advertisements rather than just display ads.  Even though they are cutting some staff, FM Publishing will be expanding the Strategic Programs and Major Accounts divisions.

[via FM Blog]

Federated Media is an advertising broker partner for many top tech tier sites.  They power the advertising for TechCrunch, Silicon Alley Insider, Mashable, You’re the man now dog, AppleInsider, ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat, TechDirt, etc.  To date, Federated Media has raised $57.5 million.

Federated Media (FM) has lost a number of partners to acquisitions and poaching.  Digg was a partner of FM before Microsoft signed a deal with them.  Ars Technica was a partner of FM before Condé Nast bought them out.  Another Federated ad partner, Sphere was picked up by AOL.

Now GigaOm will be stepping down from FM to sign with IDG Group.  IDG’s Network includes CIO, Computerworld, JavaWorld, Linuxworld, Macworld, PC World, etc.

In related news, Federated Media is also slashing advertising rates in order to adapt to rough economic advertising conditions.  TechCrunch’s CPM has been dropped from $36 to $23.40.  Silicon Alley Insider’s weekly square button ads have been dropped from $630 to $409.50.

Federated Media, the ad broker company that was started and run by John Battelle is rumored to have raised $50 million based on a $200 million pre-investment valutation from Oak Hill Capital Partners. John Battelle is founder of Wired and author of a book written about Google.

The funding source originates from a blog post written by Eric Eldon on VentureBeat. Savvian, the investment banking firm that Battelle acknowledge hiring supposedly helped with brokering the deal. FM has not confirmed the deal though.

In terms of revenue, FM supposedly earned $20-$23 million over the last year and is expected to earn $60 million this year. Federated Media brokers ads for Alarm:CLock, AltSearchEngines, Ars Technica, BoingBoing, GigaOm, Guy Kawasaki’s personal blog, LiveSide, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, Sphere, TechCrunch, Techdirt, VentureBeat, and Wikia.

Federated Media Publishing, the advertising brokerage company founded by John Batelle is rumored to be raising another amount of funding.  The second round of funding is expected to be between $20-$30 million according to Stefanie Olsen, an editor at CNET.  The first round of funding was $4.5 million by JPMorgan Partners, the Omidyar Network, and The New York Times.  The Omidyar Network was founded by Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay.

Federated Media also recently employed GCA Savvian Advisors to help them work investment queries.  There was a rumor floating that Federated Media was offered $100 million for a buyout, but turned it down.  Ad networks around the world are raising funds and are being acquired.  Google acquired DoubleClick for $3.1 billion and Microsoft acquired aQuantive for $6 billion.  Yahoo! and AOL have also picked up a couple of advertising companies as well.

Federated Media has been generating large sums of advertising revenue and has even paid some of their clients $1 million.  Federated Media’s network of publishers include TechCrunch, Mashable, GigaOM, Digg, and BoingBoing.

Federated Media (FM), the advertisement brokerage arm for many high-end clients has hired Savvian, an investment bank to potentially seek additional investors or to be responsible for incoming offers. There were speculations that Federated Media may be looking for an acquisition, but the company said specifically that the they are not interested in selling. FM’s priority is to focus on growth.

Federated Media publishing partners include GigaOM, TechDirt, BoingBoing, Digg, VentureBeat, and Mashable [full list here]. Federated Media is run by John Battelle, one of the original founders of Wired magazine and also author of The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture.

In total, Federated Media raised over $4.5 million from investors such as JP Morgan, The New York Times, and Omidyar Network. Individual investors include Mitchell Kapor, Tim O’Reilly, Mike Homer, and Andrew Anker.

Some of the transactions that Savvian was involved in includes Dell’s acquisition of Everdream, Motricity’s acquisition of Infospace, News Corp.’s acquisition of Beliefnet, and RevolutionHealth’s acquisition of HealthTalk.

[Information Source: paidContent]

Amount Invested: Undisclosed
Series: Angel
TheBig is a video channel website that is based in India. The company has raised angel funding from Suhel Seth and Swapan Seth. Suhel is a Managing Partner with Counselage and Swapan is the CEO of Equus Red Cell. Gaggan Duggal and Chetan Sharma were also investors. Chetan is a consultant for ZeeTV and Duggal is the founder of Matrix, a brand name in international calling cards.

TheBig does not focus on strictly user generated content, but also has original programming. Some of TheBig’s original programming includes Sudarshan: The Lonely Boy, Professor Aye Tein, News With Leela Loose, and Agony Tau.

“With the progressive emancipation of bandwidth and the acutely swift growth of the Internet, we see a long term play in this space. Www.thebig.tv is also very different from a concept like YouTube. YouTube only uploads third party provided content. With www.thebig.tv, there is a lot of content creation from the site itself. Furthermore, over time we will also be offering films that can be downloaded,” stated Swapan Seth.
[Source: alarm:clock]

Amount Invested: $250-$500K
Series: Seed Financing
iFamily gained popularity as a Facebook geneaology application. Below is a screen shot of the application when it is active in a profile:

iFamily’s investor is a boutique investment banking company called CountryRoad Capital. iFamily has about 83,000-plus total profiles and the company was recently given a valuation of about $1 million.

“This investment from CountryRoad Capital will allow iFamily to accelerate its product and business development and sustain its leadership position as the first and foremost genealogy application on Facebook,” stated Ilya Nikolayev, the CEO of iFamily. “CountryRoad has a distinguished track record of identifying and catalyzing unique emerging technology opportunities and we are pleased to partner with CountryRoad’s Managing Partner Andrew Merkatz and his team. Rather than take an existing genealogy application and try to bend it to work within Facebook, and rather than develop a competing family oriented social network, we have chosen to build this application from the bottom up to fully leverage and integrate the power of Facebook. I believe this market positioning is unique and will allow us to drive significant value for our shareholders.”

CountryRoad Capital also invested in SocialMedia.com, the parent company of other Facebook Applications: Happy Hour, Trakzor, Foodfight.
[Source: alarm:clock]

Amount Invested: $28 Million Total
Series: Second Round ($14 Million)
Veveo is the company that created Vtap, a mobile video/Internet search service. The company’s official launch date is September 10th according to VentureBeat.

Vtaps’s search technology focuses on predictive technology rather than the number of incoming links that Google’s PageRank uses. An example that VentureBeat provides is that if you type “Gwy,” then Vtap will suggest Gwenyth Paltrow as the top result. And then users can seamlessly watch clips that feature Paltrow in them.

The investors in Veveo include Norwest Venture Partners, Matrix Partners, and North Bridge Venture Partners. Murali Aravamudan is currently the CEO of Veveo and is a former researcher at Bell Labs.
[Source: alarm:clock]

Amount Invested: $1.7 Million
Series: Series A
Vadver is a start-up site that is aiming to become a video-discovery service. Draper Fisher Jurvetson invested $1.7 million in the company. Vadver is run by Patrick Koppula.

Koppula is also part of iLike.com, Gcast.com, GarageBand.com. Vadver is based in San Francisco.
[Source: alarm:clock]

Amount Invested: $6.75 Million Total
Series: 2nd Round ($4.5 Million)
Federated Media Publishing is company that acts as a brokerage for advertisements to be placed on some of the top web publication and news companies including Digg, TechCrunch, BoingBoing, Mashable, Alarm:Clock, Ars Technica, GigaOM, ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat, Wikia etc. Inevitably, Pulse 2.0 (P2) is aiming to become a client too, but P2 is still in the growth phase.

Federated Media was founded by John Battelle, author of The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture and co-founding editor of Wired. Investors that participated in this round of funding includes JPMorgan and Omidyar Network (started by eBay’s founder).
[Source: PEHub]