Author of “The Search” and BoingBoing.net “band manager” John Battelle’s Federated Media scooped up its first round of venture capital funding.
JP Morgan Partners led Federated Media’s (FM) first round of financing for a currently undisclosed amount. The firm joins such initial investors as The New York Times Company, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s Network, and techie book publisher Tim O’Reilly in backing Battelle’s venture.
A statement from FM described what the endeavor hopes to accomplish (besides making Hefty bags full of cash, natch):
Federated Media represents “best of breed” independent publishing sites, with a focus on high quality authors catering to influential and highly engaged audiences. Through its advertising, technology, publishing, and business development services, FM connects independent weblog authors, marketers and influential audiences in an ongoing conversation that feeds everyone involved. The sites in FM’s network include BoingBoing.net, Buzzmachine.com, Digg.com, Dooce.com, Fark.com, GigaOm.com and more than 25 others.
The inclusion of Digg is notable, as the site has supported itself through placement of Google AdSense blocks throughout its pages. Those Google ads are still appearing on Digg, so their switchover to FM has not happened yet.
People can get a feel for the type of stories and writers in the new FM network by visiting its authors page and reading some of their work collected on a “best of” page.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
