As passion, integrity and authority are among some of the key selection criteria used, it is with great pride that I can officially announce that MasterNewMedia has become part of the Federated Media Publishing and advertising network.

Federated Media, headed by John Battelle is the premiere online advertising agency for author-driven sites and the pragmatical avant-garde of conversational marketing made reality. The Federated Media network is a fantastic ring of independent, author-driven blogs and sites - such as TechCrunch, Digg, Search Engine Land, GigaOM, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, Boing Boing and many other great ones.

"An FM site has influence not because its author is well known, but because the author has earned the trust of an influential community."

And this is why I am so happy to make this announcement: as John Battelle mentions in the short video here below, MasterNewMedia has been selected among 4000 sites that have applied in the last year to become part of the FM network. MasterNewMedia is also among the elite group of four sites not based in the US (only another one is based in Europe).

I feel very excited by FM choice to select this site as one of its network advertising partners and I like to think of this success as a reward for the hard work in publishing and sharing quality content that me and my team have been bringing forward.

To celebrate this new partnership, I have a very special present for you: John Battelle, CEO and founder of Federated Media has allowed me to get an exclusive video sneak-in inside his office to record a 4-min video where he explains to you what Federated Media is and what makes it so unique for independent online publishers.

FM has also kindly asked me to ask you, my readers, a few simple questions to help Federated Media find the most relevant potential advertisers for the MasterNewMedia community. This will help both Federated Media learn more about what kind of readers I have but also help them identify the best possible matches in terms of advertising brands that may have something really relevant to bring to you, the MasterNewMedia audience. I know surveys are never the most appealing thing to do, but I have taken two steps to make this one as sweet and approachable as it can get:

a) it is very short - you can go through it in a couple of minutes

b) As a thank you, I am giving away to each survey respondent my own complete list of RSS new sources. Yes, I am making available for all MasterNewMedia long-time readers and supporters my original OPML source file, containing all of the RSS news sources my newsroom taps into daily, to hand-select the very best news you see daily on the front page of MasterNewMedia.

So, if you are a Robin Good's passionate reader and want to give a little contribution to my publishing efforts please share your views about MasterNewMedia here: Federated Media / MasterNewMedia short-survey.

Here below John Battelle exclusive mini video interview for MasterNewMedia readers:

MasterNewMedia First Italy-Born International Site To Join The Federated Media Network

John Battelle CEO and founder of Federated Media explains 1) What is Federated Media, 2) What makes FM so unique to independent web publishers.
Duration: 3' 57"

Full English Text Transcription

Intro

John Battelle: Hey Robin, and Robin's readers and viewers, it's John Battelle here, welcoming Robin to the FM family.

I wanted to answer a couple of questions that Robin had for me about Federated Media.

Two questions:

1. What is FM? Why did you make it?
2. What makes Federated Media unique for independent publishers like Robin Good?

What Is Federated Media

John Battelle: First of all, what FM is, it is a media business leveraging technology and leveraging shifts that are happening in the ecosystem of the media business over the past ten years. Toward a conversational form of media like this. Leveraging the Web as a platform.

A couple of big trends that FM has built in:

1. The cost of distribution, which is to be the largest cost in all media, has been mitigated by the Internet.
2. Secondly, the tools of production are no longer an impediment to the creation of media allowing for talented individuals to create platforms to allow audiences to aggregate and have conversations around the individuals' passions, like what Robin has done.

This is a trend that has been happening for ten years, we really took off in the last five. Federated is a business that has developed around those trends to support independent publishers.

Not unlike what happened with music business, in the 50s, 60s and 70s, as musicians began to get tools of production in their own hands: in other words, the organ wasn't just in the church.

You can have a guitar, and playing in your garage and get really good, but you needed a music label, a band manager and a talent agent, distribution people, to get you records out and all that stuff. You needed this all infrastructure for the musician to get to the point of making money. Similarly, independent web site publishers need a business around.

Big difference of course is we don't control, own, or try to exploit the intellectual property. We actually work as partners with the publishers in finding ways to get brand revenue to those publishers mainly through working with top nudge, top five-hundred brands, in the United States, and increasingly globally.

What Makes Federated Media Unique

John Battelle: Second question: What makes FM unique? It's our approach to working as partners with publishers, and working as partners with marketers and bringing the marketers and the publishers together in conversations that add value to the audiences.

I think what makes us unique is that we are very selective about who we bring on, and we're very selective about how we bring these conversations together, and actually keep marketing in this new environment.

We're not a pumped-up banner ad, punch-the-monkey, ram-it display network, we try to bring high quality to everything we do.

Sure, we run typical ads but we run a lot of different kinds campaigns that try to get the community involved in conversations, around the greater themes that are contributed toward to a brand.

And there's a lot of examples of those on FederatedMedia.net site, so encourage anyone interested, given that I know most of the audience here is interested in new media and marketing, to go to FederatedMedia.net and check it out.

I think you'll see our difference there.

MasterNewMedia Becomes Part of The Federated Media Family

John Battelle: That's like a good summary I think, of everything that we do, looking forward to engaging with you and your site as you become member of the family.

Welcome!

I guess I should say congratulations, 4.000 people applied last year to be part of the family and it's very rare that we let someone through the door, so I hope we can have a great partnership together with not just you Robin, but your audience in particular.

Thanks very much!

Share Your Opinion about MasterNewMedia

Originally shot and recorded by John Battelle for MasterNewMedia and first published on November 17th 2008 as "MasterNewMedia Joins The Federated Media Advertising Network: John Battelle Video"