John Battelle, author of The Search, has started a company called Federated Media Publishing. FMP is a “network” for blogs: essentially the Web 2.0 equivalent of what used to be called a magazine. It promises to take care of things like helping to find appropriate advertising as well as providing cool new blog technology, to free bloggers to write while FMP does the other stuff.
They have an impressive initial list of bloggers including some of my favorites like Om Malik and Jeff Jarvis. Superblog BoingBoing is a member. Sounds like good company so Fractals of Change has joined as well. Two of the things I like about FMP is that advertisers get to pick the sites on which they want to run and bloggers get to pick the campaigns they want on their sites. The Google robots just don’t do a very good job of picking ads which interest you (or me either, for that matter); I’m hoping that working with FMP I can do better.
The Internet is a great way for content producers like me to get content very cheaply to its consumers – you. And the content flows with very little intermediation. The traditional gatekeepers – editors employed by book publishers, magazines, and newspapers – don’t stand between us. Because blogging doesn’t involve any significant out-of-pocket costs, amateurs like me can afford to blog without a substantial revenue model. But we need professional content as well. And professionals – whether they’re musicians, writers, singers, whatever – need to be able to earn a living or more from their profession.
So it IS important that there be a business model for all of this. FMP has promise to be part of the answer to the question of how content producers get paid.
Now the pitch:
In order to make FMP work right AND in order to target the right ads to you, my readers, it’s helpful to know something about you. I would appreciate your taking a few minutes to answer the questions in this survey. You won’t be asked to identify yourself. There is nothing buried in the survey which could identify you. And, of course, you don’t have to answer any question you don’t want to answer or even complete the survey once you’ve begun. The survey will only run for one week.
Thanks for filling out the survey if you do and thanks for reading Fractals of Change even if you don’t.