(image) This will be the final Signal of the week, as I’m taking Thursday and Friday off. I suggest you do too, our wonderful industry will survive.Meanwhile, the Pepper Spray Cop Meme is just too funny to not include. To the Turkey links:
Will Mobile Ads Ever Work for Publishers? (DD) Hey, who raised this last week? Oh yeah, me.
Facebook users: Five degrees of separation (WP) Kind of fun. Once a lot of folks get on the graph, stuff like this comes out. Wish Facebook did more of it.
Image as interest: How the Pepper Spray Cop could change the trajectory of Occupy Wall Street (NL) Here’s where I found the Pepper Spray Cop imagefest.
Tech coalition backs off SOPA support (WP) This is very good news.
Clayton Christensen: How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy (Forbes) Interesting.
Facebook to Make Social-Powered Smartphone (ATD) It’s named Buffy. It’s HTC plus a very tweaked version of Android (think Amazon).
Help Us Shape The Signal Conferences in 2012 (Searchblog) Your input wanted for our conference series next year! Vote on six choices or add your own.
Federated Media Publishing’s Independent Publishers and Authors Share Their Insight on Food, Tech and Lifestyle Trends for the Holidays (FM) The longest release headline in FM history. Says it all.
Mobile Ad Figures Show Android Has Secured Its OS Lead, Apple A Device Lead (PC) More stats for yer PowerPointers.
#####
FM’s program of the day is the Fiat 500 campaign.
If it suits your information consumption goals, sign up for Signal’s email newsletter or RSS feed on the FM home page (upper right box).
I am very pleased to announce that Deanna Brown, who has been leading FM as President and COO since Fall of 2009, will be stepping up to the role of CEO, effective immediately.
Those of you who’ve been reading my posts on the FM site for some time may recall the announcement of my original search for a partner back in May of 2009. When we announced that search, I wrote:
It’s time to take it to the next level. FM is no longer a scrappy startup, and while its leadership team is deep and experienced, we’ve come to the conclusion that to take the company to the place we all know it can go, we need an additional leader on board.
During the past year and a half, Deanna has become an essential and highly respected member of our FM family and, if I might be selfish for a moment, she’s been a crucial partner to me. She has expertly led our team into exciting new territory and continues to focus on our growth and evolution as a company. And her promotion marks a new high in FM’s nearly six years of growth. (For some deeper reading on my approach to being a CEO, see the first post I wrote announcing the business, six years ago this March).
A few milestones during Deanna’s tenure, from our press release announcing her promotion:
· Six consecutive quarters of profitability for the company
· A 62 percent growth in top-line revenue and a 35 percent growth in ad programs
· Investments and acquisitions to help better serve partners, including TextDigger, BigTent, FoodBuzz and Clever Girls
· Continued focus on hiring top level talent to supporting client teams and new product offerings
While Deanna is taking over the role of CEO, not too much will change – as you can see from the results above, she’s already been effectively running the company for nearly a year and a half. She will continue to do what she has always done and does very well: run this company and lead the FM team into an action-packed 2011 and beyond.
So what about me? Over the past year, I’ve come to depend on Deanna and our senior managers to manage the company, and I’ve been increasingly in the field, talking with partners and staying on top of this extraordinary industry. This will not change. As I wrote in that post back in 2009:
In order to take FM to the next level, it’s essential that I intensify my role working with our major clients, thinking hard about where the media business is going (a fascinating question), and evangelizing the market in which we operate.
I will continue and deepen this work. I’ll be very involved in the company in my new role as Executive Chairman of the Federated Media Board of Directors. This move will also allow me to lead Federated Media’s own event series, which has expanded significantly for 2011, and to focus on strategy.
I’ve been working closely with the Federated Media Board over the past year to prepare for this leadership transition that highlights both Deanna’s and my strengths as partners.
Please help me congratulate Deanna on her new position. I’m thrilled for her, for Federated, and for all our partners.
We’re excited to share news of FM’s acquisition of Foodbuzz, a leading online food community that is the fastest growing in its space. The combination will make it easier for brands to surround one of the web’s most popular topics.
Exclusive relationships with more than 4,400 independent food bloggers allow Foodbuzz to reach 
more than 14 million unique users per month. Combined with FM’s premier food sites, including Serious Eats and Bakerella, the new offering gives marketers increased opportunities to engage with audiences sharing recipes and recommendations.
FM’s purchase of Foodbuzz comes on the heels of three other significant transactions: the acquisition of BigTent, the leading community platform for local groups, especially groups of parents; the acquisition of semantic-search technology from TextDigger; and a partnership with the Clever Girls Collective to reach audiences on more than 1,000 top-quality lifestyle blogs.
You can read more about the news from AllThingsD, PaidContent, and AdAge, in addition to the press release.
With the completion of the Web 2.0 Summit today (and the headlines it brought), we’re excited to share plans for a three-city series of online marketing events. Day-long sessions as part of the Signal Series executive produced by John Battelle are scheduled for Los Angeles, Austin and Chicago in the early part of 2011.
The first meeting of business leaders and marketers will take place on February 8 in Southern California. Scheduled speakers around the theme of content marketing include FM COO Deanna Brown, Mandalay Entertainment Group CEO Peter Guber, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, and Slideshare co-founder Rashmi Sinha among others. Signal events will take place in advance of the sixth CM Summit during Internet Week next June.
At SF and NY HQ we’re excited about the launch of Touchdown Rundown, a new collaboration between AT&T, MEC and FM that allows college football fans to see in real time who’s checking in and which teams are winning. The platform for NCAA football information and conversation serves as the first BCS social platform and integrates college football conversation from Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and foursquare APIs.
The site and app for NCAA college football fans includes stadium tips available through foursquare and real-time Twitter updates on the status of the league that make it easy to check stats and talk about favorite teams. Rather than toggle between friends’ and opponents’ updates and team rankings, visitors to Touchdown Rundown can access score information across all conferences–and the conversations they inspire–in a single place.
We’re thrilled to announce today that FM has acquired BigTent, a leading platform for trusted groups. Millions of moms use BigTent’s communications and networking tools to have active conversations in groups, often organized around local schools, communities or events.
BigTent adds to the 13 million parents who currently engage with FM’s site partners with free forums, calendars and file sharing for parents to stay connected. The thousands of groups using the platform will continue to function as they have been.
The purchase of BigTent follows FM’s recent expansion of its ability to reach parents online through a partnership with the Clever Girls Collective and the increase in its technical capabilities with the acquisition of semantic-search technology from TextDigger.
News coverage of the acquisition can be found at AllThingsD, VentureBeat and TechCrunch, and the full press release is here.
Be it for pair of original sneakers or a handwoven denim rug, your vote for a winner in the Ecouterre Recycled Denim Challenge should be submitted by Thursday to count towards one designer’s sustainable vision. Sponsored by Gap’s 1969 line, the contest has collected photographs of readers’ most inspired creations from 
recycled denim, including Hyun Gun Jang’s striking geometric dress repurposed from wide leg jeans and Miranda Chance’s woven saddle bag made from old jeans and jackets.
Judges of the final 45 entries included FM author Jill Fehrenbacher, creator of Ecouterre and the Inhabitat sites, and senior editor Yuka Yoneda among other eco experts. The crowd favorite will win a $200 Gap gift certificate and the opportunity to have their designs featured on Ecouterre, Inhabitat and the Gap 1969 Stream.
Forrester Research has announced 16 Forrester Groundswell Award winners for effective use of social technologies to advance business goals, and POPURLS Brown Edition delivered by UPS won in the business-to-business division.
To position UPS as a business solutions organization and not just a partner for shipping packages, UPS and the Martin Agency collaborated with FM to reach business decision makers with original video content on themes including taking risks, using social networking, and the economics of business abundance. Leveraging the popularity and functionality of real-time news aggregator POPURLS, the business news dashboard POPURLS Brown Edition was created to curate timely and popular stories across business categories. FM partners Small Business Trends, Venture Beat, and TechDirt contributed to the project, and their combined posts reached 30 million people.
In a contest for the largest prize ever offered on the geolocation platform foursquare, Mazda today announced that they will award a new 2011 MAZDA2 subcompact five-door hatchback to one lucky music, style and gaming fan. The Inner Driver Challenge, which was created in partnership with brand agency Doner and FM, includes three steps for prospective car owners and followers of MazdaUSA’s social media channels to win the car:
- Check-in at relevant locations to unlock any 2 of these 3 custom badges: MAZDA2 Beat Junkie (concerts & music spots), MAZDA2 Style Guru (nightlife haunts, boutiques and fashion events) and MAZDA2 Button Masher (Gaming Competitions & retailers). The game includes sponsorship of Mazda2 Music Tour artist and falsetto crooner Mayer Hawthorne’s national tour as he performs with The County band nationwide through November, and his shows count as check-in locations. Cities with check-in locations include Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Washington DC, and Portland.
- Once they’ve earned two of the custom badges, players will instantly earn the fourth custom badge, Inner Driver, which will enable them to enter to win the brand new MAZDA2.
The Mazda team worked with FM and foursquare to find an alternative approach to reaching young urbanites and connect with them at music, social media and group events. Followers of MazdaUSA’s foursquare, Twitter and Facebook channels will also see special location announcements for places where they can unlock the Inner Driver badge and instantly advance through the other steps.
The contest for US-based contestants lasts until December 7th, and the winner will be announced shortly thereafter.
HP has just partnered with FM to launch “Reimagine ROI,” a program for its LaserJet printers that includes a contest with $30,000 in rewards for users who share stories of their best investments. The campaign for IT influencers and business decision makers runs through the end of October, and entrants can enter tales of value found to win a five-day trip to Northern California wine country for six staff members along with an HP tech makeover for their office.
Eighteen FM authors representing Business and Tech publishing, including BoingBoing, ReadWriteWeb and Small Business Trends, are contributing content to the project. They share anecdotes about getting more than they anticipated from cell phone upgrades, home improvement projects, and learning how to play music at an early age.
While HP sponsors tweets on Tweetmeme, they’re also running a series of videos around the concept that “sometimes the best payback is the one you don’t expect.”
(image) This will be the final Signal of the week, as I’m taking Thursday and Friday off. I suggest you do too, our wonderful industry will survive.Meanwhile, the Pepper Spray Cop Meme is just too funny to not include. To the Turkey links:
