Professor Pete has stepped up to take charge of FM’s growing sales organization. Congrats Pete!
Press Release:

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., May 29, 2009 – Federated Media Publishing (FM), a next-generation media and publishing company, today announced that Pete Spande, a key member of the sales organization, has been promoted to senior vice president of sales. Spande will oversee FM’s growing sales organization and will bring FM’s evolving content and product offerings to market.
“Pete has been a leader from the day he started at Federated Media,” said John Battelle, founder, chairman and CEO of Federated Media. “Now he’s tasked with taking our sales team to the next level, and after working with him for the last two years, I have nothing but confidence that he will do just that. He has a natural ability to understand the big picture while creating products and programs that meet the needs of each of our constituents: authors, brands and audience. Pete is just the kind of leader we need right now.”
FM was founded in 2005 with a small group of leading tech blogs. The company has since then grown aggressively in categories such as Home, Food, Entertainment, Business & Marketing, Personal Finance and more. In order to serve such a large and complex ecosystem, FM has also announced that it is hiring for several other open positions.
As a pioneering media company that champions the principles of conversational marketing, FM has led the charge in bringing major brands into the social media space. Spande will be charged with building on a solid foundation of hundreds of social media marketing executions on behalf of large brand advertisers in the consumer packaged goods, finance and tech industries, among others.
“I’m honored that John Battelle and the rest of the team have seen fit to offer me this opportunity,” said Pete Spande. “The entire team is doing incredible work and we have many amazing programs and products launching in the near future. I am excited to move the company forward in a way that continues to serve our ecosystem of authors, readers and marketing partners.”
Since 2007, Spande has led FM’s East Coast sales organization and has worked closely with large tech, consumer packaged goods, finance, and entertainment brands on more than 100 groundbreaking social media marketing executions. Prior to Federated Media he was vice president and publisher of CMP’s TechWeb Network where he oversaw sales, marketing, and product development for CMP Technology’s largest online properties including 65 bloggers and 45 technology blogs. Prior to CMP, Pete held a variety of posts at CNET Networks including general management responsibilities for TechRepublic, one of the largest communities of tech professionals on the Internet. Prior to CNET, he held sales jobs at IDG and Miller Freeman.
About Federated Media
Federated Media (FM) is a next generation media and publishing company that connects the highest-quality conversational content with leading brand marketers. FM Represents more than 100 of the world’s most respected websites, blogs, and social networking applications. With a unique combination of quality, safety and scale, FM leverages deep, long-term relationships with brand marketers and advertising agencies to create cost effective and meaningful media and marketing executions. Learn more at www.federatedmedia.net.
Product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.
# # #
Contact
Matthew DiPietro
Federated Media Publishing
415-230-4866
mdipietro@federatedmedia.net

It’s hard to believe that four years ago, Chas Edwards and I were sitting in a converted garage in Marin, sketching out a new approach to the media business that, if we were lucky, just might help redefine the world of social media. We dreamt big – what if we could get to ten, even twenty million in revenue!? And we imagined a time when, if the company really made it, we’d figure out a way to do it all over again.

A lot has changed since those early days. FM is far larger than even our biggest dreams, and the company is making the transition from startup to growth company. With that transition comes changes and reflections on what is right for any early founder. I’ve decided to double down in my work at FM, bringing in a new leader and focusing on guiding FM to a powerhouse position in the social media landscape. Chas, one of the finest leaders I’ve ever worked with, is moving on.

Chas’s tireless work ethic and forward-looking philosophy are embedded in FM’s DNA. But at heart, Chas is start-up mountain climber. His skills are unmatched in taking a company from zero to significant revenue. He’s done that here and more. He built an amazing publishing organization from the ground up and helped create some of the most successful marketing campaigns in social media along the way.

If you know Chas, it comes as no surprise that he is itching to take on his next big mountain. I will miss him terribly, but I also knew this day was coming.

With that said, I have supreme confidence in the sales team that Chas helped to build. He has surrounded himself with consummate professionals who know social media and marketing better than anyone. Chas will hand the baton to Pete Spande, who will take over the sales organization as SVP Sales, supported by Josh Mattison, SVP West.

And so – my sincerest thanks to Chas for his amazing work. It was truly an honor to work with you for so many years. Go do it again, we’ll all be rooting for you!

The upcoming CM Summit, June 1-2 in New York is officially sold out. Thanks everyone for purchasing your tickets. We’ll see you next week!
We’re very, very excited for this one. The agenda is amazing. We just added Dana Perino, former White House Press Secretary and now chief issues counselor at global public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, to the speaker list. And that’s just the beginning.
Some other highlights:

• Matt Spiegel, CEO, Omnicom Media Group
• Scott Howe, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Corporation
• Reid Hoffman, Chairman and CEO, LinkedIn
• Magid Abraham, President and CEO, comScore, Inc.
• Sean Finnegan, President & Chief Digital Office, Starcom MediaVest Group
• Betsy Morgan, CEO, HuffingtonPost

ExecTweets has received a ton of attention since it launched in late March. We’re quite proud of this one, so it’s nice to see that after using it and living with it for a while, people continue to find value in the service. Rick Broida at BNet’s Business Hacks had this to say yesterday about ExecTweets:

Want to become a successful executive? Then you need to think like one. ExecTweets aggregates the Twitter feeds of top business executives, giving you a unique window into the minds of some of capitalism’s finest…
Having perused just the tweets from this morning, I gotta say: This is good stuff! I came away feeling like Bud Fox hanging around a hundred Gordon Gekkos, soaking up priceless pearls of business acumen. ExecTweets is a must-visit site for anyone in sales or management, or trying to climb the rungs of the business ladder….
I’m going to hop out on a limb and say that ExecTweets ranks as one of the best business uses of Twitter I’ve ever seen.

Thanks Rick!!

Uncrate brings you “Real Advice from Real Men” in the form of Uncrate Answers, sponsored by Gillette. This new section of the ever-popular site is described as:

The place to ask questions — about anything — and get helpful answers from fellow men. So whether you need style advice, grooming tips, or just need to know which camera to buy, you’ll find the wisdom right here. Post your question or start answering.

In the week and half since the Answers service launched, 19,000 members have registered, 170 questions have been answered with more than 1000 suggestions. That’s some great traffic and engagement for such a young offering.

I’s always nice when industry colleagues recognize your work. MarketingProfs, a member-based organization that provides case studies, articles and research for marketing pros, put together a comprehensive case study on WEPC.com entitled, “Harnessing Web 3.0 to Pump Up Brand Preference and Loyalty.” I’d post the whole thing if I could (it’s very good), but it’s available only for purchase at the MarketingProfs site. From the Summary:

In this new age of conversation between corporation and consumer, chip-maker Intel and PC-maker ASUS have embraced “crowdsourcing.” Allowing consumers to design the ideal PC, they are gaining valuable consumer insight and in the process building not just a PC but customer loyalty.

We continue to see the worlds of old media and new media collide and combine in interesting ways. CNN anchor, Miles O’Brien, for example, just signed on with our friends at Boing Boing Video as a guest correspondent (awesome). Xeni Jardin writes:

I am thrilled to announce today that we have the honor of welcoming none other than Miles O’Brien, former CNN anchor and reporter, one of the most esteemed space and science journalists on the home planet, as a Boing Boing Video guest contributor…
I’ve been watching him explore what is possible in online, independent news venues with the same sense of adventure that captivated me in his space reporting for CNN. The video he’s been producing as a solo journalist is wonderful.
Miles is a personal hero. He’s the best there is at what he does. It is with the absolute deepest respect that we welcome him as a guest colleague.

Here’s the inaugural episode:

Four years ago this past March, I posted on this site announcing “The Start of Something.” That thing became Federated Media, and if I can show a bit of parental pride, what we’ve managed to accomplish in four short years is pretty extraordinary.

In that post I demonstrated my proclivity for predictions, and in this post, I’m announcing that one of them is going to come true. Back in 2005, I wrote this:

I’ve learned what I am good at – starting things, getting them to a certain size. I don’t do so well at running ongoing businesses where the expectation is that lots and lots of money should be made. I find that a bit uninteresting (though others of course find it fascinating), and should the company get to that stage, it’s best to let the professional managers take over, whether that means selling … or bringing in someone who lives to manage media properties. I want to be upfront about that with everyone I might work with, so there you have it.

In the four plus years since I wrote those words, FM took off – and we indeed did grow to the size where major investors understood the opportunity in front of us. But one thing has changed, in a very significant way. There is almost nothing I find uninteresting about running FM. In fact, I find it so fascinating, I plan to intensify my focus on this company in the coming years.

Back in late 2004, before announcing the company, I wrote the first business plan for FM. It projected $20 million of revenue in year three. The company beat that number handily – by nearly double, in fact. But with great growth comes new phases of corporate life. After funding FM very lightly, and building the company on cashflow and a few million dollars of early investment from the New York Times, Omidyar, and Panorama Capital, in April of last year FM closed a $50mm investment from Oak Investment Partners. It was our belief, which our investors share, that our thesis of dramatic media industry shift was proving out, and it was time to lean into the opportunity and create a company that leveraged the “rest of the world” of quality social media – the world beyond portals like Facebook, MySpace, Google, MSN, and Yahoo.   

But with great opportunity comes great work. FM exists at the locus of an ecosystem consisting of publishers, marketers, partners and readers. We exist to serve this ecosystem, but we are also of course served by it, and none of FM’s success could have happened without the amazing efforts of everyone involved.

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. So today, I’m announcing that I’m officially launching a search for that position. It used to be you did this in private, but we live in the world of social media, and one of FM’s mores is transparency. I want to honor that value today.

So let me be clear: I am in no way leaving the business. This new leader – the title will depend on the person – will be responsible for running the business – taking all reports and managing to our plan – but he or she will be working very closely with me.

So why now, and what will I be doing going forward? 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 currently spend about half of my time doing this, and my clients and partners demand I double down. It’s where I need to focus, to be sure, but those of you who know me will recognize it’s what I want to do as well.

Last year alone, FM put nearly $25 million in the pockets of independent creators on the web, ranging from extraordinary one-person shops like Mighty Girl  to venture-backed startups such as Internet Brands. And while on the surface it seems that FM “sells ads for great sites,” our true work is far more complex. Media businesses are complicated beasts, in particular the best ones. We’ve built an extraordinary technology platform and workflow process that unites publishers and marketers so as to create truly valuable media programs. Along the way we’ve helped create and define the practice of conversational marketing, and we’ve been responsible for scores of first and best practices in the field.

I’m extremely proud of the work that got us here, and in particular of the team I work with so closely every day. And I can’t wait to get started on the work ahead.

At FM we work with a select group of what we consider to be the best social media sites on the Web (with the most engaged audiences on the Web). Back in February we announced some of our latest partners – sites like Alltop, Outblush and Inhabitots.
Today we’re announcing the newest of the new. Representing 30 million pageviews, these sites have today joined the FM family. Welcome one and all. We look forward to working with each and every one of you!
FM’s newest partners in no particular order:

- Aviary
- SlideShare
- The Big Picture
- Wise Bread
- The Simple Dollar
- Recipe4Living
- Worth1000