John Battelle's new startup

Congratulations to Boing Boing band manager John Battelle on the launch of his next media startup! We're thrilled to be FM Publishing's first lab rat. From the new company blog:

For now, the company is called "FM Publishing." The "FM" stands for "Federated Media" - a nod toward the fundamental idea behind the company - that of federation, as opposed to ownership (it's also sort of a nod to the evolution of a medium - e.g. radio going from AM to FM). The company is a publishing business focused on high quality content - that should come as no surprise to those of you who know what I love to do. But the difference is that I do not plan to "own" most of the content that will be critical to FM. Instead, I plan to partner with site authors, acting as a platform which provides important services to them - revenue (in the form of advertising), back end support, and the like. In essence, FM will act as a publisher to sites which need and want a publisher. We don't plan to take a lot of folks on, initially, but hope to grow over time.

FM was inspired by the things I learned writing the book, as well as running Searchblog and acting as Band Manager for Boing Boing. For now, nothing is really changing with regard to my role at Boing Boing, but when FMP is up and running, it's my goal to move BB's business services over to FMP, and the kind folks behind BB have agreed - at least in principle. I still have to deliver what I say I can deliver, and that's non trivial....

I'm not allergic to financial investors - folks who put money in with the express intent of getting a lot more money out - but for now, I prefer to keep it strategic, and small. In fact, I hope to build FMP in a very Web 2.0 way - a lightweight business model focused on innovation in assembly, driven by the force of many - you get the picture.

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