One our FM authors has the news here. We're very happy to partner with Digg!

is this?

Thomas Hawk has joined FM, and has a wonderful post as to why.

Why I Joined FM Publishing.

It's all about the conversation in great sites. This is a great example, via Scott Rosenberg.

At FM, we have a healthy mix of small and large sites. Marketers can understand the basic story of a very large site like Fark or Digg through simple reach and frequency calculations. But it's in the smaller ones where marketing might shift to different metrics. From a post today on MediaPost, Mike May makes some good points:

Online publishing businesses are most concerned with the metrics that allow them to drive the greatest advertising revenues--those that create the greatest number of ad impressions at the highest perceived value. Small publishers publish, in most cases, simply to be heard. Their end-game is not the media kit, but growing their sphere of influence. How many page views they generate, or the demographics of their readers, can't accurately measure the volume and clarity of their individual voices. The metrics small publishers should pay more attention to are those that reflect the depth of their influence....

...It's easy for small publishers, employing search campaigns, e-mail newsletters or RSS feeds to drive traffic, to get caught up in the direct response metrics these campaigns generate. They are important as a means to understand the tactics of driving traffic, but are inadequate when trying to measure influence. A better measure is through brand recognition initiatives. Buying a search ad on the blog's or writer's name as keywords will allow the publisher to see how often the search term occurs--a measure of unaided brand awareness not captured by click-throughs on targeted campaigns. And en route to building that brand, publishers should pay just as much attention to how many people are served an ad with their brand as they do to the number who click on it. While a day of five clicks on 30,000 AdWords impressions might be deflating, it also means that 29,995 prospective readers were exposed to the brand--perhaps for the first time.

One of the things that's interesting about what we are building at FM is the idea of a robust network of sites that share similar influence profiles. I'm not entirely sure what the characteristics will be of such a network, but I'm certainly looking forward to seeing it develop.

And, by the way, we'll have more news on new sites joining FM, both small, large, and in between, over the coming weeks....

Jeff Jarvis likes how Sprint is attempting to get its stuff into influencers' hands. I got sent the same email....

Now that we have a few months of development under our belt and have learned a few things, FM is ramping up. This is a chance to join a well-backed startup before we move to the next level and get all fat and happy (well, we are in fact pretty happy...). As a reminder, here's our backers, and yes, we do provide options and good benefits (and we pay market rates). Our offices are right across the Golden Gate bridge in Sausalito with grand views of the Bay, we're exactly one city block from the best sushi in town, and your commute - if you live in the city, for example - would be about 15-25 minutes of gorgeous driving, or a short ferry ride (we're very close to the Ferry terminal).

So what positions do we have? Read on:

Sales: Account Executive
We're looking for a high-energy account executive with at least 3 years of online advertising sales experience. The perfect candidate has existing relationships with media buyers and advertising clients. Required skills include fluency with media-buying terminology (eg, CPM v. CPA, reach v. frequency, GIF v. Flash), familiarity with online ad-serving platforms (eg, Doubleclick's Mediavisor), proficiency with Excel and Powerpoint. Must be a clear and concise communicator. The position will report to FM's VP of sales & market development. Interested? Contact us!

Controller/Financial Analyst/Overall Business/Numbers Geek
FM is looking to hire a finance and accounting pro who loves the web and the media world, and can help us manage a growing business. We need someone who is meticulous and independent, who wants to help us build a startup in the online advertising space. Responsibilities include running our accounting function, as well as forecasting and analysis of business developments. We looked into outsourcing this, but we realized that if the right person comes in to do this job we’d be getting a lot more than just a service, we’d be getting another voice helping our business be smarter and better. If this sounds like you, please contact us.

Author Technical Services
We're looking for someone to help support our authors on a more technical level - in short, to help our authors make their sites as good as they can be. Someone to respond to technical emergencies, to help pinpoint problems with site layout, and correcting issues our authors might have with the performance or layout of their sites. The Author Technical Services Jockey (OK, you can call yourself whatever you want) will also be a point person for managing our ad servers and administration tools.

* Expert HTML production and CSS layout, light JavaScript and other small programming tasks and deployment
* Image production and preparation using Photoshop
* Experience setting up and maintaining Wordpress, MovableType, and TypePad blogging tools
* Good communications and followup skills – ability to work well with our authors.

Experience with Macintosh, MySQL, phpAdsNew, phpMyAdmin, and Unix shells a plus. Can't wait to start? Contact us!

New Year's Day FM and The Search were featured on the Advertising Show. You can listen here.

Findory hit cash flow positive in December. Way to go, Greg.