I'm very pleased to announce that Federated Media has closed its Series A financing, with JP Morgan Partners (JPMP) as the lead investor. All of FM's seed investors - the Omidyar Network, The New York Times, and several angels (my post on the first round is here), have also participated in the round. We're not disclosing the numbers involved in the funding, but we're thrilled with the support that the new round brings to our company.

Joining Federated's board is Chris Albinson, a partner at JPMP who I've known for years. We've coached our sons' little league team together, watched our daughters' first school play together, and when the opportunity came for us to work together, we both jumped at it. Chris and his team’s network of relationships and extensive business experience has already paid significant dividends for our young company. Chris and his team are embarking on their own startup of sorts, as they are spinning out from JPMP and starting their own venture capital firm - Panorama Capital - focused on technology and life sciences.

Some of you might wonder why I decided to go with a firm like JPMP/Panorama over other Silicon Valley VCs, given the focus of my previous work. The answer is simple: Panorama Capital and I have a history of sorts. Back when I was running the Standard, I had a board member from JPMP. By the summer of 2001, a standoff over strategy and a terrible market meant we were on the brink of shuttering the business. JPMP stepped up with a company-saving offer, putting tens of millions of dollars behind both my business and me personally. My major shareholder blocked that deal from happening, but I've never forgotten how JPMP stood in my corner back in those dark days, and I'm honored to have them back again, and this time leading our Series A.

A more formal release can be found here.

For Immediate Release

Contact: Jennifer Charette, Federated Media Publishing
415.332.6955
Beth Raia, Panorama Capital
650.234.1432

Federated Media Publishing Closes Series A Financing

Sausalito, CA, March 15, 2006 – Federated Media Publishing Inc., a Sausalito, CA-based Internet publishing business, announced today the completion of its Series A financing.

The financing was led by JPMorgan Partners (JPMP), and included Federated Media’s previous seed investors: Omidyar Network, The New York Times, Mitchell Kapor, Andrew Anker, Mike Homer, and Tim O’Reilly.

Joining Federated’s Board is Chris Albinson, a partner at JPMP and one of the five founding partners of Panorama Capital, a venture capital firm being formed by the JPMP venture team. Before joining JPMP, Albinson was Chief Strategy Officer for Digital Island [NASDAQ: ISLD]

“I’m thrilled to have Chris and JPMP on our team,” said John Battelle, founder and chairman of Federated Media. “Their network of relationships and extensive business experience have already paid significant dividends for our young business.”

“After founding Wired and then the Industry Standard, John Battelle has now founded a company that will help redefine the publishing industry,” said Albinson. “Audiences are increasingly moving toward the genuine, fresh and powerful voices that can be heard in the blogosphere today. By bringing together author-centric blogging and branded media, Federated Media enables authors, audiences and advertisers to engage in a dynamic conversation that is radically changing the traditional publishing model. We are energized to work with John again on this newest and most exciting venture.”

Federated Media represents “best of breed” independent publishing sites, with a focus on high quality authors catering to influential and highly engaged audiences. Through its advertising, technology, publishing, and business development services, FM connects independent weblog authors, marketers and influential audiences in an ongoing conversation that feeds everyone involved. The sites in FM’s network include BoingBoing.net, Buzzmachine.com, Digg.com, Dooce.com, Fark.com, GigaOm.com and more than 25 others.

J.P. Morgan Partners, LLC (JPMP) is a leading private equity firm with approximately $10 billion in capital under management as of December 31, 2005. Since its inception in 1984, JPMP has invested over $15 billion worldwide in consumer, media, energy, industrial, financial services, healthcare, hardware and software companies. With more than 75 investment professionals in five principal offices throughout the world, JPMP is an experienced investor in companies with worldwide operations.

As previously announced, the JPMP team will become independent from JPMorgan Chase later in 2006 and will establish two separate, more highly focused platforms. The venture team is forming a new firm, Panorama Capital (www.panoramacapital.com), and will continue to focus on technology and life sciences investments. The buyout/growth equity team is also forming a new firm, CCMP Capital, which will focus exclusively on lead buyout and growth equity investments primarily in its six targeted industry sectors in the U.S. and Europe. JPMP Asia, now known as CCMP Capital Asia, closed a new fund in 2005. It continues to invest in the Asia/Pacific region and will maintain its affiliation with the buyout professionals of CCMP Capital. ###

And FM helps Fred and a sponsor start a relationship. We're very proud!

In MediaPost today, Chas (our VP sales/dev) writes:

Successful marketing on Weblogs today--and on traditional sites as they begin to imitate the participatory nature of blogs--means a different kind of engagement. It requires that the conversation begin at the first point of contact between the brand and the consumer.

Inviting consumer participation is the stock-in-trade of Weblog authors, and it's what has driven the enormous popularity of the top Weblog sites.

Full Story.
Imagine what marketers might do if they could partner with these influential sites? Now there's a concept...

I'm pleased to report that FM has hired several new folks, who I'll be announcing in turn. The first is Jason Weisberger, who joins us as VP of Business Operations. Jason has an incredible background, including starting his own business and growing it to tens of millions of dollars before selling it to Digital Island, which then became part of Cable & Wireless.

Jason is a focused and talented executive who knows how to scale a business, and understands the rigor and science required to handle large-scale, complex internet provisioning (ie, managing millions of ads a day). And, of course, he's a blogger as well!

Jason is starting part time for a bit, and will be joining us full time shortly. Welcome, Jason!

With this new release on stats, FB is doing a number of things, but the new feature that raises my eyebrows is this:

TotalStats (Premium Service)

* Reach (TotalStats): Another new concept and metric that tells you what percentage of your total subscriber base is actively reading and clicking on individual items within a feed. Like newspapers or magazines, some number of people subscribe and another number actively open and act on content. Reach begins to provide some insight into this second metric.

Proving audience for advertising purposes has been one of RSS's major obstacles. I'll be checking this out!