John Kricfalusi, the FM Author of All Kinds of Stuff and a pioneer in Web animation, has been featured in a fascinating in-depth profile and interview on Cold, Hard Flash. Especially interesting to those of us at FM is the discussion of his work with FM advertiser Raketu:

AARON: Your recent collaboration with Raketu created quite the buzz on the internet. Have you heard from the company on how the campaign is working?

JOHN: Well, they told me that since the launch they had multiplied their downloads by a huge percentage, so I figure that's a good sign. I hope to do more cartoons with them. They are a good group. Oliver McIntyre, the marketing director was all over the concept and really wanted to define Raketu as a unique brand. Oliver and I met along with the owner of Raketu, Greg Parker, in New York to go over all the concepts and I kind of wrote them on the spot as they showed me what Raketu was all about.

This is how I would love to work with sponsors. Show me the product, tell me what the selling points are and then let me come up with an entertaining way to pitch it so that the audience actually wants to watch the commercial. That was the concept behind my fake commercials in Ren and Stimpy. Log, Powdered Toast, etc. - I wanted to show that you could make commercials that people would love as much as the show itself.

This Blue Lithium study claims that ads next to what they call UGC (I'm not a fan of that term, I prefer Conversational Media) do better. From the release:

On average, user-generated content (UGC) sites provide a lower cost per conversion than non-UGC sites. That's the surprising finding from a new study published today by BlueLithium Labs, the research division of ad network BlueLithium.

Questions about the brand risk of running ads within or adjacent to user-generated content have been debated extensively in the advertising trade press. However the issue of whether user-generated content Web sites perform as well as editorial Web sites for marketers has not been explored. BlueLithium had, in fact, received queries from its own marketing clients regarding the price performance of UGC vs. non-UGC Web sites, so to help answer that question for its clients, the company undertook a thorough, unbiased, nine-month quantitative study.

Our new Director of Business Development, Mark Weiss, brings over eight years of Internet experience to FM. He has held roles in sales and business development at leading technology companies such as Yahoo!, HotJobs.com, Vibrant Media, and Eurekster. Prior to FM he was the head of business development for Eurekster where he secured partnerships with large online publishers such as Forbes.com and Time4Media. He was with HotJobs.com from its pre-ipo days in 1999 to 2002 when it was bought by Yahoo. In 2002 he transitioned to Yahoo headquarters as a Sales Producer for Yahoo Local. Mark holds a bachelors degree from Boston University where he rowed on the Division 1 Crew Team and an MBA from the University of San Francisco.

We're thrilled to have Mark here, he's already hard at work bringing new opportunities to our growing network of high quality authors!

From Darius at ColourLovers, an FM Graphic Arts site:

COLOURlovers is in the running for Best Community Website of 2007 against, Delicious, Flickr, Threadless & Yahoo! Answers. ....If my competitors don’t win a Webby Award this year, I don’t think they’re going to miss any sleep over it. This isn’t “I Win, They Lose.” All of them have already won. They’re worth millions of dollars. They’ve made it.....COLOURlovers on the other hand is a grass roots site, Nowhere near acquisition, Still largly in debt, and Facing sites with x50 the traffic and membership.

So, this is the favor I ask of you, nay, my call to action! Help our little community beat 4 of the biggest communities out there. Vote for COLOURlovers in the People’s Voice Awards.

Gotta love the little guy! It reminds me of Horton!

Today, the Webbys announced Honorees and Nominations for the 11th Annual Awards. Six FM Authors take the spotlight as Honorees and Nominees this year!

Three FM Authors were selected as Official Honorees -- a designation which honors "sites and teams that demonstrated a standard of excellence." The Webby judges chose Darius Monsef's COLOURlovers in the Social/Networking category, Thomas Marban's PopURLs in the Services category and Dave Ibsen's Five Blogs Before Lunch in the Business Blog category.

Additionally, a number of FM Authors became finalists, or Nominees, to win Webby awards:

* We Make Money Not Art is up for the honor in the Culture/Personal Blog section.
* Techdirt is a finalist in the Business Blog category.
* Digg stands a chance at winning in both the Best Practices and the Social/Networking categories.
* And, not satisfied with hooking an Official Honoree title, COLOURlovers also earned a nomination in the Community category.

You can vote for your favorite Webby nominees (er, FM Authors) until April 27th, and help them win the People's Voice honor. Official judges will also be making their selections, which will be announced on May 1. Congratulations to all the FM Authors recognized for their great work!

The Times gives big play to the work of Tim, David, and the folks at BlogHer today, as well as to Heather, one of FM's own. The story focuses on the creation of a bloggers' "code of conduct." Since the beginning, our authors at FM have ascribed to a set of "Mores" that we wrote together back in early 2005. Here's the link again.