Wired Co-Founder Nears Launch of Blog Ad Network

Entrepreneur and author John Battelle plans to launch an advertising network for blogs later this year, he said Tuesday at OMMA West in San Francisco. He said he expects to complete an angel round of financing this week, and hopes to have the network up and running by this fall.

The network, dubbed FM Publishing (with FM standing for Federated Media), will launch with between 10 and 20 technology-related blogs, including Boing Boing, as well as Battelle's own SearchBlog. Battelle said he also is considering including blogs that cover culture for the network.

Battelle, who co-founded Wired magazine and also founded The Industry Standard, said he is only inviting "high-quality, high-authority" blogs into the network. "We're going to focus on what we believe is getting the best ecology of sites," he told the audience during the afternoon keynote address at OMMA West.

He said he's using his own editorial judgment to decide which bloggers to invite to join the network, but added that his judgment is informed by the community of bloggers that link to each other.

Battelle added that individual bloggers will be able to join other networks, such as BlogAds. Bloggers also will continue to own the intellectual property rights to their work.

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