Federated Media is a aggregator of some really interesting blogs. Blogs that are strong voices with useful things to say; as well as quirky blogs; informative blogs. Federated puts together 'Federations' of these blogs and sells space on them to advertisers.

Federated have now moved from seed and angel funding, to a series A round of venture capital. All the people who were in, stayed in,  including Pierre Omidyar (eBay guy). A lot of that  support and now funnding is about founder John Battelle, who helped found Wired and Industry Standard, two great journals of the tech world. He has also just published The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, a very interesting look at the idea of search. Baettelle naturally blogs on search, Searchblog.

The new media landscape is proving similar to the old in many ways. Yes, it is easier to publish than before. So there is much self publishing. There are many, many, new independent voices and podcasters. Inevitably, however in moving beyond self expression or vanity, bloggers want to monetize their blogs.

So that's where the well connected, (like Battelle) the lucky or the first in, carve out a business niche of some sort, with some going on to make decent money. Cash from flow, or, cash from cashing out.

Rupert Murdoch was disingenuous pretending that big media will be run out of business by the new media. He's placed bets on the future buying MySpaces and is a logical person to buy the big reach aggregators, just as AOL bought Weblogs. Advertisers still want to reach consumers and they need vehicles. Federated Media is an easy conduit to key blogs. It serves ads on properties that attract easily identified consumers. That makes it attractive.

Having now staked out useful ground, Battelle stands to make a lot of money as the business side of blogs begins an inevitable consolidation and change.