“John Battelle”:http://www.battellemedia.com/ is a noted “author”:http://www.battellemedia.com/archives/001194.php, “event organizer”:http://www.web2con.com/, “columnist”:http://www.battellemedia.com/archives/cat_columns.php, and “entrepreneur”:http://www.fmpub.net. In his spare time he acts as “Ruben Kincaid”:http://www.boingboing.net/2004/12/22/battelle_looks_back_.html to the “Partridge Family of the Internet”:http://www.boingboing.net/ (“Xeni”:http://xeni.net/ even says they’ve got the web equivalent of “bubblegum cards”:http://www.boingboing.net/2005/07/11/john_battelle_interv.html).
Interestingly, John’s brevity leaves us with a 305 word interview that is 57% questions and 43% answers – a ratio only slightly better than if I’d asked “boxers or briefs” and he’d answered “briefs”.
*One Degree: Your “endemic advertising post”:http://battellemedia.com/archives/000678.php was a big part of the inspiration for One Degree. Can you explain a bit more about what you mean by endemic advertising and why you think it is a natural match for blogs?*
Publications are conversations between three parties – authors, audience, and advertiser. I believe that advertising works best when the advertiser is also a conversant – someone who naturally belongs in the conversation. My term for that kind of an advertiser is “endemic.” You see a lot of them on boingboing.net, for example.
*One Degree: I’ve been assuming that your new venture FM Publishing would be modelled around endemic advertising. Is this the case?*
Yes, to the greatest extent possible.
*One Degree: How did having the blog help or hinder birthing your soon-to-be-released book “The Search”?*
It was critical. The blog audience became my proxy readers, my critics, my editors, my sounding board.
*One Degree: I love RSS, but as a publisher I worry about the disruptive nature of syndication on all content-heavy business models. How do publishers adapt to a world where we can’t generally charge for content and now we’re going to have a hard time tethering content to ads?*
I don’t think it will be that hard. Just think of RSS as another browser of sorts, and attached advertising to your content in some form. Solutions will come…some are already out there…
*One Degree: The Web 2.0 conference sounds like it will be even better this year. How are you making conference attendance relevant in an age of podcasts, live blogging, backchannels, etc.?*
By embracing all of that, but focusing on the conversation on stage and in the hallways. Sometimes, you just have to be there!