Don't Just Publish -- Federate It

While we are on the subject of the long tail, check out The San Jose Mercury News's spread today on John Battelle.  Three articles on the entrepreneur-wonk-journalist-impressario, who is prepping for the release of his new book about the search market....  Battelle, as always, is keeping himself impossibly busy.  In addition to the book, a widely-read search blog, and the upcoming Web 2.0 conference (co-producer), he is launching a new company this Fall, FM, (Federated Media -- check out the "pre-alpha" site), that aims to provide a better way for independent writers to publish and make money on the Web.  We like the word "federated" -- it calls to mind how the word in being used to describe the Deep Web, like here (Groxis = client) -- and we are very interested to see how this particular idea plays out.   There's a very long tail indeed in the world of independent journalism/publishing, and this is perhaps one of the most groupwise ways of wagging that tail.