Federated Media Publisher Chas Edwards to join Digg

The publisher of Federated Media, which sells ads for blogs and social media sites, is leaving to be chief revenue officer at user-based news aggregator Digg.

Chas Edwards, who will officially assume his new role on June 22, had stints in sales and marketing at CNET and TechTV before co-founding Federated Media in 2005 with then-journalist John Battelle of Wired and The Industry Standard renown.

At Digg, Edwards will work on sales and advertising strategy and focus on creating new revenue streams including sponsorships, new ad programs and channels, as well as manage the company's ad relationship with Microsoft, according to a post by Digg Chief Executive Jay Adelson in a company blog post on Friday.

Federated Media used to handle all advertising sales for Digg, but that changed nearly two years ago when Digg switched to Microsoft for display ad sales. Federated Media still handles sponsorships on Digg.

"Maybe it's time to spark up that Digg-FM partnership again!" Edwards wrote in a post on his personal blog. "In the meantime, FM runs in my blood. To my friends at FM: See you at Red's Javahouse and Sala NYC soon and often. I owe you more than I can ever repay."

Battelle said he "knew this day was coming."

"Chas' tireless work ethic and forward-looking philosophy are embedded in FM's DNA," he wrote in a post on the Federated media blog.

"But at heart, Chas is (a) start-up mountain climber. His skills are unmatched in taking a company from zero to significant revenue. He's done that here and more."

The move comes as Battelle searches for "an additional leader" to run Federated Media and "take the company to the next level."

Federated Media, which raised $50 million from Oak Investment Partners a year ago, laid off 7 of 90 employees in January.

The company serves ads on popular sites like Boing Boing and TechCrunch, but lost its contract with GigaOm last year to a new IDG ad network.