“The open web is full of spam, shady operators, and blatant falsehoods. Outside of a relatively small percentage of high quality sites, most of the web is chock full of popup ads and other interruptive come-ons. It's nearly impossible to find signal in that noise, and the web is in danger of being overrun by all that crap.”

American entrepreneur, author and journalist

John Linwood Battelle is an American entrepreneur, author, and journalist known for helping build influential media businesses. He helped launch Wired in the 1990s, started The Industry Standard during the dot-com boom, and later founded Federated Media Publishing in 2005. Battelle went on to reshape parts of that company’s business, including the 2014 sale of its direct sales arm and the relaunch of its programmatic advertising operation under Sovrn Holdings. He later created NewCo Platform, an events company focused on visits to newer kinds of businesses in cities around the world, and co-founded The Recount in 2019, which was sold in 2023.