Buzzfeed has been a nice collection of what's happening on the internet at any given time for awhile, and they're making in-roads into driving their own editorial content with the help of Ben Smith, formerly of Politico, but I'm 1) surprised they're actually making money and 2) trying to figure out if someone would give The Range some money if we ran more lists of 25 things.
Social media optimized and meme focused aggregator BuzzFeed has just raised a $15.5 million round of Series C financing, lead by New Enterprise Associates and followed on by Lerer Ventures, Hearst Media, Softbank and RRE Capital. In addition to the funding, NEA General Partner Patrick Kerins will be taking a position on the BuzzFeed board and Huffington Post co-founder Ken Lerer will be moving on up to BuzzFeed Executive Chairman.[...]
When asked about the company’s future plans, co-founder Peretti tells me, “The biggest shift for us is refocusing under Ben [Smith] as an organization that does real reporting and original content.” After all, scoops and breaking news are just as viral as aggregation … Peretti hypothesizes that most successful content sites in the future will have a mixture of both light-hearted and compelling images, videos and lists in addition serious and emotionally impactful content.
