BuzzFeed Nabs $15.5M for Viral News Site
Arlene Weintraub1/10/12Leave a CommentFollow @awjourn
New York-based BuzzFeed announced that it has brought in $15.5 million to build its increasingly popular social news publishing platform. New Enterprise Associates (NEA) led the round, with participation from Lerer Ventures, Hearst Media, Softbank, and RRE.
BuzzFeed, founded in 2008, aggregates popular Web content and posts it under categories with names like “OMG,” “Cute,” “Trashy,” and “WTF?” The company says its traffic has tripled in the past year to 25 million unique monthly visitors. BuzzFeed has generated quite a bit of its own buzz of late: It broke the news that John McCain planned to endorse Mitt Romney. And in December, BuzzFeed recruited Ben Smith from Politico to serve as editor-in-chief.
BuzzFeed has raised a total of $27 million to date. With this round, NEA general partner Patrick Kerins joins BuzzFeed’s board, and Kenneth Lerer, manager of Lerer Ventures, becomes executive chairman.
Arlene Weintraub is the editor of Xconomy New York. She can be reached at aweintraub@xconomy.com and followed on Twitter @awjourn.
