Posts Tagged ‘Jonah Peretti’

FishbowlLA braved the harsh L.A. drizzle on Thursday night to hit Skybar, where BuzzFeed staffers and friends were celebrating the launch of the website’s new Los Angeles bureau. Top BuzzFeed brass was in attendance: CEO and founder Jonah Peretti, president Jon Steinberg, editor-in-chief Ben Smith, executive VP of video Ze Frank, and probably more we didn’t recognize.

We spotted Nate Silver in the crowd, as well as Julia Boorstin of CNBC, comedian Chelsea Peretti, LA Times VP of Communications Nancy Sullivan and former Good magazine editor Ann Friedman, who tolerated some gushing on our behalf over her delightful Tumblr and column, #Real Talk.

But we don’t have pictures of any of these lovely people, because we forgot our camera. We only managed this one grainy cell phone picture before giving up and hitting the open bar:

That’s Ann-Marie Thomson of SYCO television, Grantland editor Emily Yoshida and BuzzFeed’s Los Angeles bureau chief Richard Rushfield being blinded by my cell phone camera.

Looks like our former Mediabistro colleague Andrew Gauthier (TV Spy) has some capable new company at BuzzFeed with regards to cranking out memorable video material.

A month after Gauthier joined the company to help oversee video production, BuzzFeed has announced the hire of LA video blogger extraordinaire Ze Frank (pictured). From today’s release:

With BuzzFeed’s acquisition of Ze Frank Games, Frank will build a team of video producers in Los Angeles and establish a studio to create content native to the social web. The acquisition and hire are effective immediately.

“I’ve been a longtime fan of the way that BuzzFeed creates and curates great social content, so it’s a thrill to join them. There is a great opportunity to bring BuzzFeed’s philosophy to the wild west of online video and I’m excited to be putting together a talented team in LA to make that happen,” said Frank.

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LA based performance artist Ze Frank has been working in the Web video trenches for just over a decade now. It started with a 2001 birthday invitation that went viral and 2002 Webby Award for Best Personal Website; it continued in the spring of 2006 via daily series The Show with ZeFrank. Six years later, the multimedia saga is set to add another chapter.

According to a report on gigaom.com by Janko Roettgers, Ze Frank (pictured) has added to an earlier $146,752 kickstarter.com campaign with just upwards of three-quarters of a million in seed funding.* This latest amount was pulled together from some very high-profile people:

Ze Frank quietly raised around $756,000 $200,000 late last month from Marc Andreessen, Buzzfeed co-founder John Johnson and Huffington Post co-founder Jonah Peretti… Frank told me that he intends to use the funding to start “a new kind of media company” that develops and produces shows with active audience participation. “I’m obsessed with media and the way audiences can become creative participants,” he said.

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In the final part of our three-part “Media Beat” interview with Jonah Peretti, the internet entrepreneur talks about launching The Huffington Post and BuzzFeed.

“I wasn’t sure if it would be a big success,” Peretti admits, remembering the days leading up to the launch of The Huffington Post. “A friend of mine asked me if he should invest, and I was like ‘I’m not sure’… I didn’t really want to risk my friend’s money.”

He also offers advice for those wanting to launch their own startup, explaining that entrepreneurs shouldn’t worry about what tech blogs are covering.

Part 1: BuzzFeed’s Jonah Peretti: ‘Our Reporters Are Doing the Kind of Work Reporters Love to Do’

Part 2: Jonah Peretti On What It Means To Go Viral

For more videos, check out our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

In the first part of our three-part Media Beat interview with Jonah Peretti, the BuzzFeed founder discusses how his company is becoming a full-scale news organization following a flurry of recent hires and breaks down how social media drives news online.

“We have reporters who have beats and sources, and can do original work,” Peretti says, “the kind of work that reporters love to do, where they dig in on a story. They’re not just aggregating, they’re not summarizing what’s happening elsewhere, they’re creating something new and original.”

For more videos, check out our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti was in our mediabistroTV studio today for an upcoming Media Beat interview and he shared his thoughts on Andrew Breitbart, who died Thursday morning. Peretti worked with Breitbart in launching The Huffington Post.

“It’s easy for internet commenters to say, you now, ‘It’s good he’s dead and look at all the damage he’s done,’” Peretti said. “But it’s harder when you’ve met someone to feel that way.”

For more videos, check out our YouTube channel and follow mbTV on Twitter: @mediabistroTV