| Jonah Peretti | |
|---|---|
Peretti in August 2005 |
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| Born | January 15, 1974 |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | BuzzFeed, Huffington Post |
| Notable works | Nike Sweatshop Emails, Black People Love Us |
| Spouse | Andrea Harner |
| Relatives | Chelsea Peretti (sister) |
Jonah Peretti (born January 15, 1974[1]) is an Internet entrepreneur and a founder of BuzzFeed and Huffington Post. The New York Times called him a "viral marketing hot dog." [2]
A graduate of the MIT Media Lab, Peretti is best known for his experiments with "contagious" or "viral" media, including the parody website BlackPeopleLoveUs.com, which enthusiastically documents a couple's rapport among the African-American community, and a widely-forwarded email thread known as the Nike Sweatshop Emails in which Peretti exchanges politesse with an anonymous Nike representative over why "sweatshop" was not allowed to be printed on his custom Nike iD sneakers.
Peretti is member of the New York based artist group Free Art and Technology Lab (a.k.a. FAT Lab).
Peretti is married to Andrea Harner and lives in New York City. He is the brother of comedian and writer Chelsea Peretti.
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In 2005 Peretti hosted the Contagious Media Showdown at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, where he worked as Director of the R&D Lab from 2001 - 2006. Showdown participants competed for hits for three weeks starting on May 19, 2005, with the winners receiving cash prizes. Showdown projects—including top performers Forget Me Not Panties, Crying While Eating, and Blogebrity -- collectively amassed over 2 million unique visitors during the competition, and over 50 million during the entire period when stats were being collected (exact dates unknown).[3]
During the process Peretti developed the concept of the "Bored-at-Work Network", which he supposes to be larger than some major television network audiences.[4] Peretti claims this relatively untapped market segment is behind the bulk of the e-mail forwarding and link sharing that drive the spread of Internet memes.
Peretti is the founder of "Internet popularity contest" site BuzzFeed, launched in November 2006. He is also the co-founder of the popular political blog Huffington Post.