- BuzzFeed, whose viral/social media-friendly content has fueled huge traffic growth and made it the bane of many traditional publishers, is planning to go public as its expansion efforts bear fruit, CEO Jonah Peretti stated at the Code Conference.
- Peretti: "We’re very focused on building out internationally, we’re very focused on building out across multiple different platforms, we’re very focused on building out our video business ... That will give us a diversification … to allow us to build a big independent company with much more predictability and things that would allow us to be a public company."
- BuzzFeed was valued at $850M in a 2014 funding round, and reported last fall it has surpassed $100M/year in revenue and 175M monthly unique readers. Over half of the company's traffic comes from mobile, and 75% is driven by social media (much of it via Facebook). The company has begun investing more heavily lately in traditional Web media content.