- Jonah Peretti
Infobox Internet celebrity
name = Jonah Peretti
imagesize =
caption = Peretti circa Jan 2008
birthname = Jonah Peretti
birthdate =
birthplace =
deathdate =
deathplace =
othername =
nationality = American
spouse(s) =Andrea Harner
webalias =
period active =
host service =
genre =
subjects =
influences =
influenced =
meme =
meme date =
notable works = Nike Sweatshop Emails, Black People Love Us
notable roles = BuzzFeed, Huffington Post
signature phrase =
homepage =Jonah Peretti, who the New York Times called the "viral marketing hotdog," [New York Times, [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/15/technology/15carr.html?_r=1&oref=slogin Building a Brand with a Blog] , May 15 2006] is an Internet entrepreneur and a founder of
BuzzFeed andHuffington Post .A graduate of the
MIT Media Lab , Peretti is best known for his experiments with "contagious" or "viral" media, including the parody website [http://BlackPeopleLoveUs.com BlackPeopleLoveUs.com] , which enthusiastically documents a couple's rapport among the African-American community, and a widely-forwarded email thread known as the [http://www.shey.net/niked.html 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 married to
Andrea Harner and lives inNew York City .Contagious Media
In 2005 Peretti hosted the [http://showdown.contagiousmedia.org/ Contagious Media Showdown] at
Eyebeam Atelier , where he served as Research Director. Showdown participants competed for hits for three weeks starting on May 19th, 2005, with the winners receiving cash prizes. Showdown projects -- including top performers [http://forgetmenotpanties.com/ Forget Me Not Panties] , [http://cryingwhileeating.com/ Crying While Eating] , and [http://blogebrity.com 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). [From Contagious Media Showdown site, http://showdown.contagiousmedia.org/]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 [* [http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/25/jonah-peretti-interview.html Peretti interview in STAY FREE! magazine] ] . Peretti claims this relatively untapped
market segment is behind the bulk of the e-mail forwarding and link sharing that drive the spread ofInternet memes .Recent Work
Peretti is the founder of "Internet popularity contest" site [http://buzzfeed.com BuzzFeed] , started in Sept. 2002Fact|date=February 2008. He is also the co-founder of the popular political blog
Huffington Post .References
External links
* [http://www.buzzfeed.com/ BuzzFeed]
* [http://www.contagiousmedia.org/ Contagious Media]
* [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonah-peretti/#blogger_bio Peretti's bio on Huffington Post]
* [http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~peretti/ Peretti's MIT alumni website]
* [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A05E1D81530F934A25752C1A9649C8B63 NYTimes article on BlackPeopleLoveUs]
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/15/technology/15carr.html?_r=1&oref=slogin NYTimes article on Huffington Post] , May 2006
* [http://www.mensvogue.com/business/media/peretti Peretti interview in Men's Vogue] ,
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
