Jonah Peretti
Encyclopedia
Jonah Peretti is an Internet entrepreneur and a founder of BuzzFeed
and Huffington Post. The New York Times called him a "viral marketing hot dog."
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
.
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. 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.
BuzzFeed
BuzzFeed is a website that combines a technology platform for detecting viral content with an editorial selection process to provide a snapshot of "the viral web in realtime." Cofounded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti , BuzzFeed is located in SoHo, New York.-Homepage content:The BuzzFeed homepage consists...
and Huffington Post. The New York Times called him a "viral marketing hot dog."
A graduate of the MIT Media Lab
MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a laboratory of MIT School of Architecture and Planning. Devoted to research projects at the convergence of design, multimedia and technology, the Media Lab has been widely popularized since the 1990s by business and technology publications such as Wired and Red Herring for a...
, 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
Nike, Inc.
Nike, Inc. is a major publicly traded sportswear and equipment supplier based in the United States. The company is headquartered near Beaverton, Oregon, which is part of the Portland metropolitan area...
representative over why "sweatshop" was not allowed to be printed on his custom Nike iD sneakers.
Peretti is member of the New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
based artist group Free Art and Technology Lab
Free Art and Technology Lab
The Free Art and Technology Lab a.k.a. F.A.T. Lab is a collective of artists, engineers, scientists, lawyers, and musicians, dedicated to the merging of popular culture with open source technology. F.A.T. Lab is known for producing artwork critical of traditional Intellectual Property Law in the...
(a.k.a. FAT Lab).
Peretti is married to Andrea Harner and lives in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. He is the brother of comedian and writer Chelsea Peretti
Chelsea Peretti
Chelsea Peretti is an American comedian and writer based in Los Angeles.-Career:She and brother Jonah Peretti were co-creators of the and of web satire...
.
Contagious Media
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).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. Peretti claims this relatively untapped market segment
Market segment
Market segmentation is a concept in economics and marketing. A market segment is a sub-set of a market made up of people or organizations with one or more characteristics that cause them to demand similar product and/or services based on qualities of those products such as price or function...
is behind the bulk of the e-mail forwarding and link sharing that drive the spread of Internet memes.