Babble, a magazine and parenting community site aimed at urban hipsters, has secured $1 million in Series A funding from Greycroft Partners. This round adds to the $2 million Babble raised earlier from Village Ventures in December of 2008. (This is an extension of that round at the same valuation) Spun off from sex and dating community Nerve Media, Babble takes a more modern view on parenting, aimed at a younger generation of parents who live in cities, equally share parenting duties (or at least make an effort) and use the internet to access information. It is the same demographic that the magazine Cookie is going after, except it tries to appeal to the Dads as well. Urbanbaby.com is also a site that appeals to urban dwellers and parents.
Nerve Media is also gaining a new CEO. Founder Rufus Griscom is passing the baton to Sean Mills, former president of The Onion. In his seven years as president, Mills helped grow the Onion from 30 to 175 employees and developed and launched The Onion News Network. Prior to The Onion, Mills founded and was managing director of ad agency Adgile Interactive in San Francisco and sold the company’s proprietary technology to Doubleclick in 2001.
Funding for content. Nice to see.
Totally confused, this has nothing to do with twitter
Let me guess…
The founder and his VCs are in the early stages of their first kids. City slickers all, they’re sure they’re on to that new unique niche only they know about.
Follow all the Babble kids over the years…they’ll be the neurotics in middle school walking the halls with “kick me” signs taped to the back of their really hip Fred Perry crew knit shirts dad bought for them.
Pretty good chance they could put a “follow us on Twitter” icon somewhere on their homepage. Big leagues, baby. Big leagues.
Target demo == “… parents who live in cities, equally share parenting duties (or at least make an effort) and use the internet to access information.”
vs.
Non-Target demo: “…live in rural areas, with wives slaving away as husband watches NASCAR, and trade information at the local Grange.”
Lena, I think it’s time to quit your blogging career and start selling Amway in China! Huh, whaddaya think?
I’m gonna waterboard yer asses in hell!~
yawn, i’ll look for it in the deadpool…this could have been done with drupal and a marketing budget under 150K…
Go babble!
At first sight I got confused with the language transaction service Babel … anyway I went and tried understanding what are they offering… sorry didnt quite understood.
hmmm… if I were a hipster dad who surfs the internet, I’d be on some poker site 24/7. And it ain’t hip for hipster dads to take care of children.
easy 2 copy, why can they got this funds, only for content? or they want to express some other things.
Babble? I never heard about that before…
Hipster parent kids are going to give Dr. Benjamin Spock raised Boomers a run for the most screwed up generation in this country’s history.
I hate hipsters and i hate the site.
Babble. Never heard of it either. How come sites like it get funding?
How the hell do site get funded for contents ?
Business model = selling ads.
Come on !!!!!!
I really want to like this site. I’ve been a fan of Rufus for a while and have enjoyed seeing how he has pushed against the tide with Nerve and other ventures. And who doesn’t like the Onion, right?…..
…But, upon my first visit to the site there’s a full page interstitial ad unit. I have nothing against these – great CPMs, after all – but c’mon, on the first visit? At least give me a click, guys!
Good luck, though. New funding for original, talented content always get my vote.
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Alot of money to spend on a web site today. I hope they are planning to have alot of great content to attract alot of visitors, and then have some way of monetizing the hits. The PPC market is decelerating due to the recession and high click costs, so hopefully the new site will either have premium (pay based) features or an online store.