Fwix, a startup that offers a stream of local news that’s updated in real-time, has somewhat belatedly announced a $2.75 million funding round it closed last year, led by BlueRun Ventures. CEO Darian Shirazi says since closing the round last fall, the company still has the majority of the money left. Alongside today’s funding news, the company is also launching a new ‘Wire’ API that will allow third parties to integrate the company’s stream of news updates into their sites and apps.
The basic idea behind Fwix is fairly simple: it aggregates news articles and blog posts that are relevant to a certain region (the site now features support for over 80 cities in the United States and Canada). To do this, the Fwix team selects news sources and blogs that it thinks are related to each city, and also uses automated algorithms to determine when other content might also be relevant.
Fwix has evolved considerably since its launch last August. For one, it has seen a total redesign, shrugging the Facebook-like interface it launched with in favor of something more streamlined. The site has also been making some recent strides in getting distribution — itlaunched a widget that allows bloggers to embed Fwix’s local news feeds into their sites, and the widget network is now seeing over 9 million monthly unique visitors.
Shirazi says that the new API has been in private beta on a handful of sites, including Weather Underground and RawStory. He also notes that the company’s iPhone app (which also has changed significantly since we covered it in March) was built using the API.
