BuzzFeed founder to speak at UF March 20

February 24, 2014

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – ACCENT Speakers Bureau at the University of Florida will bring Jonah Peretti, founder and CEO of BuzzFeed and co-founder of The Huffington Post, to campus on March 20.

Creator of the “share” button, Peretti is known for his innovative integration of social media and current events.

A graduate of the MIT Media Lab, Peretti caused a stir in 2000 by a series of emails between him and NIKE’s personalization system. He attempted to order shoes with the word “sweatshop” in response to claims that the company uses overseas sweatshops and was denied, and he wrote back asking why. The email exchanges went viral.

In 2005, Peretti joined Arianna Huffington and others to found The Huffington Post. Originally intended as a liberal answer to conservative news aggregators, HuffPost was acquired by AOL and became the first U.S. commercially operated digital media company to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Peretti launched BuzzFeed in November 2006. True to its slogan “The Media Company for the Social Age,” BuzzFeed blends light content, such as GIFs of popular animals, with weightier content. His media take advantage of the “Bored-at-Work Network,” a term Peretti coined to describe procrastinating office employees surfing the Internet.

Peretti will be discussing journalism, the evolving media landscape and his career.

The program starts at 8 p.m. at the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. Doors open at 7 p.m., and admission is free and open to the public. Student tickets are available for pickup at the Phillips Center Box Office at noon the day before the show. Student with a valid UF ID will be allowed up to two tickets, one ID per person. Any remaining tickets will be made available to the general public beginning at 5 p.m. the day of the show. Photography is not allowed during the program, but press may record and photograph during the first five minutes of remarks.

A sign language interpreter will be present at the show.