- Apr 24, 2013
- 1,200
Reddit’s new investors include hip-hoip star Snoop Dogg and actor Jared Leto. Photograph: Public Domain
Social news platform Reddit has secured $50m (£31m) in funding from venture capitalists and investors including actor Jared Leto and hip-hop star Snoop Dogg, and is preparing to give 10% of the new shares back to the website’s users.
The fundraising comes weeks after Reddit banned “The Fappening”, a community dedicated to posting the nude celebrity photos leaked over the summer – following widespread criticism accusing the company of being slow to take action.
Yishan Wong, chief executive of Reddit, said that the timing of the closure of The Fappening and the greenlight on funding were not connected. “Fundraising cycles are much longer than nude celebrity photo cycles, and the two happened to overlap,” he said, speaking to Venturebeat. “We handled the two independently, just like we made statements around other events. If anything, I spoke with our investors before doing the final term sheet signing and told them: ‘Hey, this thing is going on, and we are going to handle it the way we always handle things. Here’s a chance to back out if you want,’ and they all stayed in. It was a nice chance to make sure they were really on board with how we do things”.
The images were originally posted on anonymous image sharing site 4chan, but The Fappening provided a home of sorts reportedly attracting more than 250m views in days. Reddit tried to shut the community, or subreddit, citing copyright issues rather than invasion of celebrities’ privacy.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/technolo...-secures-50m-fundraising-investors-snoop-dogg
