Local Newswire Fwix Raises First Round
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Fwix, a hyperlocal newswire launching with sites for 72 cites on Monday, has raised an undisclosed first round from BlueRun Ventures. The San Francisco company was founded last November by 22-year-old CEO Darian Shirazi, a former engineer at Facebook and eBay. Aside from the first round, a Fwix rep said the company raised a small seed round previously. Shirazi is promising real-time local news and is adding mobile user updates, including the now-requisite iPhone app. The company claims 8 million visitors per month across its content network, while it’s been getting 400,000 uniques to its North American city sites during its beta phase.
In addition to its sites, Fwix also offers a “network of widgets,” which it is pitching to local newspapers and other publishers as a way to get its content viewed by more users. On top of that, the company says it can track local trends, identifying a city’s most popular articles, possibly offering ways of increasing publishers’ ad revenue. In its coverage, the NYT points out that Twitter has done a pretty good job of serving up on-the-go news. But Shirazi says Fwix is able to be more selective and therefore more relevant when it comes to filtering its news updates.
Posted In: Advertising, Local, Media & Publishing, Online News, Money, M&A & Venture Capital, Venture Capital
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