The Lerer family is widely known in New York city because of their vast media portfolio. Ken Lerer, the family patriarch, is a cofounder of the lucrative Huffington Post website with Jonah Peretti (now founder of Buzzfeed) and of course Ariana Huffington. Lerer’s son, Ben, is the founder of Thrillist, and together, father and son, run Lerer Ventures, a startup VC fund that has backed 185 different startups, including Rebel Mouse.
Rebel Mouse is one of hundreds of social media aggregators, but it seems to be the one that most people actually use. It pulls in multiple social feeds and then allows users to direct people to their Rebel Mouse page to see all of someone’s social media at once. That’s why the Lerer’s have built there latest web property, The DoDo, ontop of Rebel Mouse, guaranteeing that they can find the best content about a subject matter that everyone in the world seems to love, animals.
When Buzzfeed’s Peretti spoke to the crowd at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC last spring he talked about how posts of cute animals garner Buzzfeed a lot of hits, and who doesn’t want hits on their website. While Buzzfeed isn’t getting the news credibility that their Huffington Post site gets, they’re getting eyeballs which translate into dollars.
So this time around, for another one of Ken Lerer’s children, they’re going straight for the animals. The DoDo is cofounded by Izzie Lerer, Ken’s daughter.
In case you were wondering it’s pronounced do-do like the bird not doo-doo like animal poop. As far as the name goes, The DoDo’s editor in chief Kerry Lauerman, Salon.com’s former editor in chief explains:
“We’re resurrecting the dodo — a mysterious bird we drove into extinction nearly 400 years ago — to remind us of just how great our impact on animals is, and to inspire us to get it right this time.”
The site allows anyone to sign up, similar to RebelMouse and post what they want about animals. It will also aggregate your animal related posts a la the way Rebel Mouse does with all your social posts, to your The DoDo page.
Check it out for yourself here at TheDoDo.com
