Gather gets $2.4M Series E for demand content

Social network and group of freelance writers to bring in ad revenue for demand media company

Gather, a site where freelance writers create and share content for shared revenue, has raised a $2.4 million Series E round of funding from Lotus founder Jim Manzi, investment firm Allen & Co. and new contributor Progress Partners, represented by Nick McShane.

Other investors in the round include Andrew Tobias, Hearst Corporation, Jack Connors, Kevin McClatchy, the McGraw-Hill Companies, Maerican Public Media Group, Pilot House Ventures, TechStars mentor John Landry, and the Gerace family, Boston Business Journal reports.

The company has raised just over $24 million so far.

Gather originally launched in 2005 as a content-focused social network, but has since shifted gears to focus explicitly on advertising-generating content. Freelance writers, who share ad revenue with Gather based on their pieces’ popularity, attracted seven million monthly unique visitors to the site in the last year.

In addition to the new funding, Gather also announced a partnership with Pampers to provide content for Pregnancy.pampers.com, with four other brand partnerships launching this year. The idea is to have a network where media and content is being created based on demand.

“Instead of having them create content maybe people want to read,” explained CEO Tom Gerace, “now you take these experts and you get far greater leverage from them by pointing them in the direction so they can write content people are seeking out.”

Gather has about 26 employees right now but plans to at least double that in the near future.