Ongo - social news startup - raises $12M

NYTimes, Washington Post and Gannett fund social-news aggregator

Newspapers do not always have the highest opinions of Web-based media outlets. On the 24th of September, Leonard Downie Jr., a former executive editor of the Washington Post, summed up this sentiment by calling blogs and aggregators, “parasites living off journalism produced by others”, at the James Cameron Memorial Lecture, at London’s City University.

So you might find a bit of today's news ironic. Three major publications - Washington Post Company, Gannett, and the New York Times Company - have made a significant investment in Ongo, a social news aggregator. Ongo announced an initial fundraising of $12 million, in its seed round today. The service, which launched about three months ago, is not yet available to the public.

When it does come out of stealth mode, it will be a consumer service, designed to facilitate the reading and sharing digital news and information from multiple publishers, in one location. While the tool is obviously being funded by newspaper companies, it is not clear if it will focus solely on newspapers, or expand into other forms of media as well.

The initiative comes at the same time the Post and the Times are pursuing their own expansion into digital news. The New York Times, recently announced the creation of its own personalized news site, and The Washington Post bought iCurrent, a personal news aggregator, in July.

Cupertino, Calif-based Ongo is headed by Alex Kazim. You may know him as the man who ran recently defunct aggregator Tokoni, which focused on blogs. You may also know him from his six years at eBay, where he was the SVP of new ventures, or from PayPal, where he was VP of marketing and products. Several members of the former Tokoni staff were also brought onto the new project.

While no specific launch date was set for public access to Ongo, the company promised it "..will introduce the Ongo service before the end of the year," in the release. 

Ongo was not available for immediate comment.

(Image from Ongo site)