Facebook’s Chris Hughes to launch “viral media” start-up

Facebook co-founder, Chris Hughes, is teaming up with two other entrepreneurs to launch a start-up media company that aims to spread “progressive content” virally online.

As one of the Facebook co-founders, Hughes worked as the Facebook spokesperson from his Harvard University dorm room with fellow co-founders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz.

He served as US President Barack Obama’s digital guru during the 2008 election, before launching Jumo in 2010, a philanthropic social network connecting individuals with good causes.

It’s been reported Hughes is launching a new start-up with Eli Pariser, involved in the left-wing online campaign network MoveOn, and Peter Koechley, former editor of satirical magazine The Onion.

MoveOn is particularly influential among Democratic politicians and voters in the US. Pariser is also the author of The Filter Bubble, which seeks to expose the inner workings of the internet.

While the trio has declined to give any details about their new company, which has the working title Cloud Tiger Media, there are snippets of information revealed in recent job postings.

“In January 2012, veterans of The Onion, MoveOn and Facebook are joining together to launch a viral media start-up,” the job postings say.

“[The company] will spread important, compelling ideas to hundreds of millions of people online, and make being a progressive fun again.”

“Our first round of funding is complete – now we need a few fantastic partners to help hit the ground running… We run a virtual office and collaborate online.”

The founders are looking for a chief technology officer, a founding engineer, an experienced designer, a viral editor and even an editorial intern, all of whom are expected to start no later than February 1.

“We believe that the media company of the future will be as much a tech company as an editorial process,” the founders say.

The start-up will be focused squarely in the progressive political realm, but aims to fuse political savviness with “immediate emotional resonance” based on quality visual content.

It hopes to create a product “that users love and that makes a dent in the universe”.