Cheezburger beefs up warchest with $5M in new funding

Cheezburger Network has just added a fresh $5 million to its coffers.

According to an SEC filing, the company issued securities in exchange for cash from Foundry Group, Madrona Venture Group, and Avalon Ventures. This infusion comes about a year after the company’s last deal, a splashy $30 million round late last year.

This round brings the company’s total funding raised to date to $37 million.

During the last round’s announcement, Cheezburger CEO Ben Huh (pictured) said he was still searching for his meme media empire’s larger significance (and revenue). While the dot-com economy, such as it existed, was built around e-commerce and news, and the social media economy was built around content creation, he thought a new era was about to dawn, “something bigger there that we want to be a part of. How do we get there? I don’t really have the answer. That’s why this money is important to us, to try to experiment, to try to understand the market.”

Since then, Cheezburger has taken a few interesting steps. Huh went on a warpath, talking about the importance of data over design. To allow for the creation and gathering of even more data, the network allowed users to start making their own Cheezburger-related sites and communities.

And to blow it up even more, mere days ago the company launched its API, which will help the massive network pull in and share more content than ever before.

“Before we made the API available, you could make a comic but then could only share with your direct network,” said Rick Simpkinson, a technical product manager at Cheezburger, in a VentureBeat interview. “Now by working with us, they can make Cheezeburger available as a publishing option.”

Ultimately, Huh and Co. have a huge scope and vision for the future of Cheezburger and its unique brand of democratically derived online content.

“As Cheezburger continues to innovate as a social humor platform, we’ll be pushing that innovation out through these apps and serving our customers the best funny content, wherever they are,” Simpkinson said.