Gawker: valleywag, polaris venture partners

HealthCentral takes cash from Barry Diller, Michael Moritz

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 16:20:36 EST

HealthCentral just announced $50 million in funding. The round included a major investment from IAC and smaller contributions from prior investors Sequoia Capital, Carlyle Group and Polaris Venture Partners. HealthCentral operates several health-related websites, including the long-troubled DrKoop.com, which was once a publicly traded company a bubble or two ago. Here's how their traffic looked last year, according to Compete. It's nice and all, but stick around for the one comparing HealthCentral to WebMD. If I used the word pwnage, I would. But I don't.

Here's HealthCentral.com and its other sites.
And now, versus WebMD.
Looks pretty bad for HealthCentral, but it's early yet. The site only changed its name to HealthCentral in 2006.

Animation studio JibJab raises $3 million

Jordan Golson — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 18:36:19 EDT

Animated comedy site JibJab has raised $3 million in a second round of funding from Polaris Venture Partners. JibJab, the faux-paper animation studio run by a pair of brothers, hit the scene with a parody of "Our Land" featuring John Kerry and George W. Bush. They've since gone on to make dozens more animations. There's even a cartoon generator into which you can insert a friend's — or, say, a journalist's — picture. The original "Our Land" video is after the jump.

Larry Kramer, founder of the MarketWatch...

Owen Thomas — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 18:07:44 EDT

Larry Kramer, founder of the MarketWatch stock-news site now owned by Dow Jones, has joined Polaris Venture Partners as a senior advisor. The firm's portfolio includes online-media companies like JibJab and Heavy. [LinkedIn]