![]() | This article is an autobiography or has been extensively edited by the subject or by someone connected to the subject.(May 2023) |
Chris Richmond | |
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Born | Christopher Richmond July 29, 1986 Oakland, California, [1] U.S. |
Occupations |
Chris Richmond (born July 29, 1986) is an American businessman and entrepreneur. [2] He founded a television streaming site called ShareTV.com, co-founded an adtech platform called Proper Media and acquired websites such as TV Tropes, Snopes, and Salon.com. [3] [4]
Richmond founded his first large website in 2007, called ShareTV.com. [5] This became one of the first online distribution partners of HULU and TheWB, [6] and was one of first sites to stream the Oscars online. [6]
In 2014, Richmond, along with his business partner Drew Schoentrup, acquired TV Tropes, a wiki geared toward fiction writers. [7] To announce the purchase, Richmond and Schoentrup launched a Kickstarter campaign to ask the members for their help in improving the project. The campaign raised more than $100,000 in donations. [8]
In 2015, Richmond co-founded an adtech platform called Proper Media. Its first official client was Snopes.com, the largest and oldest fact-checking website on the web. [9] After a year, Proper Media purchased [10] a significant stake in Snopes.com. There was a legal dispute [11] regarding whether Proper Media purchased 50% or 40% of Snopes.com. The dispute started in 2017 and continued until 2022, when Richmond and Schoentrup bought out all other shareholders of Snopes. [12] [13]
In 2018, Richmond helped with his 3rd acquisition by acquiring Spoutable.com under Proper Media. [14] This acquisition added eight employees and nearly doubled the reach of Proper Media. [15]
In 2019, Richmond and his business partner completed the acquisition of Salon.com for $5 million from Salon Media Group (OTCQB : SLNM). [16]
In 2021, after 6 years of year over year growth with Richmond as CEO, Proper Media was sold to Sovrn Holdings. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. [17]
In 2022, Richmond took over as CEO of Snopes after completing the transaction with Schoentrup to buy out the other shareholders. [13] [18]
In 2023, Richmond and Schoentrup sold Salon.com for an undisclosed sum. Salon was nearing bankruptcy two decades on, when they bought it, in 2019, for $5 million. Nobody was laid off from the newsroom under Richmond and Schoentrup’s tenure. [19]
Richmond started out at ShareTV.org and was completely unable to obtain the commercial equivalent, ShareTV.com, from a cybersquatter. In 2013, Richmond won a lawsuit for ShareTV.com against the cybersquatter, despite the fact that they owned the domain seven years before ShareTV began its trademark. [20]
As of 2016, Richmond was engaged in a lawsuit against Snopes over whether he and Drew Schoentrup own 50% or 40% of Snopes. [21] [22] As a result of this dispute, ad revenue was withheld from Snopes.com and its founder David Mikkelson launched a GoFundMe campaign to keep Snopes.com running. [23]
Snopes, formerly known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source for both validating and debunking urban legends and similar stories in American popular culture.
Hearst Television, Inc. is a broadcasting company in the United States owned by Hearst Communications, made up of a group of television and radio stations, and Hearst Media Production Group, a distributor of programming in broadcast syndication.
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TV Tropes is a wiki that collects and documents descriptions and examples of plot conventions and devices, which it refers to as tropes, within many creative works. Since its establishment in 2004, the site has shifted focus from covering various tropes to those in general media, toys, writings, and their associated fandoms, as well as some non-media subjects such as history, geography, and politics. The nature of the site as a provider of commentary on pop culture and fiction has attracted attention and criticism from several web personalities and blogs. Users of the site's community are called "Tropers", which primarily consist of 18-34 year olds.
PolitiFact.com is an American nonprofit project operated by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, with offices there and in Washington, D.C. It began in 2007 as a project of the Tampa Bay Times, with reporters and editors from the newspaper and its affiliated news media partners reporting on the accuracy of statements made by elected officials, candidates, their staffs, lobbyists, interest groups and others involved in U.S. politics. Its journalists select original statements to evaluate and then publish their findings on the PolitiFact.com website, where each statement receives a "Truth-O-Meter" rating. The ratings range from "True" for statements the journalists deem as accurate to "Pants on Fire" for claims the journalists deem as "not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim".
Constant Contact, Inc. is an online marketing company, headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, with additional offices in Loveland, Colorado; and New York, New York.
Xconomy was a media company providing news on business, life sciences, and technology focusing on the regions of Boston, Boulder/Denver, Detroit, New York City, Raleigh-Durham, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle. The website was launched in June 2007 by founders Robert Buderi and Rebecca Zacks. Xconomy content covered "local personalities, companies, and technological trends to business and technology leaders" with a target audience of "entrepreneurs, business and technology executives and innovators, venture capitalists, angel investors, lawyers, and university researchers and officials." Bill Mitchell of the Poynter Institute described Xconomy in 2010 as reflecting "the insiderish feel of, say, Politico, but with some of the familiarity that you might expect from a small town paper."
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