Digital media and advertising company Federated Media Publishing has acquired BigTent, a platform that enables local school, community and other shared-interest groups to connect online. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Federated Media acquired BigTent for its reach within a well-defined target audience: moms.
The media company says more than 8 million moms engage with its authors, and Federated Media President and COO Deanna Brown says the combination with BigTent’s platform for trusted parenting groups will give marketers a “powerful new way to reach the most valuable consumers online”.
Federated Media says BigTent’s thousands of groups will continue to function as before, and that new groups are welcome to sign up. BigTent gives each group its own private social networking environment in addition to a set of related tools.
BigTent says it primarily hosts parent groups, PTAs, schools, neighborhood groups, scouting troops, hobby clubs, alumni associations and other community groups nationwide.
The purchase of BigTent follows Federated Media’s recent expansion of its ability to reach parents online through a partnership with the Clever Girls Collective and the acquisition of semantic-search technology from TextDigger.
BigTent has raised $5 million in funding from Menlo Ventures and Mohr Davidow Ventures.