RED HERRING | The $6M Buzz on Buzznet

Just about every web site loves buzz, but perhaps none so blatantly as Buzznet, a social networking site built around music and other pop culture brands, which on Thursday announced a $6 million round of funding.

The two-year-old site lets users post blog entries, videos, and photos revolving around specific musical artists and other popular personalities. The site has seen some buzz of its own of late, growing its users from 2 million to 6 million in the span of six months.

Redpoint Ventures joined the site’s original investors, Anthem Venture Partners, in the second round. Buzznet’s founders plan to spend some of that money to establish a separate social networking site focused on other topics, breaking away from the more music-oriented site.

“All these venture guys, they’re looking at what gets organic traffic, looking at the real DNA of things that are growing,” said Buzznet chairman Tyler Goldman. “We were getting inbound calls from all the top venture capital firms. We thought that since Redpoint had also been a big investor in MySpace that they understood the next evolution of the model.”

Mr. Goldman went to great pains to distinguish his site from MySpace, the social networking behemoth that also attracts plenty of attention from the music community. Mr. Goldman asserts that Buzznet provides more of a “programming” eye towards its content.

It culls from user-generated additions, expert blogger contributions, and professional contributions from popular personalities, such as the popular Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy, to create what it hopes comes across as an authentic, engaging, controlled environment for users.

Mr. Goldman said that model offers a safe, lucrative space for advertisers to create their own mini-social networks for targeted demographics, as Honda recently did on Buzznet for its Civic campaign.

But a lot of folks are attempting to build branded media sites right now. Yahoo, for example, recently introduced its branded universe initiative that brings together content around specific, popular themes, such as the television show “The Office.” Traditional media companies themselves, meanwhile, are trying to hang on to some of their own buzz with social networking sites they run themselves, as NBC recently began doing.

Bill Woodward of Anthem Venture Partners, who was on the board of MySpace and the now-Yahoo-owned Launch Media, believes branded media networks are only in the “second inning”, poised for rapid growth.

“Making brands the key part of driving demographic traffic, there’s a lot more that can be done there,” said Mr. Woodward.

RED HERRING The $6M Buzz on Buzznet