88. Rufus Griscom

Rufus Griscom is one-half of the husband-and-wife duo behind new-wave parenting site Babble.com, which Disney acquired last fall for approximately $40 million.

“… Something that’s been risky for us–and everyone in the online space–was making the decision to push content out to other platforms such as Facebook or the Huffington Post. That was scary at first. We worried, Are we giving away the baby? But we’ve concluded that it really is the right approach,” Griscom says.

“If we have more comments on a Facebook post than on our own site, are we pushing the conversation or the audience away? But of the 6 million folks who come to Babble each month, about 35% are coming through social media–Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Stumbled-Upon, and various aggregators. And we started to realize that a lot of these are actually filtering our content better than we are.”

Click here to read the conversation about building online communities around content between Griscom and NBCUniversal President, Digital Entertainment Vivi Zigler, No. 89 on our Most Creative People list.

Timeline

• 1986

  Buys his first car, a Saab 99 for $800 borrowed from his younger siblings

• 1986

  Falls in love for the first time

• 1997

  His first website, Nerve, goes live

• 1998

  Is interviewed by Charlie Rose

• 2001

  Launches Spring Street Networks, his second company; falls in love for the last time

• 2005

  Becomes the father of son, Declan

• 2008

  Becomes the father of son, Grey

• 2011

  Becomes the father of son, Rye

• 2011

  Sells Babble to Disney

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