BuzzFeed announced today that it has raised $15.5 million with New Enterprise Associates (NEA) leading the round and Lerer Ventures, Hearst Media, Softbank, and RRE participating. Patrick Kerins, General Partner at NEA will join BuzzFeed's board. Kenneth Lerer, Manager of Lerer Ventures and co-Founder of The Huffington Post, will expand his role, becoming executive chairman.

Greg Coleman, President of Criteo and formerly President of The Huffington Post, has joined the company as an active advisor. All BuzzFeed's revenue comes from a unique form of social advertising that is used by top brands like GE, Disney, and Microsoft.

In the past year, BuzzFeed.com traffic has more than tripled to over 25 million monthly unique visitors with social sites like Facebook, Twitter, and StumbleUpon driving the growth.

"The baton has been passed from print to the traditional web and now from the traditional web to social," said Jonah Peretti, Founder and CEO of BuzzFeed. "The entire industry is shifting, and we intend to be the leader in social publishing."

"BuzzFeed has a huge opportunity to create the definitive publishing site for the social world, and we couldn't be more excited about becoming their partner," said Patrick Kerins, General Partner at NEA.

In January, editor-in-chief Ben Smith joined the company from POLITICO with a mandate to build an editorial powerhouse for the social world. Smith has hired top reporters and launched a politics section whose fresh take is the talk of the political world. And he and his team have already broken major stories, including being the first to report John McCain's planned endorsement of Mitt Romney.

"This isn't the future of news - it's the present," said Smith. "Many of the best reporters are already writing for the social web and getting their news from the social web."

For more information on BuzzFeed, visit http://www.buzzfeed.com