Upworthy’s output is a stream of curated daily picks via email newsletter, Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter. Its first two featured items are both about the Trayvon Martin killing.

Upworthy was co-founded by MoveOn board president Eli Pariser, and former managing editor for The Onion, Peter Koechley. It is backed by Chris Hughes, the Facebook co-founder who recently bought The New Republic.

Pariser, who wrote the book “The Filter Bubble,” explained his justification for Upworthy today: “In the Darwinian environment of the hyper-relevant news feed, content about issues like homelessness or climate change can’t compete with goofy viral videos, celebrity news, and kittens … Hopefully, we can help bring attention and focus to stuff that really matters in a viral format that can reach millions.”

The intersection of virality and more serious content seems particularly timely, given the potency of Kony 2012 and other recent Internet activism, like the SOPA protests.

In an introductory post, Upworthy says it would like to run items about “something like planking or Tebowing but about climate change” and “17 Sexiest Pics About Income Inequality.” I guess it’s better to poke fun at yourself before other people can.

Hughes had previously pitched jobs at the prelaunch start-up for people who “love Facebook, hate Fox News, and are amazingly talented,” but as described today, the site says it’s not partisan.

Pariser said in an email today that the site is “very minimum viable product,” but it already has a privacy policy in the form of an infographic, so I’d say it’s ready for public consumption.

The year-old company has big-name backers and lots of interest from tech’s A-list. But when you start talking about what the company is up to–a structured database of objects, compiled primarily by machines–things get a little fuzzier.

Here’s another way to look at what the company is doing: TheFancy.com. It’s ThingD’s consumer site (and where you’ll now end up if you try heading to http://www.thingd.com).

This one is easier to understand. It’s a catalog of stuff people like, illustrated with photos they’ve taken or pictures they’ve found on the Web.

See something you like, and Fancy will tell you more about it; find someone who has interesting taste and Fancy will show you more stuff they like. You can also see what Ashton Kutcher likes, if that floats your boat.

And there is an iPhone app, of course.

There’s no business there yet, but you can easily imagine how Fancy could add e-commerce into the mix, if it gets scale. Which makes it quite similar to other social/stuff/catalog start-ups like Svpply.

The big difference is that Fancy is powered by ThingD’s database, which is supposed to be doing some very heavy lifting, and that Fancy/ThingD has some very serious expectations. The kind you get when you get backing from people like Andreessen Horowitz, Allen & Co., Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Facebook’s Chris Hughes right out of the gate.

You can see where this is going, or at least where it’s supposed to go. ThingD’s ambition to catalog lots and lots and lots of stuff puts it in the same sandbox, theoretically, that heavyweights like Amazon and eBay are already playing in. And Google, of course. The folks at Facebook, among other big tech companies you know, are paying attention.

With the exception of a Sun Valley showcase, ThingD/Fancy has stayed mostly quiet for the past year. But now, as 29-year-old founder Joe Einhorn gets ready to open up Fancy to the general public, he’s trying to explain what he’s doing to the rest of the world. This New York Observer profile is especially well-done.

I thought it’d be fun to get him on camera and let him tell his story in his own words, so I dropped by his very unstart-up-like office (it’s on top of the Apple Store in New York’s meatpacking district!) and he put up with my brutal cold and my caveman questions.