Omits one of the most interesting facts about BuzzFeed: it was started by a member of MIT's Media Lab [0]. It all made sense once I started viewing it as the result of research into content virality. Internally I think of it more like a "profitable social/cultural experiment" than "media company".<p>[0] <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/business/media/at-buzzfeed-the-significant-and-the-silly.html?_r=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/business/media/at-buzzfeed...</a>
This article doesn't incorporate yesterday's news that BuzzFeed has missed revenue targets this year, and is forecasted to miss revenue targets next year: <a href="http://nymag.com/following/2016/04/buzzfeed-halves-revenue-target-for-2016.html" rel="nofollow">http://nymag.com/following/2016/04/buzzfeed-halves-revenue-t...</a><p>This is even after a <i>pivot</i> to video-content like all the major players in the industry are doing, which was done because BuzzFeed's current model, the one praised in this post, <i>is not sustainable</i>.<p>The viral approach is an approach that only works once.
I think the idea of complex algorithms is overplayed. For instance, ViralNova.com was/is a click-baity site very similar to BuzzFeed.<p>It was started by a single hacker like most of us here on this forum, with 2 part-time writers. Initially it was just a wordpress blog, that he later turned into a custom CMS because wordpress is so inefficient and kept crashing when he had spikes in traffic. Scott (founder) sold it in 18 months for somewhere around 80 Million $.<p>Source: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/zealot-media-buys-scott-delongs-viralnova-for-100-million-2015-7" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessinsider.com/zealot-media-buys-scott-delon...</a><p>> For a while, ViralNova was a one-man startup run entirely by DeLong and two freelance writers. Together they were able to grow their website to Buzzfeed's size and scale — about 100 million monthly readers<p>Doesn't this mean that BuzzFeed has too much "fat" ( in terms of employees) that cuts into their profits?<p>Thoughts?
I fancy BuzzFeed quite a bit.Yes the sheer volume and omnipresence can be discerning and irritating.But while they use this model I enjoy the fact that they give serious readers good long form writing too[1].
So keeping apart all of the reasons for why buzzfeed might/will/will-not grow/crash/stalemate in the market.I enjoy serious journalism which they sometimes do add. I hope they someday manage to incorporate that into their business model too.<p>[1]:<a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/news" rel="nofollow">https://www.buzzfeed.com/news</a>
Buzzfeed always gets the kid gloves treatment in the media and somehow became one of "the cool kids" despite being a website built on dumb viral content like so many others.<p>No surprise, I guess - big names like Andreessen Horowitz invested so now we all have to pretend like this all means something. Watching something as unimpressive as Buzzfeed get treated this seriously in the press makes me wonder just how little you have to pay a tech journalist to own them.
I've always explained it like the digital equivalent of those trash magazines at grocery store checkout stands. It's not for everyone, but it works for some.
BuzzFeed's biggest problem, at least as I view it, is an immense negative equity as yet another exploiter of weaponised viral clickbait crap.<p>I'm aware that the company produces <i>other</i> material, but it continues to rely heavily on clickbait. And so I say: die in a fire.
'“Capitalism, Peretti concluded, needs to be constantly producing identities for peoples if the system is to survive,” Matthews writes. “And ten years later, he built a factory to fill that precise need.<p>Matthews later reached out to Peretti to ask if he felt that Buzzfeed embodies the principles outlined in Peretti’s “Capitalism and Schizophrenia.” Peretti simply responded “lol.”'<p>-- <a href="http://www.critical-theory.com/buzzfeed-founder-responds-to-his-marxist-roots-lol/" rel="nofollow">http://www.critical-theory.com/buzzfeed-founder-responds-to-...</a>
As someone who's worked in publishing and advertising, the rise of Buzzfeed has been fascinating to watch. There are two really amazing things about it's business:<p>- Buzzfeed has no banner ads, zero—every ad comes in the form of native content.<p>- Companies pay Buzzfeed to distribute Buzzfeed content through ad networks. You'll see Buzzfeed Partner videos on Facebook, these are videos that Buzzfeed has been paid to create that includes a brand in some way or another. They are then paid again to run this content on ad networks.<p>Creative, media buys and more—Buzzfeed is essentially an advertising agency that gets paid to create and distribute assets for it's own brand.
They make social viruses, they figured out what worked and hasn't worked, hires kids for the low rates and talent and teaches them to also make social viruses.<p>If Facebook is social layer OS then Buzzfeed was the stuff McAfee and Norton would warn you about.