Buzzfeed is junk food
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What is BuzzFeed, really?
41–50 of 73 posts
Re: What is BuzzFeed, really?
#42Omits 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". [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/business/media/at-buzzfeed...
The whole thing about the "science of viral content" has always seemed like fluffy nonsense to me to make the stakeholders feel like they are part of something "higher brow" and more complex than just a spammy blog.
Spammy blogs just wither and die. They do not produce a huge company like Buzzfeed.
Re: What is BuzzFeed, really?
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
People aren't bored, but the economics have changed in terms of ad revenue, and the notion of linkbait has been tragedy-of-the-commonsed since everyone is doing it.
According to Alexa, Buzzfeed has been dropping in daily pageviews and global ranking [1]. That's synonymous with people getting, bored, right? http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/buzzfeed.com
Or everyone else is just stealing the playbook, and consumers really don't care where the content comes from.
Readers of clickbait presumably get to such pages from social shares aimed to grab a click, and probably have no loyalty to the site producing the clickbait.
Re: What is BuzzFeed, really?
#44I'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.
great thread on this very idea of content junk food: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11475367 and http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/apr/10/twitter-ev-will...
Re: What is BuzzFeed, really?
#45I think the idea of complex algorithms is overplayed. For instance, ViralNova.com was/is a click-baity site very similar to BuzzFeed. 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…
First, I'll start by saying that, personally, I'd rather run a ViralNova than a Buzzfeed. However, to answer your question, the reason that a company like Buzzfeed would add that many more employees is because of the idea that the economies of scale would work in its favor. Let's make up some numbers and say with two employees, Viral Nova was doing $20MM. The idea is that with 100 employees, they could potentially gr…
Which completely ignores the fact that after a certain point as you add headcount you often deteriorate productivity and communication.
Re: What is BuzzFeed, really?
#46They 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.
If Facebook is social layer OS then Buzzfeed was the stuff McAfee and Norton would warn you about.
Re: What is BuzzFeed, really?
#47Everyone always complains about the cat gifs and listicles. No one ever praises the Zenefits exposé or leaking John McCain's running mate.
Do you often remember stories that are either buried or pushed off to a sidebar? Looking at their home page now, there's one "serious" story at the top. Below that are hundreds of crap stories about celebrities with titles in blue, indicating they're clickable, and a description of the article below. Off to the right, with titles in black and no description, are the "serious" articles. It's clear that they either don't think their users value the serious articles or they can't make enough money off of them, so they deemphasize them. You can hardly blame users for not remembering them.
Re: What is BuzzFeed, really?
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
People aren't bored, but the economics have changed in terms of ad revenue, and the notion of linkbait has been tragedy-of-the-commonsed since everyone is doing it.
According to Alexa, Buzzfeed has been dropping in daily pageviews and global ranking [1]. That's synonymous with people getting, bored, right? http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/buzzfeed.com
Based on the original article, their strategy has become sponsored content across 30+ platforms. Their site is only 1 part of this.
Re: What is BuzzFeed, really?
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
The whole thing about the "science of viral content" has always seemed like fluffy nonsense to me to make the stakeholders feel like they are part of something "higher brow" and more complex than just a spammy blog.
To be fair though the "science" of anything social always seems like fluffy nonsense made to make spaghetti throwing on the wall seem like methodical, analytical research.
If your measurements are good enough you can make a methodology out of throwing spaghetti at a wall.
Re: What is BuzzFeed, really?
#50I think the idea of complex algorithms is overplayed. For instance, ViralNova.com was/is a click-baity site very similar to BuzzFeed. 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…
Scott started VN with a very small crew, he shared a picture once showing how often he was eating takeout between work sessions, I wouldn't be surprised to find out he was putting in 12+ hour days initially. Leading up to the eventual sale the company grew quickly though. He's been creating profitable sites for years and VN was just the next evolution. The key difference was seeing the potential in taking VN further then just a site run by a couple of people.
I've been told the change was when he hired an executive team to go after bigger ad buys and to shape the business to be more then just a small group operation.
I've been reluctant to ask him personally about the details but this is what I've put together talking to acquaintances. Say what you want about VN, Scott is a top notch guy that has hit it out of the park many times.