for me, buzzfeed is like hyundai. Hyundai had the reputation prob anytime before 8ish years ago of being total unreliable shit. However, they made a massive set of enigineering improvements, created better styling and started standing behind their products with the best warranty in the industry, 100k miles. They even created a luxury line under the hyundai brand and started offering more expensive cars. During hte period, their stock started actually doing well[0].
It has since, gone down a bit and I won't say it is 100% the point I will make next,but it factors in. Buzzfeed is a lot like Hyundai. While Hyundai killed in the low-cost market, no middle class consumer wanted a hyundai. Their brand had negative value.
Just as quality longform content is not read by the same people who read buzzfeed. So they(bf) will not adopt users, just as hyundai slipped a bit after the marketing relaxed and consumers remembered that the "image" conveyed by hyundai was low-income/cheap. While they had erased the real problem, shitty engineering, the image was just as important.
So buzzfeed should rebrand or meta-structure itself if, at least in my non-expert off the cuff opinion, it wants to ever sell content. Obviously, ancilliary advertisements are will be dead very soon, but buzzfeed is really good at writing advertising copy, they call it journalism i think.
However, as stated above and evidenced by this very article they are breaking some good stories, and are funded by a16z. They have quality journalists who have access and are equipped & talented to write great articles. I just think that most of the people who would value that article, would never read it from buzzfeed. buzzfeed should channel out services like vox and rebrand.
tl;dr know your customer
[0]http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=005380.KS+Interactive#sym...