BuzzFeed

About

BuzzFeed^[1] is a viral content and entertainment news site founded by American Internet entrepreneur Jonah Peretti in 2006. The site is comprised of more than 20 verticals dedicated to curating a wide variety of viral media and news content, ranging from politics, business, sports, and music to internet memes, animals and celebrities, as well as its own original content.

History

BuzzFeed launched on November 1st, 2006 with seven articles containing 10-20 links to other articles on a specific topic, including homosexual Republicans^[23], Borat^[24] and eating endangered animal species.^[25] BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti (shown below) had previously been involved with viral web content while studying at the MIT Media Lab. In January 2001, he attempted to order custom Nike sneakers with the word “sweatshop” embroidered on them. After his request was denied, his shared the email correspondence online, which quickly went viral. In May 2005, he co-founded The Huffington Post with Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer and Andrew Breitbart.

Buzzfeed Motion Pictures

On August 10th, 2014, The New York Times^[32] reported BuzzFeed had recieved a $50 million investment from the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz to expand their original video production division under the newly-branded umbrella of Buzzfeed Motion Pictures. The article went on to suggest that Buzzfeed Motion Pictures would be able to launch full-length films as well as strengthen its shorter video production efforts on YouTube. That same day, the investment deal was announced on the blog of Chris Dixon^[34], a tech business mogul and partner of the investing firm.^[33] In it, Dixon explained:

“As a small, early investor in BuzzFeed, I got to observe firsthand how effectively Jonah and the team executed in recent years. The results speak for themselves: BuzzFeed now reaches over 150M people per month, is consistently profitable, and will generate triple digit millions in revenues this year. I believe the future of BuzzFeed – and the media industry more generally – will only get brighter as the number of people with internet-connected smartphones grows, and the internet solidifies its place as the central communication medium of our time.”

The investment and focus on Buzzfeed Motion Pictures was covered by many sites including The Wrap^[35] and Philly.com.^[37] Buzzfeed^[36] published its official press release regarding the investment on August 11th, which stated:

“Digital video is the future of the media industry and after two years of growth and success, BuzzFeed will expand its video division and become BuzzFeed Motion Pictures. Ze Frank will lead the division as President of BuzzFeed Motion Pictures and will expand to focus on all moving images from a GIF to feature film. BuzzFeed Video will exist under the new organization to focus on current short form video, while the BuzzFeed Live Development team will create mid-form serialized content, focused on building characters and genres. BuzzFeed Motion Pictures will launch a “Future of Fiction” team to explore the future of long-form, television and trans-media video. Hollywood producer Michael Shamberg and actor/comedian Jordan Peele will join BuzzFeed Motion Pictures as advisors.”

Criticism

Listicles

Much of BuzzFeed’s content is list-based articles known as “listicles” consisting of a specific number of curated photos or GIFs centered on a certain topic, for example 15 Curious Things Found in Library Books^[26], 21 Reasons You’re A True Hillbilly^[27] and 16 Problems Every Petite Girl Deals With.^[28] As early as July 2012, this format has been parodied by other blogs and magazines including McSweeney’s^[22], Eater^[23] and Vanity Fair.^[29] Other news sites have criticized BuzzFeed for using this format to explain serious news^[17], including explaining the political climate in Egypt with GIFs from Jurassic Park (shown below).

Parodies

FeedBuzz

On April 5th, 2013, BuzzFeed’s tech vertical FWD posted an oral history of Weird Twitter, containing a number of interviews with Twitter users about their participation in the loosely aligned group of comedic accounts. Two days later, Nate Lamagna, who goes by the handle @vrunt^[9], launched the parody blog FeedBuzz.^[10] That day, he made the first two posts parodying BuzzFeed’s stereotypical listicle content: 7 Unexpected Breakfast Fails^[11] and Top Five Bad Search Engines Throughout History.^[12]

Lamagna invited his Twitter followers to contribute, resulting in more than 400 satirical articles within two months, including pieces by Something Awful writer Jon Hendren, Toothpaste for DInner cartoonist Drew and #ExilePitbull co-creator David Thorpe. In April 2013, FeedBuzz was featured in a satirical review on Fishbowl NY.^[13] In early June, FeedBuzz was featured on the Daily Dot.^[14]

BuzzFeed Minus GIFs

On October 17th, 2013, a single topic blog titled “BuzzFeed Minus GIFs”^[31] was launched on Tumblr as a parody of BuzzFeed’s signature GIF-driven article format, highlighting the text without any images that usually comprise the centerpiece of the articles.

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Related Memes

Aretha’s Hat

Aretha’s Hat is a photoshop meme featuring the bow-style hat worn by singer-songwriter Aretha Franklin during Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration on January 20th, 2009. That day, a photo of the singer wearing the hat was posted to BuzzFeed and commenters began to photoshop the hat onto other photos of humans and animals. Within hours, BuzzFeed made a second post highlighting some of the submitted photoshopped images.

Horsemaning

Horsemaning is a photo fad started by BuzzFeed in August 2011. After posting a sepia-toned photo^[5] (shown below, left) claiming the forced perspective photography had come from the 1920s, the article called it “the new ”/memes/planking">planking and invited readers to take their own photos. However, the astroturfing led writers from Gawker^[6] and Rocketboom^[7] to criticize BuzzFeed for attempting to force a meme.

Tobias Fünke’s Blanket

Tobias Fünke’s Blanket is a photoshop meme that spread on 4chan and Tumblr after a behind-the-scenes photo of actor David Cross wearing a blanket on set was leaked on BuzzFeed on August 9th, 2012, who highlighted a series of photoshopped images based on this strange outfit the following day.

Traffic

As of July 2013, BuzzFeed reaches more than 60 million unique visitors per month.^[2] The site has an Alexa^[3] score of 85 in the United States and 315 globally. BuzzFeed also has a Quantcast^[4] rank of 36 in the U.S.