
At BuzzFeed, a Pivot to Movies and Television - minimaxir
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/22/business/media/at-buzzfeed-a-pivot-to-movies-and-television.html
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paul7986
Buzzfeed should also open restaurants and or at least license “Tasty,” to a
restaurant juggernaut company so they can create Tasty restaurants.

It could be the first social media menu driven restaurant where the most liked
Tasty videos/dishes establish the menu.

I mean I don't cook, but constantly salivate over their videos.

~~~
manachar
Their Tasty content is social media gold (well produced food "porn"). It's
highly viral and well liked by many people. It's weird to me that you're
getting downvotes for suggesting that Buzzfeed take this content and do more
with it.

I may personally hate the idea of social media popularity being used to
dictate the content of a menu, but I suspect there's a kernel of a great idea
there. After all, this is essentially the big data or Netflix approach to
deciding what content to make. Likes are just one metric that would be needed,
but you can certainly get an idea of the kinds of things that make people
drool.

Buzzfeed will likely first want to move into more cooking shows before opening
a full restaurant to see if they can create some more fans, possibly even see
if they can have their own homegrown celebrity chefs, then branch into
restaurant/food space.

~~~
overcast
They've been known to steal a ton of their recipes from other people, without
acknowledging them.

[https://mic.com/articles/163958/the-secret-ingredient-to-
buz...](https://mic.com/articles/163958/the-secret-ingredient-to-buzz-feed-s-
viral-tasty-videos-recipe-theft-food-bloggers-say#.xvBz69Kz9)

Also, there is a reason we have an executive chef developing menus. Ever heard
of too many cooks spoiling the soup? That, and the general population has shit
taste in everything from food, to entertainment. Having the children of
buzzfeed deciding this, will end up with a menu full of macaroni and cheese,
and pizza logs.

~~~
manachar
Can an executive chef be replaced with enough data? I'm inclined to believe
so.

Also, recipes are not copyrightable or otherwise able to be locked up in some
form of intellectual property. Thankfully. I would hate to see a world where I
could only buy chocolate chips and chocolate chip cookie recipes from Nestle.

Of course, it would be nice if they add attribution as needed, but tough to
prove for something like this (bacon weave being a fairly common new fangled
technique applied to everything from tacos to ice cream).

~~~
flukus
> Can an executive chef be replaced with enough data? I'm inclined to believe
> so.

I want what tastes good to me, not what tastes good to most people. You can't
solve personal subjective problems with data.

~~~
overcast
Especially when the masses enjoy justin bieber, and the olive garden.

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teej
One of the major drivers of this new age in BuzzFeed has been driven by Ze
Frank[0] of all people. He ushered in an era of "viral" content before that
was even a thing. I'm surprised there hasn't been more discussion of how he
has helped transform them into more of a original content company.

[0] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ze_Frank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ze_Frank)

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orliesaurus
Makes sense, the way I see it: Netflix is the distribution platform for long
form non-live content. By building out these videos BuzzFeed realised they can
v become an oven churning mildly interesting content to sell to Netflix that
engages the 20-40 bracket. Basically stuff they want to see. Perhaps I'm wrong
but that's how it feels it's going to go.

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xemdetia
This makes sense to me because there are a lot of these youtube-esque clones
that are finally reaching fairly good production value and can recut what they
are building for a youtube format as well as a structured format. It feels
like an easy landing area for these premium (in production) web channels,
where their content has the youtube value curve of 1-3 days but easily could
be repackaged in a form to be resold to someone else.

~~~
kamphey
That is exactly what we're doing at TBD

[http://www.tbd.com](http://www.tbd.com)

Packaging top quality digital content from YouTube, and vimeo, getting the
rights direct from creators and managers. Then repackaging it into 30 minute
and 60 minute shows.

~~~
xemdetia
Oh neat, I didn't know firms involved yet.

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dghughes
I really hope not. Buzzfeed Canada is terrible a slimy tabloid organization I
couldn't imagine in the 80s The National Enquirer starting a cable TV channel.
Maybe the US version of Buzzfeed is different.

~~~
flanbiscuit
One day I was listening to an episode of Radiolab[1] (an NPR podcast) and I
was surprised to hear they were collaborating with Buzzfeed. For the most part
I still think of them as a listicles site but I guess they are trying to break
into more serious journalism.

1\.
[http://www.radiolab.org/story/60-words/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/60-words/)

~~~
wmeredith
They've been doing serious journalism for a few years now. They use their
clickbait nonsense to fund it. Here's a short article I wrote about it earlier
this year: [https://medium.com/@wwmeredith/10-reasons-not-to-write-
off-b...](https://medium.com/@wwmeredith/10-reasons-not-to-write-off-
buzzfeeds-clickbait-8e5ea527c16)

I don't write regularly, but I've had this conversation with so many of my
friends and colleagues that I decided to put it down somewhere.

The basic gist is that the old newspapers funded deep investigative journalism
with want ads, funny papers, sports pages, and the weather. They can't do that
anymore, but Buzzfeed is finding a way. It's fascinating.

~~~
Larrikin
They should rebrand their serious journalism. I know about it, and know they
sometimes produce important work, but I never read their articles unless
another organization reports on it as being valuable. There's too much risk of
getting a waste of time currently.

~~~
pulisse
Under what circumstances do you update your priors?

