
Memo To The BuzzFeed Team - gankit
https://www.linkedin.com/today/influencers/20130904212907-1799428-memo-to-the-buzzfeed-team
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jgalt212
Are these astounding traffic numbers for real? Every time I go to BuzzFeed
(every few months or so) I feel like Gertrude Stein visiting Oakland. I then
retreat in disgust lamenting the few minutes I've wasted there.

In some sense, they must get a lot of bot traffic who only scrape the site to
see what's "hot" because BuzzFeed itself is a highly optimized version of
Yahoo Popular News. And BuzzFeed probably has little incentive to police these
bots because that would drive their pageview numbers lower. At the end of the
day, they probably have low value traffic and their ads sell cheap. But the
BuzzFeed is probably not too concern about CPM because when the do sell they
will try to frame the valuation around pageviews and not revenues.

~~~
zmitri
They are heavy buyers of Facebook ads so I imagine a fair bit of traffic comes
from those + the fact they have a sense for "viral" content. Although Peretti
says they are profitable in his internal memo, I am quite skeptical until they
release some real numbers to back that up -- I wouldn't be surprised if
Facebook buys them.

~~~
untog
_I wouldn 't be surprised if Facebook buys them_

That would be a really, really weird choice. Facebook has an incredible number
of editorial partners, I doubt they'd be too happy if Facebook bought one of
their competitors.

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jljljl
>>> "This is why BuzzFeed has a major role to play in the coming years
producing great journalism and compelling entertainment[...] There is a huge
opportunity to be the leading news source for the social, mobile world."

The comment by danso in this thread highlights the problem with this dream
pretty well:

>>> "I kind of wish that HN would remove its blanket ban of the Buzzfeed
domain. Their longform section has as great of HN-likable original content as
any other legit site"

They have a strong brand perception they will need to overcome if they truly
want to become a trusted news source. They've been very successful at becoming
an ubiquitous and constant presence across my Facebook news feed, but I've
never seen anything beyond the standard lists.

I read a lot of longform content, but I never considered BuzzFeed as a source
due to its reputation as a pusher of repurposed Reddit threads and "viral"
content. I probably owe it a second look

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jonathanjaeger
This is an aside from Buzzfeed, but I listen to a ridiculous podcast hosted by
comedian Chelsea Peretti who happens to be Jonah Peretti's sister. He visited
the show one time, so if you want a respite from the usual tech podcast
schedule give this a listen: [http://feralaudio.com/32-the-case-of-the-three-
gramas/](http://feralaudio.com/32-the-case-of-the-three-gramas/)

You'll also discover they had a viral hit with blackpeopleloveus.com from back
in the day, if you didn't know that already. So Jonah's viral chops pre-date
HuffPo.

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danso
Those traffic numbers are really impressive...aside from their popularity, I
think Buzzfeed is probably the content site that actually _gets_ the value of
an efficient CMS. It's easy to dismiss them as being nothing but listicles,
but lots of sites have tried to do that and don't come close to the well-
thought out finesse of Buzzfeed.

On a related note, I kind of wish that HN would remove its blanket ban of the
Buzzfeed domain. Their longform section has as great of HN-likable original
content as any other legit site:
[http://www.buzzfeed.com/longform](http://www.buzzfeed.com/longform)

Users should still exercise the right to flag the Buzzfeed list crap off of
HN...but let's face it, with the numbers at Buzzfeed claims, the HN bump would
merely be a blip for them.

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AVTizzle
Funny... The whole time I was reading this I couldn't help compare it to
Ballmer's last re-org call-to-arms letter. I only understood maybe 5% of
Ballmer's memo... This one actually got me excited for the future of Buzzfeed.

