Analyzing BuzzFeed

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The Rise of BuzzFeed

There are countless online-news sites in today’s world. But one that’s been able to distinguish itself from others and gain rapid popularity is BuzzFeed. Buzzfeed has only been around for 8 years but it has come a long way in revolutionizing how journalism is implemented and shared across the internet. At its heart, Buzzfeed is a social news and entertainment company but it has a variety of services to offer. It’s a popular website for sharing articles and it has a strong social media base that’s used to enhance the reading experience. This blog will illustrate how BuzzFeed’s presence through social media has improved the company’s user engagement and popularity.

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The Power of Sharing

BuzzFeed is a site that’s hard not to notice. One of the best ways it reaches mass audiences is through sharing.  For example, I decided to go on the site two years ago when my Facebook friends kept sharing articles. I was curious about what the site offered since it kept appearing on my timeline. This tactic works for the company because if you’re not a regular viewer, chances are you’ll visit the site based upon friends sharing the articles. The company’s founder, Jonah Peretti tries to capitalize on the function of sharing. When he was interviewed by M Magazine in 2013 he said, “Sharing becomes the replacement for the broadcast pipe or the printing press or any other traditional method. It’s normal people, sharing something they like with their friends.” This ties into what we learned about spreadablitly in the media. Besides publishing stories, the company sets goals of spreading the content across a range of social media channels to gain a large viewer base. Facebook and Twitter are the most popular accounts that people share BuzzFeed’s content on because they’re usually the accounts that people have the most friend connections. 

In Mark Deuze’s article on “Media, Culture & Society,” he states how we are increasingly willing to live and share in a commercialized world. This demonstrates how changing technologies and online news like BuzzFeed can steer people to living in a “Mediapolis” environment. This relates to Peretti’s goal for BuzzFeed to be a hub where people can share with friends online like they do in the real world. 

Below are examples of when I shared BuzzFeed articles on Twitter and Facebook. When I read something that amuses me on BuzzFeed, I occasionally share it because I want my friends to be entertained as well. 

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Diversity of Social Media

BuzzFeed has positioned itself to always being a part of new and popular social media. Besides the company’s dominant Facebook and Twitter accounts, it also has a range of accounts on YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr. Having a website is just the root to all the social media branches. For example, the company has an overall Twitter account but has several other Twitter accounts under the BuzzFeed name like BuzzFeed Food, Buzzfeed Travel, BuzzFeed Style, BuzzFeed Entertainment, BuzzFeed Celeb, BuzzFeed News and more. It’s branded itself as one big site that’s made up of little communities that are targeted to people’s inherent interests. Through this tactic, the company enhances their convergence by providing more engagement opportunities for viewers.

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Influence of Participatory Culture

BuzzFeed strives to get viewers involved through several ways. They use a two-way flow of information to enhance viewer’s experiences. Having people involved with media content creates a greater identification of the audience. In other words, BuzzFeed breaks the barrier of the traditional one-way flow of information to give viewers more power. This aligns with Jay Rosen’s article “The People Formerly Known as the Audience” because it states how “people formerly known as the audience are simply the public made realer, less fictional and more able”. What gets me to stay on the home page is not just the articles, but the fact that I can take quizzes, polls and rank stories that revolve around topics I’m interested in.

One thing unique to BuzzFeed is how readers can categorize an article. At the bottom of the articles are categories of how you feel about it. So readers can categorize an article as lol, win, fail, omg, wtf, cute or trashy. The company wants to know what people think of their articles so they employ this clever tactic to see what categories readers put stories in. These categories are represented at the top of the website so people can click on them to view articles listed in them. When I visit the website I like to click on the “lol” icon because I’m usually looking for a good laugh. 

BuzzFeed also encourages users to send them content that increases participatory culture. For instance one of my past colleagues was featured in a BuzzFeed story that dealt with Harry Potter themed Snapchats. All she had to do was send in her pictures to the company and BuzzFeed selected the best ones to use for the story. Several of her pictures were chosen and you can see them here. Her pictures are from 8-15.

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BuzzFeed’s Growth in Web 2.0

BuzzFeed is a prime example of Web 2.0 because it combines various technologies to enhance its journalistic field. The company is constantly churning out various types of media and encouraging user-generated content. This aligns with Axwell Bruns article with journalism in the social media age because news is constantly being read and shared through new media technologies. BuzzFeed is an example of what the article says about how new journalism is a “reconstitution of the overall news hole through collective social media information sharing activities” (Bruns 2012). 

One tactic that BuzzFeed has been able to capitalize on is with using Memes and Gifs on their social media accounts and company website. Memes and Gifs have become very popular in the past couple of years and BuzzFeed was the site that incorporated them into their stories regularly. BuzzFeed is known for its humor so it effectively uses Memes and Gifs to enhance that humor. Most people visit BuzzFeed for light reading so the incorporation of Memes and Gifs just makes it easier and more entertaining for people to stay on the site. BuzzFeed’s basic formula is using memes/gifs, a cleverly captioned title and using “listacles” to increase entertainment and drive more viewers to the site. 

Image Sourced from: http://www.buzzfeed.com/whitneyjefferson/best-celebrity-memes-of-2013#.hqq2XP7pe

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Identifying the Fragmented Audience

Since we’re now in a new media age, people are viewing content through a variety of technologies. The most popular are with phones, laptops and desktops. To distinguish BuzzFeed from other sites, founder Jonah Peretti came up with two audiences for the company to target. The first is the “Bored at Work” audience. These users are the people at work who are constantly in front of computers. He uses some of the stories from the site to entertain this audience because it alleviates boredom and connects with their current frustrations.

The second audience is the “Bored in Line”. This is the mobile phone audience and the one that shares the most. This led to the company enabling more ways to view content (BuzzFeed app for example) to make it more accessible to a wide range of people.

Image sourced from: http://www.buzzfeed.com/tools/mobile-ios

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Mastering Viral Content

When it comes to getting media content to go viral, BuzzFeed is no stranger to this. Some articles the company posted like 15 things you didn’t know your iPhone could do had over 16.2 million page views. A popular quiz, What career should you actually have had over 5 million shares and is BuzzFeed’s most shared quiz. One of the company’s most viral posts was in 2012 with 13 simple steps to get you through a rough day. This viral content relates to what new media has established with spreadablitly across the public sphere.

BuzzFeed is able to keep making this viral content because they don’t have the stereotypical 9-5 job. In this digital age media content is continually being delivered no matter the time of day. BuzzFeed in a sense is a 24/7 work environment.  Because they’ve established themselves as a leader in news, pop culture and entertainment, they’re always monitoring trends and preparing new material. This aligns with Melissa Gregg’s article “Works Intimacy,” because she talked about how the work place is changing to become a place where it follows us outside and how the barrier between work and personal life becomes harder to distinguish.

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This video is an example of how BuzzFeed branches into various types of media. The company’s YouTube channel is popular with 5.5 million subscribers. Most videos are geared towards entertainment and this kitten video is a prime example of that. The video is about an older cat narrating a letter to the new cat in the house. This video is popular by having over 21 million views. As you can see this kind of video is what you’d also find on the website but the company uses their YouTube channel as a way to increase audience engagement and viewership.

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BuzzFeed is Here and Staying

From the examples and concepts I’ve provided throughout this blog, it’s evident that BuzzFeed is a power player in the news and entertainments field because of the effective online strategies it uses in the new mediated world.