Thousands of years from now, historians and archeologists will be scouring Internet archives, and they’re going to find BuzzFeed. And it’s going to be really embarrassing.
BuzzFeed is a self-described news and entertainment company — and one of the more gaudy things on the Internet today. Its business model is to create viral, feel-good clickbait content, stuff that will be shared and reposted millions of times across social media platforms.
It takes many forms: There are quizzes, which are great if you’ve ever wondered which sandwich best describes you. There are tons of life hacks, and sometimes, real news stories. But the ideal form of the BuzzFeed article is the listicle — a literal point-by-point list of usually vapid and useless information filled with amusing gifs and images regularly stolen from Reddit.
They have titles like “The 30 Most Fantastic Skating Outfits of the ‘90s” and they are the foundation of BuzzFeed’s media empire. Aside from the many accusations of plagiarism, the style has been criticized as lazy.
Even under criticism, BuzzFeed is immensely popular. It’s one of the most shared sites on Facebook and is the premier place on the Internet to waste time.
A quick trip to its about page — which isn’t easy to find — and the whole thing makes a lot more sense. In the video on that page, the same phrase keeps popping up: “content-driven social advertising.”
Slightly more prodding brings you closer to the truth. Years ago, BuzzFeed discovered how to manufacture viral content, and it has been using that knowledge to make you buy things. It’s not news or entertainment; it’s a brilliant advertising machine.
The formula they developed to create viral content is pretty simple. They gather information and pictures that are either really relatable or have a high potential for going viral, i.e. things that are funny, outlandish or make people feel good. They organize this information in the most readable form to create relatable and noncontroversial articles that get millions of views.
The marketing aspect of this is that BuzzFeed is willing to sell a slice of the action to whoever wants the Internet to be full of “13 reasons why everyone should buy their product.” Companies and other interests write their own listicles and, subtly or not, promote their products/goals through BuzzFeed’s viral content generator.
It’s impossible to deny BuzzFeed’s success. It’s supposed to make $200 million this year — impressive, for what amounts to a catalog of stolen cat pictures.
In these days when revenues and readerships are falling, media outlets everywhere are turning to sponsored content for survival.
But as sympathetic as I am to the media outlets using sponsored content to get by, they’re putting themselves in a precarious situation. BuzzFeed’s revenue stream may be tempting, but the people behind it have no ethics or integrity to sacrifice.
[Alec Carver is a UF journalism freshman. His columns appear on Fridays. A version of this column ran on page 7 on 2/21/2014 under the headline “BuzzFeed, sponsored content trending"]
