With cute dog pictures galore, BuzzFeed’s creator Jonah Peretti brought his website’s signature charm to UF Thursday night.
Peretti spoke at the Curtis M. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts about the science behind going viral and how he rapidly rose from a college student to the CEO of one of the Internet’s most popular social media sites.
“The social web is bigger than Google,” Peretti said. “It’s bigger than anything.”
Accent Speaker’s Bureau brought Peretti to campus, paying him a $40,000 honorarium for his talk. Accent chairman Daniel Landesberg said about 500 people attended.
He also talked about the blurring line between entertainment and news as well as long-form journalism’s comeback in the digital world.
When it comes to finding viral success, he said it’s not enough to have a good idea — half the time has to be spent thinking of how to promote it.
Peretti ended his talk with a piece of advice for those trying to become content creators.
“People are so complex they actually are literally crazy,” he said. “We are all literally crazy. Embrace it.”
Yarden Cohen, a 20-year-old UF telecommunication sophomore, said she enjoyed how casual Peretti acted while speaking.
“He was extremely informative and made it really student friendly,” Cohen said.
[A version of this story ran on page 1 on 3/21/2014 under the headline "BuzzFeed creator tells UF the secret to going viral"]
Founder and CEO of Buzzfeed Jonah Peretti spoke Thursday evening in the Curtis M. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. Peretti discussed the evolution of the media landscape, journalism and his personal career.
