(Work in Progress)
About
BuzzFeed[1] is a viral content site founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti.
History
BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti had previously been involved with viral web content while studying at the MIT Media Lab. In January 2001, he attempted to order custom Nike sneakers with the word “sweatshop” embroidered on them. After his request was denied, his shared the email correspondence online, which quickly went viral. He later co-founded The Huffington Post.
[researching]
Features
[researching]
Controversy
FeedBuzz
On April 5th, 2013, BuzzFeed’s tech vertical FWD posted an oral history of Weird Twitter, containing a number of interviews with Twitter users about their participation in the loosely aligned group of comedic accounts. Two days later, Nate Lamagna, who goes by the handle @vrunt[9], launched the parody blog FeedBuzz.[10] That day, he made the first two posts parodying BuzzFeed’s stereotypical listicle content: 7 Unexpected Breakfast Fails[11] and Top Five Bad Search Engines Throughout History.[12]
Lamagna invited his Twitter followers to contribute, resulting in more than 400 satirical articles within two months, including pieces by Something Awful writer Jon Hendren, Toothpaste for DInner cartoonist Drew and #ExilePitbull co-creator David Thorpe. In April 2013, FeedBuzz was featured in a satirical review on Fishbowl NY.[13] In early June, FeedBuzz was featured on the Daily Dot.[14]
Criticism
Listicles
Related Memes
Aretha’s Hat
Aretha’s Hat is a photoshop meme featuring the bow-style hat worn by singer-songwriter Aretha Franklin during Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration on January 20th, 2009. That day, a photo of the singer wearing the hat was posted to BuzzFeed and commenters began to photoshop the hat onto other photos of humans and animals. Within hours, BuzzFeed made a second post highlighting some of the submitted photoshopped images.
Horsemaning
Horsemaning is a photo fad started by BuzzFeed in August 2011. After posting a sepia-toned photo[5] (shown below, left) claiming the forced perspective photography had come from the 1920s, the article called it “the new ”/memes/planking">planking and invited readers to take their own photos. However, the astroturfing led writers from Gawker[6] and Rocketboom[7] to criticize BuzzFeed for attempting to force a meme.
Tobias Fünke’s Blanket
Tobias Fünke’s Blanket is a photoshop meme that spread on 4chan and Tumblr after a behind-the-scenes photo of actor David Cross wearing a blanket on set was leaked on BuzzFeed on August 9th, 2012, who highlighted a series of photoshopped images based on this strange outfit the following day.
Traffic
As of July 2013, BuzzFeed reaches more than 60 million unique visitors per month.[2] The site has an Alexa[3] score of 85 in the United States and 315 globally. BuzzFeed also has a Quantcast[4] rank of 36 in the U.S.
Search Interest
External References
[3]Alexa – Buzzfeed.com
[4]Quantcast – Buzzfeed.com
[5]BuzzFeed – Horsemaning: The New Planking
[6]Gawker – Death to the Internet Craze
[7]Dembot – Horsemaning A Forced Meme? A day in the life of Meme Research
[8]BuzzFeed – Weird Twitter: The Oral History
[11]FeedBuzz – 7 Unexpected Breakfast Fails
[12]FeedBuzz – Top Five Bad Search Engines Throughout History
[13]Fishbowl NY – Forget BuzzFeed -- FeedBuzz Is Where It’s At
[14]The Daily Dot – Behind FeedBuzz, Weird Twitter’s blistering BuzzFeed parody
[15]Smart Planet – How will business news fit among BuzzFeed’s LOL listicles?
[16]International Business Times – I Can Haz Journalism: The Listicle (And The GIF) As Storytelling Devices
[17]Digiday – 9 Incredible Examples of The BuzzFeed Backlash
[18]Bloomberg – Buzzfeed Raises $19M for Listicle Empire
[19]The Daily Dot – McSweeney’s challenges BuzzFeed to listicle-off, loses
[20]The Daily Dot – What it takes to get banned from BuzzFeed
[21]Eater – Here Is a Listicle of 43 Suggested BuzzFeed Food Listicles
[22]McSweeney’s – Suggested BuzzFeed Articles