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Omits one of the most interesting facts about BuzzFeed: it was started by a member of MIT's Media Lab [0]. It all made sense once I started viewing it as the re
by kough 11y ago
Omits one of the most interesting facts about BuzzFeed: it was started by a member of MIT's Media Lab [0]. It all made sense once I started viewing it as the result of research into content virality. Internally I think of it more like a "profitable social/cultural experiment" than "media company".
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/business/media/at-buzzfeed-the-significant-and-the-silly.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/business/media/at-buzzfeed...
- cylinder 11y agoThe whole thing about the "science of viral content" has always seemed like fluffy nonsense to me to make the stakeholders feel like they are part of something "higher brow" and more complex than just a spammy blog.
- GuiA 11y agoTo be fair though the "science" of anything social always seems like fluffy nonsense made to make spaghetti throwing on the wall seem like methodical, analytical research.
- hderms 11y agoIf your measurements are good enough you can make a methodology out of throwing spaghetti at a wall.
- tedmiston 11y agoRelated: "Is Computer Science Science?" https://www.cs.mtu.edu/~john/jenning.pdf https://www.cs.mtu.edu/~john/jenning.pdf > What is your profession? Computer science. > Oh? Is that a science? Sure, it is the science of information processes and their interactions with the world. > I’ll accept that what you do is technology; but not science. Science deals with fundamental laws of nature. Computers are manmade. Their principles come from other fields such as physics and electronics engineering. ...
- jcoffland 11y agoScience is manmade and man is of nature. It's true that most programmers do not do computer science but CS as a science does exist. CS is the study of data structures and algorithms. CS can be viewed as a branch of mathematics but it is much more process oriented than most math disciplines.
- Atheros 11y agoIf aliens ever land they're going to have the exact same sorting algorithms we have. Their history of CPUs will be the same as ours.
- njonsson 11y agoUnless they chose the ternary path. It’s closer to base e and therefore closer to optimal than binary.
- jcoffland 11y agoUnless they have quantum computers or something completely different that we have not thought of. There's a good chance that our conception of computer science, or even science for that mater, is completely unique in the universe, like a snowflake. Science is merely a model humans use to understand the world around them, with limited success.
- LeifCarrotson 11y agoSpammy blogs just wither and die. They do not produce a huge company like Buzzfeed.
- tedmiston 11y agoI felt similarly until I saw Fletcher Heisler (TrackMaven) give the talk Analyzing social media data with Python at PyOhio '14. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeSUUJFiHFY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeSUUJFiHFY Code + Jupyter Notebook: https://github.com/fheisler/pyohio2014 https://github.com/fheisler/pyohio2014
- xlm1717 11y agoNot even that profitable, as another commenter linked to: http://nymag.com/following/2016/04/buzzfeed-halves-revenue-target-for-2016.html http://nymag.com/following/2016/04/buzzfeed-halves-revenue-t...
- BlahBoy3 11y agoHuh, didn't even know this. So this is why BuzzFeed comes across as ADD in website form...
- chipgap98 11y agoYeah I always kinda wrote off BuzzFeed as listicles for people who can't take the time to actually read news (which it definitely still is in some sense) but then I saw Jonah Peretti speak [0] and I've been a lot more interested in it since then [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V82JTa3iJfk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V82JTa3iJfk
- steveklabnik 11y agoSee also http://www.datawranglers.com/negations/issues/96w/96w_peretti.html http://www.datawranglers.com/negations/issues/96w/96w_perett... , note the author. Negations was a humanities journal.
- kough 11y agoVery interesting -- thanks for the pointer
- Chinjut 11y agoWho was also a co-founder of The Huffington Post and, most interestingly to me, is the brother of comedian Chelsea Peretti.
- cha5m 11y agoAn experiment? Hardly. At least certainly not any more. They use data to deliver their cancerous content, just in the same way coke uses AB flavor testing to determine what the most addictive coke formula is. Calling them "scientists" performing "experiments" seems far too dignified.
- PascalsMugger 11y agoOriginal coke. That's the addictive one. New coke didn't work.