Folks might not understand the context of this milestone. I worked as a web developer at newspapers from 2006-2014. As the industry collapsed and publications s

Folks might not understand the context of this milestone. I worked as a web developer at newspapers from 2006-2014. As the industry collapsed and publications scrambled to make use of the new social web, everybody was trying to figure out what to do. Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, Vice, and the NYT web team were closely watched as the future of the industry. David Carr was a thought leader back then and wrote a lot about Buzzfeed, especially on Twitter. The very idea of clickbait aggregation that polluted the journalism sites you see now came from that era. Buzzfeed in particular perfected the recipe of blending garbage posts with actual news to increase pageviews and fund the journalism. I think the reason the story is getting so much attention is that Buzzfeed was really arrogant about it all. They had regular features pointing out how great they were and how the rest of journalism was doomed. Same with Vice. Mainstream outlets are probably enjoying a little schadenfreude right now.