4 ms·

Quality wins in the long run and BuzzFeed is not focused on quality. Their company should be called Linkbait, Inc. They're the problem, not the solution. I'd be

by staunch 12y ago

Quality wins in the long run and BuzzFeed is not focused on quality. Their company should be called Linkbait, Inc. They're the problem, not the solution. I'd bet against this if I could.

freshhawk 12y ago
If I believed quality won in the long run I would too, but I think this is a smart investment.
- pkfrank 12y ago
  I think that BuzzFeed's quality will drastically improve in time. To me, they're building a platform for journalism/media. They might be in the nascent stage where LinkBait is a dominant strategy, but I'd bet that high-quality journalism will become an increasingly integral part of BuzzFeed's business as it matures.
  - afafsd 12y ago
    Why should they succeed at making money by putting out high-quality journalism where others have failed? Quality journalism doesn't pay in a dollars in to dollars out basis. A carefully-researched article that takes a week-long trip to the Congo to write will get no more and possibly fewer clicks than "Ten Amazing Shark Facts That Will Make You Shit Your Pants" that takes twenty minutes on wikipedia.
    - pkfrank 12y ago
      Well, perhaps the linkbait articles that you describe will help offset the cost of eventually producing high-quality journalism.
  - freshhawk 12y ago
    That's an optimistic view, especially as they are moving swiftly in the opposite direction with their "native advertising" push. That's why they are an attractive investment, and that is anti-journalism.
    - Torn 12y ago
      He might be right though. They're probably hedging their bets here. They have more in-depth content but I imagine it's a tiny part of their overall traffic: http://www.buzzfeed.com/longform http://www.buzzfeed.com/longform
  - billmalarky 12y ago
    That's the path Buzzfeed has purported to take since the beginning, and as much as I dislike their current offering, they have struck true to that path. I remember when buzzfeed first came out and it was nothing but the lists of images stolen from reddit (pretty similar to 9gag). Now they have a decent amount of original content, and I suspect their goal is to improve the quality of content over time. That said I think they will always be more entertainment focused but there isn't anything necessarily wrong with that.
pizza 12y ago
What does "wins" mean? Makes money?
morgante 12y ago
Disrupters rarely start with quality. Mini mills were strictly inferior to integrated steel mills, web-based software was less powerful than desktop software, digital photography was inferior to film. (Many of these are from Clay Christensen.) The history of progress & technology is of fast, simple, low-end solutions getting better over time to the point where they're strictly superior to the legacy alternatives. I have little doubt that Buzzfeed, or another upstart media company, will someday be able to do "real" journalism better and faster than the NYT. (If anyone else believes this, come help me make it happen: http://www.cafe.com/developers http://www.cafe.com/developers)
- idlewords 12y ago
  Journalism is not a technology. It serves an important civic and moral purpose that isn't accounted for at all when you frame it as yet another case of 'disruption'.
  - morgante 12y ago
    I absolutely agree that it serves an important civic & moral purpose, but that is precisely why journalism needs to adopt new technology to reach people on their level.
    - jmathai 12y ago
      I'm not seeing how BuzzFeed is adopting new technology nor how adopting new technology is what journalism needs. I see BuzzFeed as a company that's found a way to exploit people's pull towards instant gratification. But it serves a terrible purpose which has short term benefits for the company but little benefit for others. They're similar to payday loan companies. Many argue that they're meeting a market need. They maybe but they're doing it in an exploitative way. That's bad for everyone.
  - madeofpalk 12y ago
    BuzzFeed isnt journalism, and I don't think anyone actually thinks it is.
  - 12y ago
rtpg 12y ago
buzzfeed creates a lot of listicle contentless articles, but they do also have some well-written pieces. A recent piece on the AUMF and its history was an excellent read http://www.buzzfeed.com/gregorydjohnsen/60-words-and-a-war-without-end-the-untold-story-of-the-most http://www.buzzfeed.com/gregorydjohnsen/60-words-and-a-war-w...
- walterbell 12y ago
  What is the percentage of "journalistic penance" articles relative to listicles and ads-pretending-to-be-journalism? Is BuzzFeed seeing cross-article conversion from listicle traffic to quality-journalism articles, or is there a subsite/index where a separate audience is being aggregated for the quality articles?

by staunch 12y ago

Quality wins in the long run and BuzzFeed is not focused on quality. Their company should be called Linkbait, Inc. They're the problem, not the solution. I'd bet against this if I could.

freshhawk 12y ago

If I believed quality won in the long run I would too, but I think this is a smart investment.

pkfrank 12y ago
I think that BuzzFeed's quality will drastically improve in time. To me, they're building a platform for journalism/media. They might be in the nascent stage where LinkBait is a dominant strategy, but I'd bet that high-quality journalism will become an increasingly integral part of BuzzFeed's business as it matures.
- afafsd 12y ago
  Why should they succeed at making money by putting out high-quality journalism where others have failed? Quality journalism doesn't pay in a dollars in to dollars out basis. A carefully-researched article that takes a week-long trip to the Congo to write will get no more and possibly fewer clicks than "Ten Amazing Shark Facts That Will Make You Shit Your Pants" that takes twenty minutes on wikipedia.
  - pkfrank 12y ago
    Well, perhaps the linkbait articles that you describe will help offset the cost of eventually producing high-quality journalism.
- freshhawk 12y ago
  That's an optimistic view, especially as they are moving swiftly in the opposite direction with their "native advertising" push. That's why they are an attractive investment, and that is anti-journalism.
  - Torn 12y ago
    He might be right though. They're probably hedging their bets here. They have more in-depth content but I imagine it's a tiny part of their overall traffic: http://www.buzzfeed.com/longform http://www.buzzfeed.com/longform
- billmalarky 12y ago
  That's the path Buzzfeed has purported to take since the beginning, and as much as I dislike their current offering, they have struck true to that path. I remember when buzzfeed first came out and it was nothing but the lists of images stolen from reddit (pretty similar to 9gag). Now they have a decent amount of original content, and I suspect their goal is to improve the quality of content over time. That said I think they will always be more entertainment focused but there isn't anything necessarily wrong with that.

pizza 12y ago

What does "wins" mean? Makes money?

morgante 12y ago

Disrupters rarely start with quality. Mini mills were strictly inferior to integrated steel mills, web-based software was less powerful than desktop software, digital photography was inferior to film. (Many of these are from Clay Christensen.) The history of progress & technology is of fast, simple, low-end solutions getting better over time to the point where they're strictly superior to the legacy alternatives. I have little doubt that Buzzfeed, or another upstart media company, will someday be able to do "real" journalism better and faster than the NYT. (If anyone else believes this, come help me make it happen: http://www.cafe.com/developers http://www.cafe.com/developers)

idlewords 12y ago
Journalism is not a technology. It serves an important civic and moral purpose that isn't accounted for at all when you frame it as yet another case of 'disruption'.
- morgante 12y ago
  I absolutely agree that it serves an important civic & moral purpose, but that is precisely why journalism needs to adopt new technology to reach people on their level.
  - jmathai 12y ago
    I'm not seeing how BuzzFeed is adopting new technology nor how adopting new technology is what journalism needs. I see BuzzFeed as a company that's found a way to exploit people's pull towards instant gratification. But it serves a terrible purpose which has short term benefits for the company but little benefit for others. They're similar to payday loan companies. Many argue that they're meeting a market need. They maybe but they're doing it in an exploitative way. That's bad for everyone.
- madeofpalk 12y ago
  BuzzFeed isnt journalism, and I don't think anyone actually thinks it is.
- 12y ago

rtpg 12y ago

buzzfeed creates a lot of listicle contentless articles, but they do also have some well-written pieces. A recent piece on the AUMF and its history was an excellent read http://www.buzzfeed.com/gregorydjohnsen/60-words-and-a-war-without-end-the-untold-story-of-the-most http://www.buzzfeed.com/gregorydjohnsen/60-words-and-a-war-w...

walterbell 12y ago
What is the percentage of "journalistic penance" articles relative to listicles and ads-pretending-to-be-journalism? Is BuzzFeed seeing cross-article conversion from listicle traffic to quality-journalism articles, or is there a subsite/index where a separate audience is being aggregated for the quality articles?