5 ms·

I wish Buzzfeed only had articles like this.

by bshimmin 12y ago

sergiotapia 12y ago
Why, people enjoy the other types of articles - why should they not cater to them as well?
- meritt 12y ago
  Because we associate BuzzFeed with bullshit clickbait spam. It makes it difficult for an article to reach the right audience when you have such a large amount of negative association with a particular brand. It'd be like if the supermarket tabloids starting include well-written and legitimate content. It's going to take a substantial amount of work to win over the millions of people who view them exclusively as a tabloid, which is exactly how we view BuzzFeed today.
  - bshimmin 12y ago
    Exactly. I don't even know how you'd find this article on Buzzfeed - the homepage is so obnoxiously cluttered with vapidness ("21 Hashtags All Curvy Girls Really Need") I only lasted about five seconds. It's like a parody of everything that's awful, only it's real.
    - mcintyre1994 12y ago
      If you want a parody of the parody then clickhole.com is awesome - it's the sibling site to The Onion.
    - zo1 12y ago
      Just an FYI: Currently, this article is on the front page of buzzfeed. Perhaps, for a brief time, we've made a genuinely good and interesting article bubble up their internal rankings?
  - prawn 12y ago
    There are countless efforts to reach people with this sort of information. Official medical sources, highbrow papers, trashy sites. What's to say that this isn't the best option to reach a certain segment and that, as a bonus, it reached beyond that? Buzzfeed may well be a Trojan to get better content to those typically reading vapid junk? Or, more likely, a way of building a financially-secure publication from trashy beginnings.
    - bshimmin 12y ago
      Do you really believe this? If Buzzfeed can achieve financial security by creating an audience who enjoy feeble drivel ("54 Things You Probably Didn't Know About 'Gossip Girl'"), surely if they then start replacing that material with long-form, well-written, thought-provoking content (like this article), they run the risk of losing that audience? It seems to me that the people who want to see 27 pictures of Beyoncé with staccato-sentenced captions - and haven't grown sick of this type of content yet - probably don't ever want to read a long article about something more important than Paris Kardashian.
      - prawn 12y ago
        Yes, I really believe what I said: That rather than just vapid trash, I'd prefer seeing something occasionally informative in there for that market. That monetising first through listicles in order to fundraise for more serious efforts could well be a valid strategy. If you're Buzzfeed, and you're offering a bit of both, you can't really lose. You have the daily visitors reading their listicles and occasionally stumbling across something premium, and you have other markets who don't enter via the front page, but follow viral links from aggregators like HN or Reddit. Unless a front page is saturated with "ugh boring!!1" content, I don't know that there'd be a risk with their existing market. One side of the fence gets slightly more educational content. The other gets more quality content, propped up by tabloid junk.
- UrMomReadsHN 12y ago
  BuzzFeed is a content farm that steals other people's work and reposts it without permission or credit. At least that's what I've heard. Here's a random example - http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/culturebox/2013/09/buzzfeed_steals_photographs_one_photographer_s_angry_response.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/culturebox/2013/09/...
danso 12y ago
BuzzFeed is reportedly profitable and growing quickly...if it were to just publish massive, obviously-valuable stories...well, the first thing from a software development perspective, they would've never had the highly-refined production process and CMS they have now...which, among other things, allows them to efficiently distribute to many eyeballs stories big and small. And of course, the second consequence of being only a "reputable" publisher...they would've never even had a known name. I wish I could name all the many other news/story startups that have promised "just the good stuff" but have failed (Byliner comes to mind)...except they all quit so quickly that it's hard to even remember them. I appreciate BuzzFeed's strategy as a content-provider and a technology company. And when it comes to actually reading their site, I have an easy tip: The more boring the headline, the better the content.
jagger27 12y ago
Good thing we have HN to filter the trash out for us.
- kvee 12y ago
  It seems like http://www.buzzfeed.com/ideas http://www.buzzfeed.com/ideas does a pretty good job of it too (I'm new to the site but was inspired by the "easy tip" above to search out some good content)

I wish Buzzfeed only had articles like this.

sergiotapia 12y ago

Why, people enjoy the other types of articles - why should they not cater to them as well?

meritt 12y ago
Because we associate BuzzFeed with bullshit clickbait spam. It makes it difficult for an article to reach the right audience when you have such a large amount of negative association with a particular brand. It'd be like if the supermarket tabloids starting include well-written and legitimate content. It's going to take a substantial amount of work to win over the millions of people who view them exclusively as a tabloid, which is exactly how we view BuzzFeed today.
- bshimmin 12y ago
  Exactly. I don't even know how you'd find this article on Buzzfeed - the homepage is so obnoxiously cluttered with vapidness ("21 Hashtags All Curvy Girls Really Need") I only lasted about five seconds. It's like a parody of everything that's awful, only it's real.
  - mcintyre1994 12y ago
    If you want a parody of the parody then clickhole.com is awesome - it's the sibling site to The Onion.
  - zo1 12y ago
    Just an FYI: Currently, this article is on the front page of buzzfeed. Perhaps, for a brief time, we've made a genuinely good and interesting article bubble up their internal rankings?
- prawn 12y ago
  There are countless efforts to reach people with this sort of information. Official medical sources, highbrow papers, trashy sites. What's to say that this isn't the best option to reach a certain segment and that, as a bonus, it reached beyond that? Buzzfeed may well be a Trojan to get better content to those typically reading vapid junk? Or, more likely, a way of building a financially-secure publication from trashy beginnings.
  - bshimmin 12y ago
    Do you really believe this? If Buzzfeed can achieve financial security by creating an audience who enjoy feeble drivel ("54 Things You Probably Didn't Know About 'Gossip Girl'"), surely if they then start replacing that material with long-form, well-written, thought-provoking content (like this article), they run the risk of losing that audience? It seems to me that the people who want to see 27 pictures of Beyoncé with staccato-sentenced captions - and haven't grown sick of this type of content yet - probably don't ever want to read a long article about something more important than Paris Kardashian.
    - prawn 12y ago
      Yes, I really believe what I said: That rather than just vapid trash, I'd prefer seeing something occasionally informative in there for that market. That monetising first through listicles in order to fundraise for more serious efforts could well be a valid strategy. If you're Buzzfeed, and you're offering a bit of both, you can't really lose. You have the daily visitors reading their listicles and occasionally stumbling across something premium, and you have other markets who don't enter via the front page, but follow viral links from aggregators like HN or Reddit. Unless a front page is saturated with "ugh boring!!1" content, I don't know that there'd be a risk with their existing market. One side of the fence gets slightly more educational content. The other gets more quality content, propped up by tabloid junk.
UrMomReadsHN 12y ago
BuzzFeed is a content farm that steals other people's work and reposts it without permission or credit. At least that's what I've heard. Here's a random example - http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/culturebox/2013/09/buzzfeed_steals_photographs_one_photographer_s_angry_response.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/culturebox/2013/09/...

danso 12y ago

BuzzFeed is reportedly profitable and growing quickly...if it were to just publish massive, obviously-valuable stories...well, the first thing from a software development perspective, they would've never had the highly-refined production process and CMS they have now...which, among other things, allows them to efficiently distribute to many eyeballs stories big and small. And of course, the second consequence of being only a "reputable" publisher...they would've never even had a known name. I wish I could name all the many other news/story startups that have promised "just the good stuff" but have failed (Byliner comes to mind)...except they all quit so quickly that it's hard to even remember them. I appreciate BuzzFeed's strategy as a content-provider and a technology company. And when it comes to actually reading their site, I have an easy tip: The more boring the headline, the better the content.

jagger27 12y ago

Good thing we have HN to filter the trash out for us.

kvee 12y ago
It seems like http://www.buzzfeed.com/ideas http://www.buzzfeed.com/ideas does a pretty good job of it too (I'm new to the site but was inspired by the "easy tip" above to search out some good content)