BuzzFeed Takes The Cash, Looks To Expansion
Off-Site Won't Mean Off-Brand
Launched in 2006, BuzzFeed is perhaps the quintessential news
and entertainment website of the social media age. While it began as a simple
website for tracking viral content across the web, it is now a content creation
behemoth with almost four hundred posts a day ranging from video to
investigative journalism to its ever-famous lists and quizzes.
The website now seems to be looking to take a further step
onto the international media stage, having secured $50 million in investment
from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The website states that they
intend to use the money to grow their profile as a media brand while maintaining
the flexibility and agility of their start-up roots.
It is this restlessness, this determination to carry the
ambition of a start-up into the body of a global media company, which marks
BuzzFeed’s plans for the spending of its new windfall. One of these is the
expansion of BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, its video content creation arm, which is
planning to produce everything from six second Vine videos to full 20 minute
programmes.
Not as immediately exciting, but perhaps more quietly
revolutionary, is the site’s plan to start producing content for a range of
other platforms like Instagram, Tumblr, and Snapchat. While other news channels
have been realising the value of having a wide social media presence for some
time now, those are almost always seen as a tools for leading readers back to
the main site. This diversification, this reconception of a media company as
something more amorphous, could herald a new era in content creation. It also demonstrates
BuzzFeed’s awareness of the varied opportunities available to those willing to
integrate themselves into a wider variety of platforms. What works on Vine may
not work on Facebook, for instance, and there are extensive monetisation
options available to those willing to adapt content to form in this way.
BuzzFeed has experience in this area already: three quarters
of its revenue comes from BuzzFeed Creative, a division of the company which
produced video and list content for advertisers which imitate the site’s own
highly popular examples of such content. By expanding into platform-specific
content creation, it’s not unlikely that you’ll soon be seeing ads on Instagram
or Snapchat which look an awful lot like that list of ‘Fourteen Kittens Who Just
Can’t Deal With Monday’ that you forwarded to twenty of your friends yesterday.
Douglas is an English Literature graduate who has written about everything from music to food to theatre, now a content creator for Social Media Frontiers. No topic too large or too small. Follow him @DouglasAtSMF.
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BuzzFeed Takes The Cash, Looks To Expansion
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Reviewed by Anonymous
on
Monday, August 11, 2014
Rating:
Anonymous
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