Bloomberg is at the center of a storm over its reporters’ use of the company’s terminals to track customers. The incident has been somewhat overblown — but the underlying issue of news and data platforms has not. Read more at paidContent »
Users will now get their own vertical on BuzzFeed, where they can submit according to their “Cat Power.” Read more at paidContent »
From PaidContent Live 2013, we brought you five different entrepreneurs who talked about ways in which they are changing up business models for media and the ways in which people consume content. Read more at paidContent »
“Native advertising” is on the lips of everyone in publishing and advertising these days. Blogger and skeptic Felix Salmon asked executives from BuzzFeed and Forbes what it really means. Read more at paidContent »
New media incubator and venture firm Betaworks is increasingly morphing into an operating company and it’s got a new rapid development launch approach that will deliver five social media products in five weeks. What’ll stick? Read more at paidContent »
The world is ending for traditional media companies, but new players who ignore the rules, and bet on mobile, will prevail, argues Huffington Post Co-Founder and Buzzfeed Chairman Kenneth Lerer. Read more at paidContent »
BuzzFeed has become the poster child for what some call sponsored content or “native advertising,” but despite the skills of founder Jonah Peretti, the secret to making ads go viral is not quite as simple as it appears to be. Read more at paidContent »
Newspapers have been a blend of the serious and the entertaining for decades — why is it so surprising that a site like BuzzFeed could broaden its appeal into more serious topics as well as funny cat photos? Read more at paidContent »
Can America’s viral site BuzzFeed succeed in a country where sensationalist journalism already thrives? We’ll soon find out. Read more at paidContent »
Grumpy Cat is the latest internet meme whose fame is growing by the day. The feline’s fame is valuable and her owners and lawyers have filed trademarks to protect it. Read more at paidContent »
Upworthy is attracting attention for its headlines and its viral videos about gay marriage, women’s rights and other social causes. But the site’s real value may be its potential to help the Democrats maintain their lead in social media and big data. Read more at paidContent »
One of the biggest trends in media at the moment is “sponsored content” or what some call “native advertising.” But is it the savior of online media, or just another mirage in the advertising desert? Read more at paidContent »
Existing players in an industry almost always fail to appreciate how disruption will affect them or understand how to adapt to it, Harvard professor Clay Christensen says, and media companies are making all of those same mistakes. Read more at paidContent »
When news shows rely on “viral” videos for their programming, without bothering to even try and verify whether they are real or not, all they do is push their viewers towards the original source of that content. Read more at paidContent »
Google has reiterated a warning to publishers that its ban on links that are designed to enhance a site’s PageRank applies not just to paid links but to sponsored content and advertorial as well. Read more at paidContent »
In its 17 years, Slate has distinguished itself as a publishing innovator and a home for well-written news and ideas. But, until recently, it has been hampered by a lack of technology and a business model. Is that about to change? Read more at paidContent »
The Atlantic caused a furore this week with a piece of sponsored content about the Church of Scientology, which raised a host of questions about the risks of “native advertising” — which many see as the future of online media. Read more at paidContent »
BuzzFeed has been criticized for taking images from other sites such as Reddit without giving credit to the original creator — something that the web’s “remix culture” is making more and more difficult. But BuzzFeed’s desire to create sponsored content makes it more important than ever. Read more at paidContent »
BuzzFeed has had a very good year after earning heaps of funding and expanding its serious news footprint from New York to Washington. Now, the viral site wants a piece of entertainment reporting. Read more at paidContent »
Reddit, the online community that gained fame last year for a Q&A with President Obama, is said to be raising venture funding that could value the company at $400 million — and would give it ammunition to compete with other new-media players such as BuzzFeed and Tumblr. Read more at paidContent »
A new Facebook prank making the rounds lets you turn someone’s account into a memorial page by sending along an email address and a fake obituary. Read more »
BuzzFeed has built the site from just a repository for animated cat GIFs into a substantial media entity, and just raised a new round of financing — and Tumblr also has a fairly deep war-chest and dreams of expansion. And both are aiming at the same targets. Read more at paidContent »
BuzzFeed became a disruptive media force in 2012 by adding serious news to the silly and sleazy stuff it’s long produced. Here are some questions that will determine whether BuzzFeed can shape news in the long run. Read more at paidContent »
Think you can send content on your smartphone that won’t appear elsewhere? Evidence that your Snapchat videos can be retrieved without notifying the sender comes as further proof what people in the digital age are realizing — true online privacy can be hard to come by. Read more »
Viral site BuzzFeed is under criticism for publishing a malicious attack on a cartoonist that contained major factual errors. Editor-in-chief Ben Smith has responded but the site may need to do more in the future if it wants to play in the media big leagues. Read more »
The business success of digital news sites has led more of them to apply their technical wizardry to long-form journalism. BuzzFeed is the latest example. Will its style of feature one days replace magazines like the New Yorker? Read more at paidContent »
More and more publications are turning to “native advertising” as the solution to declining display ad dollars and readers’ ongoing switch to mobile. Will we soon see an advertiser like Tesla paying to include a story in the New York Times? Read more at paidContent »
Viral news site BuzzFeed has selected one-time Spin editor Steve Kandell to oversee its plans to expand its selection of New Yorker-style longform pieces. The move promises more prestige for BuzzFeed but it’s too soon to say if it makes good business sense. Read more at paidContent »
Hurricane Sandy has been on the mind of everyone this past week. Here are some stories about raccoons, Australia, China, baseball and the U.S. post office, that might give you some momentary distraction from what has been a tragic week. Read more »
A Twitter user named @ComfortablySmug has been held up as a villain for posting fake news reports to Twitter, and his identity has been forcibly revealed by BuzzFeed — but is that, and all that it implies, an appropriate punishment for his alleged crimes? Read more »
A New York man who used Twitter to send fake news reports during Hurricane Sandy is one of the city’s biggest jerks. But should he also face criminal charges? Read more »
Hurricane Sandy’s impact made itself felt on major media properties including the Huffington Post, Gawker, and Buzzfeed. All of those sites reported outages around 7 p.m. EDT. Read more »
BuzzFeed’s mix of viral content driven by technology has already made it a potent force in news and political reporting. Now, the site wants to apply the same playbook to entertainment news. Read more at paidContent »
BuzzFeed published nine photographs and now an image owner wants $1.3 million. Is this a fair or practical way to use copyright law in an age where images are everywhere? Read more »
BuzzFeed’s viral-first approach is shaking up news and political reporting. Now, it has set its sights on the last bastion of traditional print journalism — long form essays. Can it compete? Read more at paidContent »
The days of publishers showing “most e-mailed articles” may be numbered as readers abandon the familiar “email this” icon in favor of other ways of news sharing. Read more at paidContent »
The purchase of the sports-blogging site Bleacher Report by Turner Broadcasting unit fills a content hole for the Time Warner unit, but it is also a validation of the user-generated-content model behind the sports-blogging network, and a sign of the disruptive effects that model can have. Read more »
A shell company says it owns the right to insert certain types of ads into online videos. Its lawsuit against popular viral site Buzzfeed shows how the problem of “patent trolling” is touching every part of the technology and media industry. Read more »
While many still associate BuzzFeed with photo galleries of kittens and other web ephemera, the network has grown into a substantial digital-media entity, and an internal memo from founder Jonah Peretti has some lessons that other media outlets would be wise to pay attention to. Read more »
What do you get when you mix the New York Times with a site best known for viral cat videos? We’ll soon find out as the Grey Lady announced today that it will be working with BuzzFeed to provide video from this summer’s political conventions. Read more at paidContent »
