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 »
The viral video of a nine-year-old boy who built a magical arcade out of cardboard at his father’s auto-parts business in Los Angeles has a lot to say about the spirit of entrepreneurship and creativity that fuels much of what we write about at GigaOM. Read more »
Megaupload sued Universal Music in federal court today, alleging that the music label is trying to censor a promotional video for the file hoster through bogus take-down notices. However, Universal said that some of the artists depicted in the video never consented to it. Read more »
Kik is a cross-platform chat application that has gone from zero users to almost 2 million in three weeks. But some users aren’t happy with the way the company has achieved that viral growth, and Kik’s CEO says it is changing the way the app works. Read more »
BuzzFeed, which tracks online topics that have gone viral, is offering a version of the analytics dashboard that the site uses to monitor the spread of these Internet “memes” to any website, brand or publisher that wants to track the popularity of their online content. Read more »
Everyone who produces content online wants to see it “go viral.” So how does that happen? Jonah Peretti, CEO of viral-media aggregator BuzzFeed and co-founder of The Huffington Post, says the secret is catering to that elusive group known as the “Bored at Work” network. Read more »
Scribd just emailed us to let us know that today’s California Proposition 8 ruling is the most viral document in the history of the site. The document is currently receiving more than 1,000 reads per second, with nearly 150,000 total readsan hour after the ruling. Read more »
