blah blah blah, what happened next will blow your mind

slowboiled

slowboiled

akhamanapusi
Jun 7, 2007
233
5
0
Santa Monica
Ben Smith BuzzFeed editor-in-chief is spouting that they would never use clickbait and it hasn't even worked since 2009.... and here I thought they'd been throttling it up and shoving it down my throat over the last couple years.

We don't do clickbait, insists BuzzFeed

He made a special shoutout to all the IM trench diggers while on his high horse:

“The worst form of this online is on a pennies-per-click business model in the transactional netherworld of outsourced sponsored content sitting at the bottom of articles around the web,”

I think he sounds like a dog chasing his tail, rationalizing and justifying instead of just saying 'hey fuckers, it's what gets you to click of course it's our go-to'.

and seo is dead
 


Anyone who clicks on these bs clickbait articles are morons. All these Buzzfeed sites and Gawker and such are just glorified content mills. Can't wait for Google to whoop them soon enough.
 
rusvik said:
Anyone who clicks on these bs clickbait articles are morons. All these Buzzfeed sites and Gawker and such are just glorified content mills. Can't wait for Google to whoop them soon enough.
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they don't need google, most of their traffic comes from social media. Google is powerless in this retrospect :)
 
Very interesting observation: Oftentimes someone posts something interesting or thinkworthy or newsworthy or discussion worthy, and then people start commenting and getting likes for their comments, in some cases many likes. But the OP gets none.

WTF cruel world.

Well, comments might be better than an original news, but cmon.

Here OP, i give you my like now.

:xmas-smiley-010:


.
 
n8800 said:
they don't need google, most of their traffic comes from social media. Google is powerless in this retrospect :)
Click to expand...

Yes, you're right. It is in fact not a bad business model.

Stir up outrage again and again in particular.

I'm just amazed at how easily people are manipulated again and again into giving their 5 minutes of daily rage. All for the sake of advertising dollars.
 
rusvik said:
Anyone who clicks on these bs clickbait articles are morons. All these Buzzfeed sites and Gawker and such are just glorified content mills. Can't wait for Google to whoop them soon enough.
Click to expand...

You're crazy if you think these guys give a flying fuck about Google.
 
3nyaw said:
How are business models that do not add value good?
Click to expand...

Does not add value to whom?

* The model adds value for the 15 year old girl who wants to be the first to share dem kewl pics (like, omg!)

* The model adds value for the ad company who gets their clicks

* The model adds value to the clickbaiter who is getting paid to connect parties A & B
 
Bullshit aside, their shift to including some longer-form and somewhat decent "journalism" was a hugely intelligent move on their part.

HuffPo was lost a lot of "credibility" with today's youth after their own shift to using clickbait headlines on their social accounts, and the overall decline in quality of the publication alongside of that.

The window has opened for them to transition to being a website that brings in large amounts of direct traffic as opposed to leaning so heavily on social, and they're jumping through it. Competing with sites like EliteDaily is probably much easier for Buzzfeed now than competing against other Facebook-dependent clickbait properties was in the early days.

If they can keep the long-form stuff dumb enough for their target audience they'll be able to be king of the mountain in their own little space without directly competing (for now) with publishers like Vice, etc.
 
golan said:
Here OP, i give you my like now.

:xmas-smiley-010:

.
Click to expand...

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Antics said:
Bullshit aside, their shift to including some longer-form and somewhat decent "journalism" was a hugely intelligent move on their part.
Click to expand...

I had the chance purely by luck years ago to sit in a meeting with the (at the time) CMO for BuzzFeed and one of their fundraisers, and boy did they sound like they knew their shit. I was the target in this meeting way above my pay grade and this was way before the current onslaught over the last couple of years when they were heavily branding all their other properties in the 'celeb news' space.

They had a mountain of money, all the Hollywood pretension you could stomach and a belligerently clear idea of what they were going to do. 'Gossip just draws more clicks, it's what people like' was one thing I remember being said more than a few times in the couple hours. Looks like bottom feeding was the path chosen but no doubt they hit it out of the park with their execution.
 
Facebook is much better off with these worthless articles popping up every 5 seconds in my newsfeed than it was when there were triangles in the sidebar.
 
kingofsp said:
Facebook is much better off with these worthless articles popping up every 5 seconds in my newsfeed than it was when there were triangles in the sidebar.
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I feel ya, I lost the ability to stay on facebook for personal reasons for more than a few minutes at a time a while ago, fucking hate facebook for personal use.

They're in another category though, fuck our user experience, they own the market share and niche. Might as well abuse and monetize that prime real estate since they know no one will ever leave.
 
Antics said:
publishers like Vice
Click to expand...

Another clickbait generals of our era. I would respect them a lot more if they were a bit more blatant about it.

Brave man Shane wanders randomly into Syrian combat zone. You won't believe what happened next.

Vice visits Colombian cocaine facility. What happened next will blow your mind.

These top 9 most dangerous places on Earth visited by independent journalists of Vice sponsored by Rupert Murdoch will amaze you.
 
Myler said:
Another clickbait generals of our era. I would respect them a lot more if they were a bit more blatant about it.

Brave man Shane wanders randomly into Syrian combat zone. You won't believe what happened next.

Vice visits Colombian cocaine facility. What happened next will blow your mind.

These top 9 most dangerous places on Earth visited by independent journalists of Vice sponsored by Rupert Murdoch will amaze you.
Click to expand...

As was pointed out below, they're really not all that bad (I actually think they're one of the better ones in terms of striking the balance between copywritten headlines and clickbait garbage headlines) - sort of reflects the fact that their audience is a lot different than that of Buzzfeed (in general) - especially when it comes to the Vice News property.
 
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