Buzzfeed, the Phenomenon That Is

What is BuzzFeed?
According to BuzzFeed, “BuzzFeed is a place for you to discover, share and track everything awesome that is happening on the internet as soon as it happens.”

What is BuzzFeed?

According to me, BuzzFeed is “The greatest thing you will ever meet, and the worst.” (In Janis Ian’s voice from Mean Girls)

I would be lying if I said I didn’t frequent BuzzFeed every day. I try to not even visit the site at work because I will start reading just ONE article I find on Facebook, and the next thing you know I have clicked on about TWENTY articles. I must not be the only one!

According to a BuzzFeed press release, BuzzFeed had more than 1.2B pageviews globally. In addition to that, they were up 41% for unique visitors year over year.

Here is a quality example from BuzzFeed of total shock when I share about the statistic of 130 million unique visitors globally!

While doing some research (aka going to the “How do I use BuzzFeed?” tab), I found a lot of really interesting things about the inner workings of BuzzFeed…. but not before I clicked on at least four articles, such as this one (I just love that slide thing! Genius!).

…and taking this quiz (I got 11 out of 21. Now I know that I need to eat more cereal!)

Getting back on track, my research says that anyone who has an account can post to the BuzzFeed community section under “Just Launched.” After that, the editors at BuzzFeed choose which posts get promoted.

Another way to get feedback on your post is badges. You have probably seen badges on the site such as LOL, Win, Cute, Fail, etc. You earn these from a BuzzFeed algorithm, which takes into account the number of corresponding reactions a post receives, its viral traffic and editorial merit.

You can also earn other awards that come straight from the BuzzFeed team. In addition to those awards, you can also earn a crown based on whoever has the most of each badge. Only one person can have a crown per one badge. Pretty simple, but now you know.

Here is an example of a community member (She really seems to be rocking it! I should know as I have looked at quite a few of her posts…. such a time suck!).

BuzzFeed does have real news articles that you can choose to view as well. The great thing about BuzzFeed is that you can read the news articles (typically sad) and then you can read something like this to get your spirits back up!

You can find all the information you need here: https://www.buzzfeed.com/help/how_to_use.

Let me know your favorite BuzzFeed articles or what your guilty pleasures are to look at on BuzzFeed. I’ll admit mine is Harry Potter. This is a no-judgment zone!