If you work in an office – or go on the internet, like, ever – then we’re sure you’ve lost a couple of hours reading ridiculous articles and looking at hilarious GIFs on BuzzFeed. It’s like a rite of passage to any modern-day web user.
If you have a Wired magazine subscription you’ll have just received the February issue which features Jonah Peretti, who created BuzzFeed after he discovered the power of the web to send things viral (you can read about his Nike vs. sweatshop email that triggered it in the issue).
Speaking of his initial viral experience in 2001, he says: “There wasn’t Facebook or YouTube or Twitter, but I was able to reach millions of people purely by making something that spread through this decentralised network, where there was no gatekeeper – it just spread on its own, through what I started to think of as the bored-at-work network, office workers who spend half their day sharing content.”
Whilst we may think of kitten memes and lists of things that make us chuckle, BuzzFeed also uses their viral platform to report news and bring attention to causes. The site’s editor-in-chief says: “Chris Geidner did a story about advances in the treatment of transgender people under law. Maybe 10,000 [people] cared about that – but it was a big scoop that maybe all 10,000 heard about. To me, that’s huge success. It’s not just numbers, it’s being part of the conversation.”
Want to know more? Read the full feature in the February issue of Wired.
Subscribe and save on a Wired magazine subscription today.
Posted by Nasir Raza.
