According to an internal memo from BuzzFeed’s CEO Jonah Peretti cited by Forbes, “the business model of news tailored for social media had become too difficult to sustain.”
An article distributed by Bo Sacks yesterday with the title, How the social traffic that gave life to BuzzFeed News ultimately led to its demise has Peretti saying “it took him too long to realize that despite being built primarily to reach a social media-based audience, those platforms did not provide ‘distribution or financial support required’ to operate a free news site.”
Here’s another quote from Justin Eisenband of FTI Consulting. “Anyone relying on social referrals as a key monetization factor has struggled in the last couple of years.”
Two lessons so far.
#1 – Live by social media, die by social media.
#2 – “Reach” doesn’t pay the bills.
This next quote is particularly important, especially as publishers are now considering the latest social media craze, TikTok.
“As short-form vertical video is prioritized, Eisenband said external links back to publishers’ sites are less amplified within social media platforms’ walled gardens, as the goal is to keep users on their app.”
That’s lesson three, which I’ve mentioned before.
#3 – Social media platforms have less than no interest in helping you get traffic. Remember the rule I mentioned about a week ago. “All your customers are become our customers.” See No, Google is not going to rescue publishing.)
Doug Arthur from Huber Research Partners said “The successful models — and there are very few — have robust subscription revenues with supplementary [advertising] feeding off the number and intensity of the subscribers’ use.”
We can extract rules 4 and 5 from there.
#4 – Rely on subscription revenue and advertising revenue.
#5 – Focus on engagement on your site.
He also said “general interest news is difficult to sell subscriptions against,” which is lesson #6.
Buzzfeed did not have a subscription business model, but asked readers for contributions. That has worked for some non-profits or mission-based publications, but doesn’t fit with a for-profit company.
I’m not claiming to know all the reasons for the demise of Buzzfeed. Wikipedia says it was originally known for online quizzes, “listicles” – which is an article structured as a list – and pop culture articles. That might explain why I don’t believe I’ve ever been to buzzfeed. I don’t care about pop culture, and I thought of it as that sort of place.
It did move into news and won some awards for its coverage, but a Pew Research survey found that it was viewed as an unreliable source.
So that will be the last lesson I pull from the Buzzfeed story.
#7 – Don’t do things that make you seem like an unreliable source.
