The Incredibly Satisfying Death of Buzzfeed

buzzfeed 20 million subscribers 20 000 views a video the once thriving brand now displays a google trend graph that looks like this a youtube viewership graph that looks like this and a stock price graph that looks like this the price fall of 55 from 10 a share to 4.50 a share over only the last month and a half in conjunction with numerous rounds of layoffs and redundancies hence at the rough seas the buzzfeed happens to be sailing through at this very moment however with such a tarnished downtrodden reputation there's probably a few who are surprised to hear of such news and in this video you're going to learn exactly how buzzfeed destroyed their reputation as an accumulation of a long string of terribly poor decisions the brand started in 2006 and by 2013 it had taken on this now established format of bizarre relatable lists in combination with completely garbage news articles there were classics such as why it's time to ban straight people and aladdin's dad is the biggest dilf of all time while these were clearly nonsense articles made with the goal of being so stupid that you couldn't help but click this is what buzzfeed was good at making extremely clickable articles which often led through to something that would be relatable to their youthful audience six signs you're becoming your asian parents 17 struggles all suburban black kids know too well these also show that buzzfeed was big on the whole identity politics movement that was being popularized at the time many of their articles were very focused on men vs women blacks whites asians gays straights etc etc now whether or not it was ethical to segregate people further in exchange for extra clicks is an argument for another day but in terms of getting people to relate to the content it worked like magic 15 videos that were so damn relatable for women in 2015. however this controversial pandering to specific identities would also be the reason behind why the site experienced massive levels of criticism videos such as their classic women try man spreading for a week were criticized online to audiences of well over 10 million on top of their already brutal 60 dislike ratios everything wrong with buzzfeed 4 million buzzfeed has hit a new low 5.5 million 36 stupid feminist questions answered 25 million views this is terrible you're trying to relate opening your legs to sexism and now racism buzzfeed began to undermine their own reputation and public image with the politicization of their brand if you look at buzzfeed's google search volume graph there was nothing but growth between 2011 and mid-2015 beginning to decline in late 2015 and 2016 a time which conveniently coincided with the brand's severe political shift on youtube it was a similar story nothing but growth from 2012 until august 2015 peaking at 377 million views in a month before halving in the year that followed in the process buzzfeed did a pretty good job of completely and utterly destroying their news department's credibility in august 2017 the university of missouri surveyed eight 8728 individuals attempting to determine the most and least trusted news sources in the usa respondents on average quote leaned towards the liberal side of the political spectrum with the distribution looking a little like this and buzzfeed still scored as the second least trusted news site in the usa even lower than alex jones's conspiracy theory show which google quite literally labels as a fake news website the damage that buzzfeed had done to their reputation was best summarized by a forum post in a thread discussing why people had turned against buzzfeed once upon a time it helped raise awareness and educate us about several marginalized groups also adding to its charm it was a warm inclusive homey online community where everybody was welcome and equal until one day it wasn't slowly it degenerated into extreme left hogwash more ridiculous than quibbler it became infested with extremism radicals instead of focusing on important issues it focused on non-issues like man spreading instead of focusing on the spirit of equality it became obsessed with the rhetoric of victimhood nowadays buzzfeed has become feed mostly mostly is a very important word to focus on here and it'd be stupid to throw the baby out with the bath water ryan bergara and shay maday who are certainly contenders for the two biggest legends in youtube history were absolutely killing it with what many considered to be the greatest series ever uploaded to the platform buzzfeed unsolved eventually releasing over 70 episodes that crack the 10 million view mark the difference in quality between buzzfeed unsolved in the buzzfeed main channel has often been highlighted in comments such as whenever i hear buzzfeed it's either followed by is complete garbage or unsolved is the best series on the internet so i can also say for certain that they have a wide range of content both in subject and quality others such as the try guys had a similarly positive impact on buzzfeed's brand often gaining over 20 million views on their episodes however it seemed as though every single one of these positive influences eventually wound up following a similar path nowadays all you gotta do is join buzzfeed be in a handful of vids then leave and boom instant traffic to your new already owned channel they'd achieve massive success through buzzfeed using their own personalities wait for their buzzfeed contract to end then leave and start their own channel doing the exact same thing only with more creative freedom and financial incentive quite frankly they didn't want to pay us enough the previously shown clip was taken from a video titled why we left buzzfeed from four different perspectives which was one of the countless wire left buzzfeed videos that had cemented this common phenomena of gaining skills then leaving to pursue your own project people literally made comments on these videos saying why i left buzzfeed could have its own channel the significance of this was that it showed buzzfeed wasn't very good at keeping their top talent perhaps not the fault of buzzfeed themselves but rather that it was simply too easy for their top people to leave and continue the same shtick under their own name taking their audience along with them the try guys often received comments such as that they didn't need buzzfeed they're the reason people watched buzzfeed while an interviewee on an article discussing buzzfeed's changes stated after my favorite creators and video stars left i no longer found their videos funny or even entertaining i haven't watched a single buzzfeed video since the try guys departed buzzfeed unsolved received similar comments such as ryan and shane literally carried this channel without them buzzfeed is irrelevant let's be honest here the new people that are taking over have big shoes to fill which was commented after ryan and shane also announced that they will be leaving to create their own channel called watcher however at least the buzzfeed unsolved boys and the try guys had the ability to resign with a bit of dignity a luxury unavailable to the hundreds laid off by buzzfeed over the last four years articles such as this one cited the layoff of a hundred employees in november 2017 after buzzfeed fell short of their revenue goals by 20 it was the same story in january 2019 another 200 staff representing 15 of the entire company were laid off the reason for which being that buzzfeed was unable to diversify its revenue a fancy sentence meaning they didn't make enough money the company would come under fire for this round of layoffs in an article posted by next shark titled buzzfeed is being accused of laying off mostly people of color and lgbt employees which highlighted numerous twitter responses from buzzfeed's fans one specifically stated whether you support buzzfeed or not the facts are that hundreds of people who made slash worked on content speaking to marginalize and unrepresented groups are being laid off and that is a problem now the more likely simple reality is that these people were probably just working in an area that had become unprofitable buzzfeed isn't going to discriminate based on skin color or sexual orientation however buzzfeed is going to discriminate based on what is bringing in profit the additional reason for most of the layoffs being people of color or members of the lgbt community is also related to their hiring process on the 18th of february 2016 one of buzzfeed's writers announced that they were looking to hire some new talent in a tweet stating would you like to write long form for buzzfeed canada well you can we want pictures for your canada-centric essays and reporting the tweets continued buzzfeed canada would particularly like to hear from you if you are not white and not male if you're a white man upset that we are looking for mostly non-white non-men i don't care about you go write for mcleans white men are still permitted to pitch i will read it i will consider it i'm just less interested because ah men white men get huffy when you don't actively encourage white men to do stuff because white men think they're owed everything giving ignored voices preferential treatment is not racist against white people it is an attempt to fix all of history haha anyway ban men literally throw them in the garbage i'm actually getting pictures from white men that start with sorry i'm a white man that doesn't actually help your case this isn't about you if buzzfeed were only interested in employing minorities statistically speaking when it came to layoffs a large portion of the laid off staff were inevitably going to be minorities in addition to the 200 layoffs in early 2019 the lack of performance from buzzfeed news the only division in all of buzzfeed that wasn't profitable resulted in the shutdown of both their uk and australian news team summed up hilariously by youtuber friendly geordies nobody watches their news the only shares that they have are from people within the office sharing it we've built a strong brand loyal audience strong brand and loyal audience you have not a loyal audience or a strong brand nobody in the world likes you with less money to work with and inability to keep their top talent and fewer staff to execute on ideas following layoffs a dip in youtube viewership was almost inevitable however their fall from a peak of 377 million views a month in mid 2015 to 40 million views a month by late 2020 wasn't only a result of fewer company resources the content being produced had become incredibly stale in 2014 their clickbait titles and various different video series were effective in garnering a new audience the content was fresh and interesting their cheap verse expensive food series was gaining views their exes doing things together series was gaining views their people trying whatever for the first time series was getting views each of which being an incredibly entertaining series that viewers would return for these days however the only series that gains big views and ensures a returning audience is there how i became a meme series with every single other video type averaging around 50 000 views former buzzfeed member ken moffatt discussed how when he worked at buzzfeed they were always more concerned about quantity over quality i started to realize that to buzzfeed uh in a lot of cases quantity trumps quality they would rather have more videos than fewer good videos this might have worked excellently in the early days of youtube when there was barely any competition and viewers would literally click on anything but these days people notice that it's made by buzzfeed and just assume that it's another piece of mass-produced content farm crap which it usually is however it's not like the company is worthless on the 24th of june 2021 buzzfeed announced that they will be going public with a target valuation of 1.5 billion dollars buzzfeed would raise 287.5 million from investors after announcing that it will be merging with another company called complex networks however by the second of december 2021 just four days before the company was set to go public it was revealed that 94 of these 287 million have been withdrawn from investors leaving buzzfeed with just 16.2 million this in combination with a clear decline in site traffic google search volume video views numerous layoffs failing to meet profit goals year after year led to somewhat of a disastrous first month as a public company on the very first day the share price was ten dollars but by the end of the first week it had dropped to 5.80 down 42 percent and after approximately a month and a half the price has since dropped further to 4.50 a total decline of 55 with one financial article stating that even after the plunge in price i feel that buzzfeed stock is not a bargain the same article also critiqued buzzfeed for their poor business operation as a whole in a statement which perfectly concludes the company's slow painful death in my view it's clear their business model is a failure perhaps too many of their writers view their employment to be a non-profit entity that exists solely to achieve social changes and not to make money for capitalist shareholders [Music]

Channel: SunnyV2

Views: 11,313,271

Keywords: thegamerfrommars, internet culture, buzzfeed, the try guys, try guys, safiya nygaard, michelle khare, buzzfeed unsolved, buzzfeed unsolved network, watcher, the fall of buzzfeed, the painful demise of buzzfeed, buzz feed, buzz, feed, buzzfeedvideo, buzzfeedblue, buzzfeedyellow, buzzfeed videos, buzzfeed yellow, buzzfeed blue, manspreading, manspread, women try manspreading for a week, h3h3, h3h3productions, sunnyv2 buzzfeed, sunnyv2, sunnyv2 downfall, why buzzfeed failed, why failed

Id: ik6FvS1kVCc

Length: 11min 20sec (680 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 20 2022