BuzzFeed创始人的网络传播心经

    但是，就BuzzFeed而言，一件违反直觉的事情是，我们正在做的事情并不是一个自然推论出的结果。因为印刷版内容不可能通过口口相传来传播。人们撕下杂志或报纸文章，把它邮递出去，这样做可以产生少量的散播效应。但在没有印刷机或广播管道的情况下，我们正在抵达8,500万独立访客。我们每天都需要制作一些人们认为值得分享的内容。如果我们制作不出人们认为非常优质，以至于他们愿意传递、并跟所有朋友分享的内容，我们就根本无法吸引到受众。实体世界并不存在这样一种模式。

    这种模式确实让这家网站更加令人迷惑。如果你说：“哦，过去曾经采用过这种方式，但现在利用互联网或技术来做更有效率。”人们就更容易理解一家企业。如果没有互联网，我们正在做的事情就不可能发生。

    BuzzFeed是一家商业企业，一门生意。你最终还是想通过它的发展壮大来赚钱，是这样吧？

    是啊。我们今年已经开始盈利，我们一直在扩充团队。我们试图打造一家可持续发展的公司。我们总是思考，如果今天从零开始，创建一家媒体公司，它将是什么样子？一家面向社交和移动时代的媒体公司会是什么模样？创建这样一家公司将是怎样一番景象？创造收入是构建一家公司的重要组成部分，创作优质的调查性报道和真正有意思的内容亦是如此。我们的视角非常广阔，我们要做非常广泛的事情。

    你的确非常善于利用互联网的病毒式传播效应。最初是你在麻省理工学院(MIT)读书的时候，你要求耐克公司(Nike)在你订购的运动鞋上标注“血汗工厂”字样，但遭到了拒绝。这个故事迅速在网上传播开来。你的朋友说你不可能复制这样的传播效应。那是你的“茅塞顿开时刻！”所以，在某种程度上，社交平台就是你的命根子。给我讲讲你怎么社会化媒体的格局，对你来说，哪些社交平台是最重要的？你最看好哪些平台？

    我们发现，内容因为不同原因在不同网络传播。究其根本，社会化内容需要人来传播。人们愿意分享是有原因的。但对于某些内容而言，一些平台的分享效果更好。Twitter的传播速度非常迅速，海量讯息来也匆匆，去也匆匆，以至于人们必须发布与当下密切相关的内容，这跟Twitter的架构有一定关系。这也是为什么电视直播、突发新闻和实时事件等内容更适合在Twitter上传播。此外，对于依托于兴趣的内容，Twitter的传播效果也要比其他社交网络好得多。所以，如果你对技术或商业感兴趣，你可以在Twitter上关注技术或商业资讯。如果你是一个追星族，你可以在Twitter上关注明星动向。

    在Facebook上，因为人们把它当作一个真实的人际网络，用它来联络在现实生活中结交的朋友——比如你在大学、高中或工作中相识的朋友，以及与你存在各种联系的其他人——你真的不想分享一些只有极少数人感兴趣的东西。所以，如果你打算在Twitter上发布关于跑步的帖子，你可以写一些关于跑步的东西，对跑步感兴趣的人或许就会关注你。但如果你开始在Facebook持续发布跑步讯息，而你的大多数朋友都对跑步没兴趣，甚至憎恶你有这样一个爱好，或者至少这些讯息使得他们为自己不常跑步而感到惭愧，那么它就不会产生很好的联络效果。所以说，与Facebook相关联的是宽泛的人类情感，以及每个人都深有体会，能够把生活中的朋友连接在一起的事物。它的真谛并不是蕴含于内容的信息，而是这些内容如何把你跟日常生活中的其他人连接在一起。

    One of the things that is counterintuitive about BuzzFeed is that there's not a natural corollary to what we're doing because it isn't possible to distribute content through word-of-mouth in print. People rip out magazine or newspaper articles and mail them, and there's some small amount of distribution, but we're reaching 85 million unique visitors without owning a printing press or a broadcast pipe or anything. And every day we have to make content that people think is worth sharing, and we don't reach any audience at all unless we make content that people think is so good that they're willing to pass it on and share it with all their friends. That model doesn't have an offline version of it.

    That does make it more confusing. It's easier to understand a business when you say, "Oh, it used to be done, you know, this way, and now it's done more efficiently using the Internet or using technology." What we're doing you couldn't have done without the Internet.

    BuzzFeed is a commercial enterprise, a business. You are interested in making money, ultimately, and in growing it. Right?

    Yeah. We became profitable this year and we've been growing our team. We want to build a sustainable company. We like to think, what would a media company be if you created one from scratch today? What would a media company be for the era of social and mobile? [What would it be like] to build that company? Generating revenue is an important part of building a company. So is having great investigative journalism. So is having really entertaining content. We have a pretty broad purview—a pretty broad range of things we do.

    You're really all about leveraging the viral aspect of the Internet. That's what you started out with at MIT, with that Nike iD thing where you were denied a request to put "sweatshop" on your shoes and the story went viral. And your friend said you couldn't replicate that. That was your "Aha!" moment. So social platforms are, in a way, your lifeblood. Tell me about the landscape of social media, which social platforms are the most important to you, and which ones are you most sanguine about.

    What we've found is that content spreads on different networks for different reasons. There are underlying human dynamics for social content. There are reasons why people share. But certain platforms are better for certain types of sharing. Twitter is very fast. Partly because of the architecture of Twitter, things flow so quickly and disappear so quickly that you need to post things that are of the moment. And so that's why Twitter is great for things like live television, breaking news, and real-time events. Twitter is also much better for interest-based content. So people on Twitter can follow tech if they're interested in tech, or business if they're interested in business, or they can follow celebrities that they're fans of.

    On Facebook, because people use it as their actual network of people that they're friends with in their real life—you have friends from college, you have friends from high school, you have friends from work, you have a diverse range of people that you're connected to—you don't really want to share things that only a very small subset of people would be interested in. So if you're tweeting about running, you can write about running and people who are interested in running can follow you. But if you start posting on Facebook constantly about running, and most of your friends don't care about running and actually kind of hate you because you're a runner, or at least it makes them feel bad about them not being a runner or whatever, you know, it doesn't really work that well. So Facebook is much more tied to broad human emotion and things that everyone can relate to, and things that connect people with the people in their lives. It's not so much about the information in the content; it's about how that content allows you to connect with other people in your life.