BuzzFeed创始人的网络传播心经

    你已经不再关心搜索了，是吗？

    我们没有花那么多时间去考虑搜索。

    搜索引擎优化(SEO)不是你的重要工作之一，这是不是太不可思议了？

    这是一件难以捉摸的事情。我的意思是，我认为在将来某个时点，搜索必须要追赶上社交网络，以了解如何索引和呈现正在高速共享的内容。我觉得，谷歌公司(Google)现在面临的一个问题是，它并没有大量的社交数据。人们输入关键词，做搜索引擎优化，改写故事时，聚合器可充分发挥搜索功能。但在社交网络上，人们想分享权威性故事——经常在Twitter上被转发多次的是BuzzFeed主编本•史密斯的独家新闻，而不是这些新闻的改写版本。但改写版本会在谷歌上获得很多流量。这是谷歌在未来几年必须设法解决的问题。

    有意思的是，谷歌现在的日子似乎并不是特别难熬。我一度以为，社交网络将扼杀搜索平台。这两块馅饼能够同时成长吗？

    是啊。这种事情是很难预测的。就在黑莓手机即将开始土崩瓦解之前，它还获得了创纪录的利润呢。凭借无人驾驶轿车，左右我们的思维模式，以及谷歌眼镜，谷歌或许还能够经历另一个10年的迅速发展和成功，也可能他们会碰上真正的麻烦。就让我们拭目以待吧。

    在BuzzFeed上，你们自身的原创内容占多大比重？

    我们有4种类型的内容。BuzzFeed有我们的记者团队创作的新闻内容。这个团队的工作重心真的不是聚合新闻；他们给人们打电话，联系消息源，做原创的东西。我们也做娱乐内容，经常发布一些很有特色的榜单。尽管它们经常使用美联社(AP)、路透社(Reuters)、盖蒂照片社(Getty )、图像库和其他来源的材料，但这些榜单都是原创作品。此外，我们还制作品牌内容，这是我们维持生计的方式，我们的收入源泉。在100个顶级品牌中，有50个使用BuzzFeed的平台发布品牌内容。最后，我们也有社区内容。大家可以去BuzzFeed的社区转转，创作自己的内容，发布出来。这4种不同类型的内容，都是在我们开发的技术平台上发布的。

    请谈一谈接受品牌赞助的内容。就优化社会化内容构成这个意义而言，对于这些品牌内容和社论，你是一视同仁的，对吗？

    是的。几年前，我们的流量已开始增长。董事们在董事会上询问我们有没有收益。我说没有。

    Do you care about search at all anymore?

    We don't spend that much time thinking about search.

    Isn't that amazing, that SEO is not an important part of what you do?

    It's a tricky thing. I mean, I think that search will at some point have to catch up to social, you know, to understanding how to index and present content that is getting shared at a high rate. I think there's a problem now where Google doesn't have a lot of that social data. The aggregators win on search where people cram in key words and do SEO and rewrite stories. But on social, you want to share the authoritative story—the Ben Smith scoop is going to get re-tweeted a bunch of times, not the rewrite of the Ben Smith scoop. But the rewrite is going to be what ends up getting a lot of the traffic in Google. That's the thing that Google is going to have to figure out how to fix over the next years.

    Interestingly, it's not like Google's suffering right now particularly. At one point, I thought that search was going to kill search. Can both pies grow?

    Yeah. It's always hard to predict. BlackBerry had record profits right before it all started to fall apart. Google could have another ten years of rapid growth and success and drive us around in cars and tell us what to think and look at with glasses, or they could have real problems. It will be interesting to see.

    What percentage of BuzzFeed content originates from BuzzFeed?

    We have four types of content. We have news content created by our team of journalists and reporters. They really are not focused on aggregation; they are calling people, working sources, doing original stuff. We have entertainment, often characterized by our lists. And those lists are all original creations, although they often use material from, you know, AP and Reuters and Getty and image libraries and other sources. Then we have branded content, which is how we make our living, where our revenue comes from. Fifty of the top 100 brands used BuzzFeed's platform to launch branded content. And we also have community content, which is where you can go to BuzzFeed, go to the community section and create your own content and launch it. Four different types of content, all on top of the same technology platform that we developed.

    Let's talk about that branded, sponsored content. You treat that the same way you treat editorial in terms of optimizing the social component, right?

    Yeah. A few years ago, our traffic was starting to grow, and we had a board meeting, and my board asked me whether we had any revenue. And I said no.