Last Thursday, Oxford Media Society was fortunate enough to
welcome Luke Lewis, the UK editor of BuzzFeed to speak. Luke gave a
fantastically visual presentation, reflecting the nature of BuzzFeed’s picture
based reporting. It became evident over the duration of the talk just how much
we have all come to love and rely on BuzzFeed, as, with each new slide showing
another BuzzFeed article there was a knowing murmur as we remembered reading,
laughing at, sharing or tweeting the piece.
Luke’s description of how he got the job was particularly
impressive. Luke, a huge fan of the site himself, which at the time only
existed in America, took it upon himself to make a mock-up of what a UK site
would look like and email it to them. He joked that his mock up looked almost
exactly like the American one but with ‘a little more One Direction and Doctor
Who’. Two weeks later, after a meeting in New York, Luke was commissioned to
launch the site in the UK. The London office now has a team of 16 and they are,
rather uniquely in journalism, looking to expand.
Luke also explained the ‘social lift’ that BuzzFeed strives
to achieve for each article. A particular article’s success is measured partly
by how many hits it gets from people accessing it via the homepage, but what
they really care about are the hits
the article receives via social media. So when you tweet an article or share it
on Facebook and a friend then sees and reads it, that hit contributes to the
‘social lift’ of an article. This way of measuring success emphasises the
company’s desire for their articles not only to inform, but also to stimulate
conversation. Luke’s obvious delight when he spoke about seeing his articles
being shared between friends with accompanying messages like ‘Number 5 is so
you!’ or ‘I remember all of these things!’ showed his personal investment in
the site.
Luke also illustrated the power of headlines. Without
meaning to, two BuzzFeed reporters wrote an almost identical article about a
man who was sent a pair of hamburger shaped headphones by Amazon by accident.
One had the headline, ‘Here Is A Very Good Way To Deal With Amazon Accidentally
Shipping You The Wrong Thing’ and the other was called ‘How An Amazon Mix-Up
Led To The Greatest Twitter Rant Ever’. The second article received about 10
times more hits than the first showing the immense effect of headlines.
Luke also touched upon the business model of the site,
explaining their choice not to use display advertisements to enhance the user
experience. He also spoke about BuzzFeed’s versatility. It’s quite incredible
that a site that delivers scoops, breaking news and detailed features on
current world affairs can also make you cry with laughter. This distinct
humorous and satiric quality that the site possesses is unique and, thankfully,
Luke promised would not disappear even as BuzzFeed starts to evolve into more
of a News outlet.
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