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Make what you will of BuzzFeed’s cute animal pics and the kitschy stamp-of-approval “reaction buttons,” which let readers “LOL” and “WTF” their way through the site’s share-happy content. But recently, the site’s name has become a truly fitting moniker for its business, thanks to ex-Politico Ben Smith taking the reins as editor-in-chief with Rolling Stone, Gawker, and Observer alum Doree Shafrir as exec editor. BY ALEXANDRA ILYASHOV PhotOgraphy by Giorgio Niro
SITE Specific GOING VIRAL!
With DOREE SHAFRIR, BUZZFEED’S EXECUTIVE EDITOR
What’s your elevator pitch for BuzzFeed? We collect the most viral, awesome stuff on the Internet. We’re focused on the social web and what people want to share, whether it’s a funny list or a story about transgender teenagers. How do you know if something is viral worthy? The stuff that does the best on the social web hits a chord emotionally. It doesn’t have to be sentimental or sappy, but it has to feel new—and to make the sharer look good and be proud of finding it. What hits that magical formula? Our biggest post in the past couple months was “21 Photos That Will Restore Your Faith in Humanity.” That got eight million views! On Facebook, when I see friends from different parts of my life—and my mom—all sharing the same thing, I know it’s a huge hit. How is this type of storytelling different from what you did at Rolling Stone? Telling a story through gifs was not something that was in my wheelhouse even a year ago! Did you have any reservations about heading to BuzzFeed? I met with Ben [Smith] in December, and there was a very senior position open for someone to launch new verticals. It sounded exciting, experimental, and like the next logical step in my career. I loved my job at Rolling Stone; I wasn’t looking to leave, and I felt like I hadn’t done everything I wanted to there. But Ben is really good at selling people. I couldn’t turn this down. What state was the site in when you arrived? I came on in February, and only the politics vertical existed, though Ben was planning out the tech vertical. I was taking a lot of meetings; I was scoping out tons of lifestyle/women’s interests editors for Amy Odell’s job. Sports originally wasn’t going to launch until May, but then we found Kevin Lincoln from Business Insider—I followed him on Twitter and I always liked his writing, and he seemed interested in sports though he didn’t always write about sports. FA S H I O N W E E K D A I L Y. C O M
How did you cobble together the team? I tried to cast a pretty wide net. Twitter has been a really important place for referrals. Are you checking out the site’s stats often? I monitor it consistently. Editors logged into BuzzFeed can mouse over posts to see instantly how many views they have. If I think a post should be doing better, I’ll tweak the headline, dek, or thumbnail. Things we think will be great don’t always take off; we just have to move on. Do you celebrate when something does particularly well on the site? There’s a sales team gong. We’ve discussed having a “viral gong,” but it’d be annoying; it would be hit too many times! Right after I started, BuzzFeed’s president, Jon Steinberg, promised that if we hit more than 20 million unique hits before December, he’d get a mini-horse for the office. So we had a pony visit us for an hour, and people took pictures with it. It’s my Twitter avatar! Have you ever had to fire someone for not netting enough traffic? No, we don’t have quotas or specific traffic rules. Knock on wood, that it’s not a conversation I’ve had to have! We’re really invested in our staff; if someone’s struggling we’re not going to just cast them out. We hired them for a reason. What’s that formula for hiring? It’s partially instinct. I like everyone I work with. That’s hardly the case anywhere! And in our job descriptions, we specify “no haters.” We don’t want negativity. Did your stint at Gawker prep you, preemptively, for BuzzFeed? One of the most important things that I learned at Gawker was to not take things personally that people say about you on the Internet. What do you think of Gawker nowadays? It’s totally different than when I was there; now, it’s general interest. It’s much bigger now; they get a lot more traffic than we did. We focused on New York and the media back then.