Scrolling down your Facebook newsfeed, you come across a post on your friend’s wall with a link to an article titled, “19 High School Cliques Every Millennial Knows To Exist” on a website you have never heard of. It looks appealing, so you look into it more. Then, your newfound obsession begins.
Buzzfeed, a website dedicated to sharing new viral social news and entertainment, is rapidly becoming popular throughout the CHS community.
“BuzzFeed provides the most shareable breaking news, original reporting, entertainment and video across the social web to its global audience of 100 million unique visitors a month,” BuzzFeed’s press director Catherine Bartosevich said. “Our technology powers the social distribution of content, detects what is trending on the web and connects people in real time with the hottest content of the moment.”
New posts are updated hourly, categorized by “LOL,” “win,” “omg,” “cute,” “trashy,” “fail,” “wtf” and an up arrow that represents the “hot” content that is skyrocketing in popularity. There are also categories such as “News,” “Entertainment,” “Life” and “Video” for a more organized search. Whether it is a post about Miley Cyrus’s latest scandal, 30 signs your best friend is your accidental boyfriend, reasons Adam Levine deserved to win “Sexiest Man Alive” or different holiday DIY’s, BuzzFeed has a category for it.
“I tend to look through the trending section or whatever is most popular because that is usually where the funniest articles are,” senior Caroline Shutt said. “I end up going through the whole site without realizing it.”
In addition to the humor and entertainment, many CHS students read BuzzFeed because the posts attract a teen audience.
“I like it because it is really funny to read, and my favorite part is definitely how relatable it is to me and my peers as well,” Shutt said.
Founder and CEO Jonah Peretti launched BuzzFeed in 2006, and it has steadily been increasing in popularity ever since.
“In the last three years, we have built a 150-person newsroom and opened up offices in New York, Los Angeles and London,” Bartosevich said. “This year, we also launched a version of BuzzFeed in Portuguese, Spanish and French.”
Students are constantly sharing Buzzfeed articles with their friends through Facebook, Twitter and other social media.
“BuzzFeed is so relatable,” senior Amy Dalrymple said. “Sometimes when I find something I like I get so excited to post it on my friends’ wall.”
Facebook is covered with links to different BuzzFeed articles.
“I’ll see a post on my friend’s wall, and I’ll click on it and then I’ll go through the rest of BuzzFeed,” Dalrymple said.
Every year, there are new trends that join the CHS community, but BuzzFeed is one fad that does not seem to be leaving anytime soon.
“BuzzFeed is redefining online advertising with its social, content-driven publishing technology,” Bartosevich said.
