BuzzFeed to launch new social media platform called BF Island
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Jonah Peretti. Photo illustration: Axios Visuals. Photo: Craig Barritt/Getty Images for Fast Company
BuzzFeed is creating its own social media platform as a joyful alternative to addictive social media feeds, CEO Jonah Peretti tells Axios.
Why it matters: If the experiment works, it will put BuzzFeed "in a totally different kind of business, where it's primarily a tech company and a new kind of social media company," Peretti says.
- "Given the state of digital media publishing, building something like that inside [of the company] could be an exciting new growth area, a new chapter," he says. "It puts us into a more exciting category."
- Peretti says the experiment would allow BuzzFeed's public market investors to get behind a speculative, but potentially lucrative opportunity that's normally only afforded to venture capitalists.
Driving the news: Similar to apps like Midjourney, BF Island will allow users to use AI to create and share content around their interests.
- Like most consumer AI apps, BF Island plans to have a freemium model, where simpler features are available for free and more advanced features are available with a subscription, Peretti says.
- For now, the company is leveraging a "small team" of existing BuzzFeed employees to build BF Island, Peretti says.
- The experimental project stems from the company's success with the interactive and AI-powered features on the BuzzFeed app. In the future, those features would no longer need to be "bolted on" to a publisher site, he noted.
- The app will begin as a private beta this year. Peretti shared a sign-up page in a memo to BuzzFeed employees on Tuesday.
Zoom out: Peretti says most major social platforms use AI algorithms to maximize usage over a quality experience, which has led to the proliferation of what he calls "SNARF" content, which stands for stakes, novelty, anger, retention, and fear.
- "Content creators exaggerate stakes to make their content urgent and existential," Peretti wrote in the Tuesday memo. "They manufacture novelty and spin their content as unprecedented and unique."
- "They manipulate anger to drive engagement via outrage. They hack retention by withholding information and promising a payoff at the end of a video. And they provoke fear to make people focus with urgency on their content," he wrote.
In a nearly 3,000-word memo, Peretti wrote that BF Island will be "built specifically to spread joy and enable playful creative expression," an antidote to today's social media experience.
- "Now that Trump is in power, a candidate who masterfully used SNARF to win the election, there is tremendous pressure for all platforms to allow the free flow of SNARF content," he wrote.
Reality check: Peretti has repeatedly shared his vision for the future of digital publishing and taken big swings at the expense of consistency within BuzzFeed's business model as he experiments.
- He dedicated his 2024 annual shareholders letter to generative AI. In 2023, Peretti spoke to Axios about investing in independent creators. In 2021, he wrote about consolidating digital media brands.
The big picture: Today, BuzzFeed is a fraction of its size compared to when it went public in 2021, but it's leaner and more profitable.
- The company shed assets and streamlined its focus to pay off its debt and focus on profits. It shuttered BuzzFeed News in 2023 and sold Complex in 2024. It sold Complex's First We Feast, the production arm behind "Hot Ones," separately to pay down more debt in late 2024.
- Those efforts have helped streamline BuzzFeed's publishing business to focus on digital assets (BuzzFeed, HuffPost and Tasty) that monetize mostly through advertising and affiliate marketing. It continues to operate BuzzFeed Studios, a production arm that licenses premium content to streaming platforms.
By the numbers: Following its IPO, which included the simultaneous acquisition of Complex, BuzzFeed had more than 1,500 employees, per regulatory filings. Its latest public headcount is 642, as of April 29, 2024. That's now likely even smaller given the company recently laid off 30 HuffPost staffers.
- For the first nine months of 2022, BuzzFeed's first full year as a publicly traded company, it made $302 million in top-line revenue. It lost $95 million and had an adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of -$17 million.
- For the first nine months of 2024, BuzzFeed made $156 million in top-line revenue. It lost $31 million and had an adjusted EBITDA of $1.9 million.
What's next: BuzzFeed is expected to release fourth-quarter and full-year 2024 results on March 13.
