The Rise of BuzzFeed

Posted on by

No one could have predicted the momentous rise of BuzzFeed over the past year. You’ve probably seen their funny articles all over your social media feeds, notable for their enticing headlines, but they are also branching into more serious news media. In the year gone by, BuzzFeed has tripled its multi-platform audience (USA only) to 71.3 million visitors. That’s an incredible growth rate, especially when you consider that it had already amassed more than 20 million visitors in the previous year.

But what’s the secret behind the rise of Buzzfeed? Basically, it’s social platforms like that drive huge volumes of traffic. You’re not the only one who falls for those curious headlines with words like “unmissable” and “you won’t believe”. A huge amount of click-through activity is generated through online and mobile access.

It’s mobile where the greatest success has occurred. The reason for the huge increase in mobile access is due to the high uptake of mobile apps and the rapid increase in mobile internet use in general. 20% of all internet users on portable devices are on.

Far fewer users access BuzzFeed through the BuzzFeed app than you’d think; instead, they access it through links on social media pages. This goes against market perceptions and trends that other business models are following. This is a different story from the app/mobile web split that occurs across the web overall.

Those users who do use BuzzFeed apps are more frequent and involved users, who spend about 24x more time on BuzzFeed than other mobile users do. So the app is still worth investing in for a business like BuzzFeed. There are two conversions in their model; the first is from social media to mobile web access of Buzzfeed, and the second is to become a BuzzFeed app user. App users spend more time investigating content from BuzzFeed and can also have content pushed at them. This means that even with huge volumes of traffic entering the site, there is still room and opportunity for growth through the second conversion. These two conversion strategies are worth looking at in more detail. If you run a web-based media site, then an equivalent model might yield similar results. The double conversion also adds extra opportunities for monetization strategies, too.