Buzzfeed closes news operations in Britain, Australia

SYDNEY — Groundbreaking website Buzzfeed said on Thursday that it would be shuttering part of its loss-making news operations in Britain and Australia, as it scales back global ambitions to cut costs.

“For economic and strategic reasons, we are going to focus on news that hits big in the United States during this difficult period,” a company spokesperson said.


Many news outlets have been hard-hit by the coronavirus pandemic, with plummeting advertising revenues and already struggling operations pushed deeper into the red.

Ten staff in Britain and four in Australia will be furloughed, in a move that is expected to become permanent.

The company will no longer cover local news in the two countries, but said: “In the UK, we still plan on retaining some employees who are focused on news with a global audience — social news, celebrity, and investigations.”

The four Australian posts were “no longer essential during this time of sharply limited resources,” the company added.

Once maligned as a funnel for little more than celebrity gossip, clickbait lists and cat pictures, Buzzfeed has developed into a news force to rival more established outlets.

“BuzzFeed gave us space to experiment with covering politics for a young audience,” Australian news editor Lane Sainty tweeted.

She lauded her staff’s work to “tackle important and often under-covered beats like abortion, LGBTQ rights, Indigenous affairs, immigration and internet culture.”

“I’ve always been grateful for that & very proud of our work.”

More cost-cutting measures are expected, including in the United States, where “workshare programs” are being touted as a way of avoiding furloughs.



“Those options need to meet our savings goals, be legally and logistically workable, and allow us to keep producing kinetic, powerful journalism,” Buzzfeed said.

This year “news will spend about $10 million more than it takes in,” it added.

Agence France-Presse

Time is running out for BuzzFeed, Mashable

BuzzFeed has given up on going public for now and Mashable is looking for an emergency buyer. The honeymoon period looks to be over for online news websites — left fragile by a model built almost entirely on advertising.

Less than two years ago, blog turned news site Mashable was valued at $250 million, with Time Warner among its investors.

Today, its value has plummeted by 80 percent, and it’s reportedly about to be sold to Ziff Davis. The publisher did not respond to requests for comment.

Meanwhile, revenues that fell short of expectations at BuzzFeed — built on a combination of pop culture and social networks — mean it is no longer expected to go public next year.

The website has just announced it is letting go of around 100 of its 1,700 employees.

These sites — like others founded in the last 10 years — promised investors huge growth driven by advertising as traditional media battled for survival.

But in the space of a few months, the tide has turned — as Google and Facebook’s chokehold on the online advertising market reaches a critical point.

In 2017, the two internet giants have snapped up 63 percent of advertising revenue, compared to 58 percent last year, according to market researcher eMarketer. Next year, they are projected to rake in a 67 percent share.

“Advertisers are increasingly demanding more granularity in targeting capabilities to reach consumers,” Monica Peart, eMarketer’s senior director of forecasting, said in late September.

“Google and Facebook have positioned themselves at the front of this demand curve.”

‘It’s not magic’

“It’s not magic,” said Alan Mutter, a professor at the University of California Berkeley specializing in the relationship between journalism and technology.

“Web publishers can publish an unlimited number of pages and get an unlimited number of page views but there’s only a limited number of people buying advertising.”

In this standoff with the two Californian behemoths, it’s new players who stack up the disadvantages — as two thirds of their traffic come from social networks and search engines, mostly controlled by Facebook and Google.

And “if you’re spending money on creating content, you’re competing with the masters of the internet who spend nothing” on producing content, Mutter explained.

But despite the brutal reality, few believe these new media will collapse completely — like the internet bubble of the early 2000s.

It may be 20 percent lower than projected, but with revenue of $280 million according to US media, BuzzFeed is still set to end the year with growth.

For Charlie O’Donnell, founder of seed stage investment fund Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, a website financed entirely by advertising is “still viable.”

“But is it viable to the tune of a billion-dollar exit? That’s tough,” he said.

Promised returns on investment and plans to enter the stock market are likely nothing but memories now — except for Vice, the only organization that has reached a viable scale.

Without reaching such a size, success requires building an audience around a specialized subject and consequently attracting advertisers — as seen with Politico, Eater and technology site The Verge.

But for those starting out today, prospects for success are limited.

“I would have to hear a very compelling story that you’re going to serve some new vertical that nobody ever thought of before,” former journalist Mutter said of investing in a new venture.

“I don’t know what that would be. This is very hard to do.” AB

source: business.inquirer.net

What Americans think of AlDub, Eat Bulaga's Kalyeserye

Since the phenomenal love team of Alden Richards and Maine "Yaya Dub" Mendoza broke the internet, more and more people are getting wind of Eat Bulaga's KalyeSerye.

News and lifestyle website BuzzFeed uploaded a video Friday of Americans reacting to AlDub. The video has gained over 10,000 views on YouTube as of this writing.

The Americans whom BuzzFeed invited totally had no idea about the love team at first, with some of them thinking AlDub was a gasoline station or a cute dolphin.

After the first Kalyeserye episode was shown to them, a lot of the reactions were positive.

"He's totally hot," said one woman of Alden Richards.

"This show is totally electric. I don't know what the (expletive) is going on, but it's just like a whirlwind of fun (expletive)," another man mused.

"Say goodbye to your 'Desperate Housewives,' your 'Parks and Recreation,' throw that (expletive) out. Eat Bulaga is coming to the States," the same man added.

—Raffy Cabristante/ALG, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com

Apple to unveil next Apple TV version in September –BuzzFeed

Apple Inc will launch the next generation of its Apple TV set-top box in September, with a new remote and support for Siri voice control, online publisher BuzzFeed reported on Thursday.

The new Apple TV will have a slimmer chassis, a "drastically improved" remote with touch-pad input, increased on-board storage and an operating system that will support Siri, BuzzFeed said, citing sources familiar with the matter. (bzfd.it/1Itc1AI)

The device will be launched with its own App Store and a software development kit for app developers, the website said.

Apple said it declined to comment on rumors and speculation.

The Apple TV has not been refreshed since 2013.

The iPhone maker was expected to unveil a new version in June at its annual Word Wide Developers Conference, but it launched the Apple Music streaming service.  — Reuters