Lost Remote just attended BuzzFeed’s first NewFront event in NYC. The viral content platform packed the SVA Theater in Chelsea with reporters, brands, social network reps and more to unveil the success and future of their video business. BuzzFeed’s video business is just a year and a half old and is quickly becoming a major part of what they do. BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti even made a strong comparison to how online video has greater scale than the cable networks.
Stacy Minero from Twitter’s content team shared this picture of Peretti’s presentation which showed the comparison to Fox News, CNN, Bravo, MTV, Comedy Central, AMC and FX:
@BuzzFeed video competing with cable nets? Check out this chart #newfronts pic.twitter.com/eu1tvg3PLX
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— Stacy Minero (@sminero) April 28, 2014
BuzzFeed’s video production business is quite impressive and untraditional. Ze Frank who runs video for BuzzFeed out of LA described how from the ground up they did everything differently than Hollywood usually does. From collaborative pitching of video ideas, to making sure that team members both edit, write and produce so there’s no hierarchy of expertise. He also described how important the “social lift” of each video is to them, meaning the earned views, as supposed to the views from BuzzFeed.com.
#BuzzFeedNewfronts: @zefrank: “The proportion of the traffic that is earned” is extremely important. pic.twitter.com/VDTHKvqkdI
— Natan Edelsburg (@twatan) April 28, 2014
BuzzFeed video has now surpassed one billion views and will surely be one of the top online video platforms to watch out for in 2014-2015.