The Internet has successfully ravaged my attention span. In fact, in the construction of that intro sentence alone I somehow managed to:
• Update my Facebook status
• Check my horoscope on The Onion
• Totally derail my train of thought
Me plus millions of others, apparently. BuzzFeed understands the nature of the beast and, utilizing a legion of similarly afflicted visitors and staffers supernaturally adept at stumbling upon cool items, capitalizes on the fickle nature of Web trending on a daily basis. In their own words:
“We are a viral tracking Web site with 4 million monthly visitors, a viral network with over 50 million monthly impressions, and a viral media platform with awesome technology for launching and optimizing content. In short, we’re the best place to find out what’s going viral online, and the first place to start if you want to make something go viral.”
In addition to its own trend-sniffing staffers, who no doubt each own heavily eroded iPhones, the site allows users to submit trends deemed worthwhile — usually in the form of embedded videos, pictures or links. The BuzzFeed editorial staff promotes items of worth, visitors in turn share the content via their own means and a trend is born. Every day.
