Not at the door, but through the window: Buzzfeed enters Russia through social networks

The American edition of Buzzfeed is increasing its presence in the Russian market. Earlier in Facebook appeared posts Buzzfeed in Russian. They are also published on the website of the publication itself. On the BuzzFeed Partner page appeared an advertisement in Russian. In early October, BuzzFeed created a Russian-language Twitter account.

The next step turned out to be quite peculiar - on November 12, the BuzzFeed publication created the community published the first post on the Russian social network VKontakte . This was announced by Social Network spokesman Georgy Lobushkin. The number of subscribers to the Buzzfeed community in VKontakte at the time of publication was 1,551 people.
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“We are constantly developing, we are trying something new and in general we always strive to make our content as localized as possible. Now they decided to experiment with BuzzFeed content in Russian. We have no plans to launch the Russian edition. This is just an experiment on one of the social media platforms, ” commented earlier the press service of BuzzFeed edition Tjournal.

“We are very focused on international development; we are trying to cover different platforms; and we are very focused on the further development of our video business, ”added the head of BuzzFeed.

According to media director John Peretti, 23% of traffic BuzzFeed receives from views of the site and its content directly through the application, 27% are views on video on Facebook and 14% on YouTube, 21% of traffic comes from Snapchat, 6% are conversions to the website is linked from Facebook, 4% are images on the same social network, 2% are searching the site using Google, another 3% are from other platforms. Buzzfeed resources attract more than 200 million unique visitors per month and 1.5 billion views.

The online edition of BuzzFeed was launched in 2006. The company is headquartered in New York. Jonah Peretti, founder of BuzzFeed, initially conceived the company as a small Internet lab. But now BuzzFeed has grown into an international media portal with a variety of topics: from international politics to television series and creative workshops.

Over the past few years, BuzzFeed has become a very popular platform, moving from simple aggregation of content and articles to a combination of several formats, including video content. The management of the resource managed to organize a harmonious coexistence of business content with entertainment and even political. Media company successfully engaged in the production of video content.

BuzzFeed has repeatedly been criticized for the "fuzziness" of the business model and the introduction of natural advertising in its materials. So, The Wall Street Journal managing editor Gerard Baker (Gerard Baker) in his speech to the students of the Faculty of Journalism at New York University noted that the merger of advertising and journalism can not be acceptable and that natural advertising can become for the publications a kind of “Faustian treaty” .

And now, expanding its influence in Russia, the company also acts outside the box - it comes as if “not at the door, but through a window”. And accordingly without knocking.