????但是，就BuzzFeed而言，一件違反直覺的事情是，我們正在做的事情并不是一個自然推論出的結果。因為印刷版內容不可能通過口口相傳來傳播。人們撕下雜志或報紙文章，把它郵遞出去，這樣做可以產生少量的散播效應。但在沒有印刷機或廣播管道的情況下，我們正在抵達8,500萬獨立訪客。我們每天都需要制作一些人們認為值得分享的內容。如果我們制作不出人們認為非常優質，以至于他們愿意傳遞、并跟所有朋友分享的內容，我們就根本無法吸引到受眾。實體世界并不存在這樣一種模式。

????這種模式確實讓這家網站更加令人迷惑。如果你說：“哦，過去曾經采用過這種方式，但現在利用互聯網或技術來做更有效率。”人們就更容易理解一家企業。如果沒有互聯網，我們正在做的事情就不可能發生。

????BuzzFeed是一家商業企業，一門生意。你最終還是想通過它的發展壯大來賺錢，是這樣吧？

????是啊。我們今年已經開始盈利，我們一直在擴充團隊。我們試圖打造一家可持續發展的公司。我們總是思考，如果今天從零開始，創建一家媒體公司，它將是什么樣子？一家面向社交和移動時代的媒體公司會是什么模樣？創建這樣一家公司將是怎樣一番景象？創造收入是構建一家公司的重要組成部分，創作優質的調查性報道和真正有意思的內容亦是如此。我們的視角非常廣闊，我們要做非常廣泛的事情。

????你的確非常善于利用互聯網的病毒式傳播效應。最初是你在麻省理工學院(MIT)讀書的時候，你要求耐克公司(Nike)在你訂購的運動鞋上標注“血汗工廠”字樣，但遭到了拒絕。這個故事迅速在網上傳播開來。你的朋友說你不可能復制這樣的傳播效應。那是你的“茅塞頓開時刻！”所以，在某種程度上，社交平臺就是你的命根子。給我講講你怎么社會化媒體的格局，對你來說，哪些社交平臺是最重要的？你最看好哪些平臺？

????我們發現，內容因為不同原因在不同網絡傳播。究其根本，社會化內容需要人來傳播。人們愿意分享是有原因的。但對于某些內容而言，一些平臺的分享效果更好。Twitter的傳播速度非常迅速，海量訊息來也匆匆，去也匆匆，以至于人們必須發布與當下密切相關的內容，這跟Twitter的架構有一定關系。這也是為什么電視直播、突發新聞和實時事件等內容更適合在Twitter上傳播。此外，對于依托于興趣的內容，Twitter的傳播效果也要比其他社交網絡好得多。所以，如果你對技術或商業感興趣，你可以在Twitter上關注技術或商業資訊。如果你是一個追星族，你可以在Twitter上關注明星動向。

????在Facebook上，因為人們把它當作一個真實的人際網絡，用它來聯絡在現實生活中結交的朋友——比如你在大學、高中或工作中相識的朋友，以及與你存在各種聯系的其他人——你真的不想分享一些只有極少數人感興趣的東西。所以，如果你打算在Twitter上發布關于跑步的帖子，你可以寫一些關于跑步的東西，對跑步感興趣的人或許就會關注你。但如果你開始在Facebook持續發布跑步訊息，而你的大多數朋友都對跑步沒興趣，甚至憎惡你有這樣一個愛好，或者至少這些訊息使得他們為自己不常跑步而感到慚愧，那么它就不會產生很好的聯絡效果。所以說，與Facebook相關聯的是寬泛的人類情感，以及每個人都深有體會，能夠把生活中的朋友連接在一起的事物。它的真諦并不是蘊含于內容的信息，而是這些內容如何把你跟日常生活中的其他人連接在一起。

????One of the things that is counterintuitive about BuzzFeed is that there's not a natural corollary to what we're doing because it isn't possible to distribute content through word-of-mouth in print. People rip out magazine or newspaper articles and mail them, and there's some small amount of distribution, but we're reaching 85 million unique visitors without owning a printing press or a broadcast pipe or anything. And every day we have to make content that people think is worth sharing, and we don't reach any audience at all unless we make content that people think is so good that they're willing to pass it on and share it with all their friends. That model doesn't have an offline version of it.

????That does make it more confusing. It's easier to understand a business when you say, "Oh, it used to be done, you know, this way, and now it's done more efficiently using the Internet or using technology." What we're doing you couldn't have done without the Internet.

????BuzzFeed is a commercial enterprise, a business. You are interested in making money, ultimately, and in growing it. Right?

????Yeah. We became profitable this year and we've been growing our team. We want to build a sustainable company. We like to think, what would a media company be if you created one from scratch today? What would a media company be for the era of social and mobile? [What would it be like] to build that company? Generating revenue is an important part of building a company. So is having great investigative journalism. So is having really entertaining content. We have a pretty broad purview—a pretty broad range of things we do.

????You're really all about leveraging the viral aspect of the Internet. That's what you started out with at MIT, with that Nike iD thing where you were denied a request to put "sweatshop" on your shoes and the story went viral. And your friend said you couldn't replicate that. That was your "Aha!" moment. So social platforms are, in a way, your lifeblood. Tell me about the landscape of social media, which social platforms are the most important to you, and which ones are you most sanguine about.

????What we've found is that content spreads on different networks for different reasons. There are underlying human dynamics for social content. There are reasons why people share. But certain platforms are better for certain types of sharing. Twitter is very fast. Partly because of the architecture of Twitter, things flow so quickly and disappear so quickly that you need to post things that are of the moment. And so that's why Twitter is great for things like live television, breaking news, and real-time events. Twitter is also much better for interest-based content. So people on Twitter can follow tech if they're interested in tech, or business if they're interested in business, or they can follow celebrities that they're fans of.

????On Facebook, because people use it as their actual network of people that they're friends with in their real life—you have friends from college, you have friends from high school, you have friends from work, you have a diverse range of people that you're connected to—you don't really want to share things that only a very small subset of people would be interested in. So if you're tweeting about running, you can write about running and people who are interested in running can follow you. But if you start posting on Facebook constantly about running, and most of your friends don't care about running and actually kind of hate you because you're a runner, or at least it makes them feel bad about them not being a runner or whatever, you know, it doesn't really work that well. So Facebook is much more tied to broad human emotion and things that everyone can relate to, and things that connect people with the people in their lives. It's not so much about the information in the content; it's about how that content allows you to connect with other people in your life.