????如果以更深入的方式創作出引人注目、打動人心的內容，其實有希望爬上一座大山。但如果只關注數據，你可能會認為自己已經爬到了山頂，因為接下來無論往哪個方向走都會導致點擊率下降。但那里其實蘊含著遠大得多的前景。優化可以引領你發現局部最大值，但這些局部最大值往往不是你真正想要的東西。這就是我們為什么探索不同類型的內容，從人的層面上思考問題。“這真的是優質內容嗎？人們點擊它是否僅僅因為他們無法抗拒，還是僅僅因為它能夠帶來一種混雜著負罪心里的快感？”提出這類的問題非常重要。你需要讓人們創造性地試驗許多不同的事情。然后，數據會變得有意義。

????我女兒正是上大學的年齡，非常喜歡BuzzFeed。你的受眾是哪些人？你希望你的受眾是哪些人？

????創辦這家網站時，我們真的沒有考慮過目標受眾群體。我們只是集中精力為社交網絡創作內容，共享是我們散播內容的方式。移動和社交真正融合在一起。這么說來，過去阻止內容傳播的正是手機。我以前很討厭手機。你的黑莓手機(BlackBerry )收到一封電郵時，你說，“回到辦公室以后，我再查閱。”現在，移動設備上最流行的應用程序是社交應用。Facebook、Twitter的相當大一部分流量都來自移動終端。

????因此，我們專心致志地面向人們今天消費媒體的方式——面向移動，面向社交——來打造媒體。隨后，當我們看到我們的等高線數字時，我們不由得驚呼：“哇！我們擁有一個超級年輕的受眾群體。我們的受眾群體為什么這么年輕呢？”原因在于，我們根據人們目前消費內容的方式來打造媒體，而年輕人恰好是最早使用智能手機消費媒體、同時把社交網絡作為主要內容源的群體。所以，我們碰巧與這樣一個讀者群相遇。這些二三十歲的年輕人接受過良好的教育，擁有比同齡人更高的收入（雖然還比不上他們的父母）。他們在社交媒體上非常活躍，以非常快的速度共享內容，以一種非常貪婪的方式消費內容。

????你是否打算向年齡更大的讀者拓展？你是否想拓寬讀者群？這是不是你尋求做的事情？

????我想我們會的。我的意思是，未來很難預測。我猜想，年輕人的許多媒體消費行為會蔓延到更廣泛的受眾。我其實并不認為，我們的受眾局限于某個具有人口統計學意義的群體。我們更多的是面向一種消費內容媒體的方式，我想一些老年人也在采用這種方式消費媒體。未來，他們的數量或許會增加。這對于我們來說將是一個增長點，就如同老年人是Facebook的增長點一樣。

????現在有多少人登陸BuzzFeed.com的首頁？它是否揭示了搜索和社交的緊張關系？

????幾百萬人登錄我們的首頁，幾千萬人閱讀“B版”頁面和文章。社交網絡現在已經真正成為大多數人尋找新聞和信息的起點，比如Facebook的新聞源和Twitter的數據流。社交網絡已經變得無所不在，對于年輕人尤為如此。我們正處在這些高速的信息流之中。在Facebook、Twitter和其他社交網絡，我們都是最受歡迎的網站之一。

????一些人訪問BuzzFeed首頁在某種程度上是因為他們在自己的信息流中發現了一堆好內容，隨后肯定在想：“噢，我喜歡這個網站。我為什么不直接去內容源看看呢？”我認為是這樣一種情況。但也有一些人打算尋找某個可以分享的內容。所以，當人們登陸BuzzFeed首頁時，他們說：“那篇文章很爛。這篇不適合我。這篇也不對我的胃口。但這篇很好啊，我要分享給我所有的朋友。”因此，兼收并蓄的BuzzFeed主頁是一個福利，因為它讓人們忽略那些不適合他們的內容，找到合適的內容，放進自己的信息流，讓它們融入社交網絡的共享洪流之中。

????If you made something that was compelling and touched people in a deeper way, you might actually… there might be a mountain that you could climb, but if you're just following numbers, you think you're at the top of the mountain because every direction you go looks like it's downward to a lower click-through rate. But there's actually something there that's much bigger. Optimization can lead to finding local maximums, but those local maximums often aren't where you actually want to be. That's why exploring lots of different kinds of content, and thinking about things on a human level and saying, "Is this actually good content, or are people just clicking this because they can't resist clicking it because it's a guilty pleasure?" is important. You need to have creative, experimental people trying lots of different things. And then the data becomes meaningful.

????My college-age daughter loves BuzzFeed. What is your audience? What do you want your audience to be?

????We didn't really start with a demographic in mind. We just were focused on making content for the social web, with sharing being our distribution. Mobile and social really converged. So, it used to be that mobile was the thing that would stop things from spreading. I used to hate mobile. You'd get the email on your BlackBerry and say, "I'll look at this when I get back to the office." Now the most popular apps on mobile devices are social apps. When we see traffic from Facebook or Twitter, it's disproportionately mobile.

????So we were focused on making media for the way people consume media today, for mobile, for social. And then we kind of were looking at our contour numbers, and we were like, "Oh, wow! We have this super-young demographic. Why do we have this super-young demographic?" The reason was that we were making media for the way people were consuming content today, and young people are the earliest adopters of using smartphones to consume media, and of using the social web as their main source of content. So we kind of accidentally ended up with this demographic of readers in their twenties and thirties who are very active on social media, who are very educated, who have high incomes relative to the peers their same age, but not relative to their parents, and who share content at a really high rate and engage with content in a very voracious way.

????Do you want to get older? Do you want to get broader? Is it something that you seek to do?

????I think we will. I mean, it's hard to predict the future. My guess is that a lot of the media consumption behaviors of young people will start to spread to a broader audience. I actually don't think we're demographically defined. It's more a way of consuming content media, and I think there are older people who do consume media that way, and they'll probably increase. That will be a growth area for us, just the same way that older people were a growth area for Facebook.

????How many people go through the front door of BuzzFeed.com? Does that speak to the tension between search and social?

????We have millions of people go to our front page and tens of millions of people go to our "B" pages and articles. Social has really become the starting point—the Facebook newsfeed, the Twitter stream—where most people are finding their news and information now. It's become something that has become more and more prevalent, particularly for young people. And we are in those streams at a really high rate. We're one of the most popular sites on Facebook and Twitter and other social sites.

????People go to the front page of BuzzFeed partly because they've seen a bunch of things in their stream, and they're like, "Oh, I like this site. Why don't I go to the source?" I think that happens. But also people are going to look for something to share. So people come to the front page of BuzzFeed saying, "Oh, that article sucks. This one's not for me. This isn't my cup of tea. But this one is perfect, and I'm going to share it with all of my friends." So the eclecticness of our home page almost is a benefit because it lets people pass over things that isn't the right content for them, find the one that is, and put that into their stream and get the sharing going on the social web.