“Information and knowledge: two currencies that have never gone out of style.”

What author Neil Gaiman wrote rings true, especially in today’s digital landscape. In fact, the exchange of information has stayed so on-trend that today’s means of sharing are indistinguishable from those of merely decades ago.

When the internet was still in its infancy, it was in the process of developing its own way of spreading information, and some people were curious about how this all worked.

Jonah H. Peretti and John Seward Johnson III built an entire digital media company on the concept of spreadable content. Their interest in how this type of material spread helped them unlock a formula to recreate the magic of a “viral” moment.

Today their platform BuzzFeed is a place where more than hundreds of millions of users come to get their fix of entertainment and news.

But as much as BuzzFeed is a place known for rapidly shared content, the site itself did not reach millions overnight.

The Very Beginning

John Seward Johnson III has a rich family history, and BuzzFeed certainly was not his claim to fame. His name might sound familiar as his great-grandfather was Robert Wood Johnson - the co-founder of Johnson & Johnson.

His father, meanwhile, is artist John Seward Johnson II. Art has been a major part of John’s family, and his own life as even his mother worked in theater and writing, and his sister followed her artistic passions and got into acting.

John got his bachelor’s degree in philosophy and mathematics from St. John’s College and later went on to earn a master’s degree in research methodology and quantitative methods from Columbia University. He never quite managed to narrow his interests down to just one thing and has had all kinds of endeavors in his life, from filmmaking to entrepreneurship and philanthropy.

The year 1974 was off to a good start as on the 1st of January, Jonah H. Peretti was born. He’s of Italian and English descent on his father's side and Jewish on his mother’s.

Born and raised in Oakland, California, Peretti attended The College Preparatory School. He had a passion for technology and science but acquired a degree in environmental studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Eventually, he’d get his Master’s of Science from the MIT Media Lab.

During his postgrad years at MIT, Peretti would get his first taste of a viral hit. This would ignite the spark that later helps BuzzFeed rise to its current success.

The First Hit

While Peretti was working on his master’s degree, something would happen that would change the trajectory of his career going forward.

He sent a request to Nike for a custom order of shoes with the word “sweatshop” printed on them. Nike rejected his order, but Peretti did contact them and had an interesting email exchange with staff workers. He shared the email chain with close friends but didn’t expect those friends would share it with others.

Soon, the exchange was a massive hit, being covered by major sites, and Peretti was left with the thought of how things such as this email exchange get shared and spread. This thought would have to be put aside for a time, however, as Peretti went on to co-found a more traditional media site - The Huffington Post.

John Johnson was in fact an early investor in the Huffington Post - that would later become the HuffPost - but is also no stranger to being on the founder’s side of companies.

John, aside from co-founding BuzzFeed, is the founder of Harmony Labs, Screenwriters Colony, and the Filmmakers Collaborative, as well as the art and technology centre Eyebeam.

He founded Eyebeam in 1997 and hired Peretti to work as its director of research and development in 2003. Three years later, both of them co-founded BuzzFeed, although initially, it was very different from what it is today.

What's All The Buzz About?

When Peretti and Johnson first started BuzzFeed, they focused on tracking and assisting the traction of trending stories and weren’t really developing any content of their own. The site was initially a news client that would find and aggregate popular media links.

The company later launched an instant messaging bot called the “Buzzbot”, which would message users the links. It was creative and reasonably popular; however, this was not a scalable business. BuzzFeed then started to feature the content it found on its site. Soon, they found the bot was not cutting it for their vision, so the company started to hire employees to curate the content that went on the site.

What set the company apart was the way it targeted consumers. Peretti chose to focus on the traction the site was getting from social media sites, which proved to be a good move. It became obvious BuzzFeed was successful when they started to produce shareable content that could garner more people to their site from social networks.

Up until 2011, Peretti worked on the HuffPost and as CEO of BuzzFeed simultaneously. Once he left the former, he could dedicate a lot more of his efforts to BuzzFeed and pursue larger goals for the company.

Slowly the site started moving from lightweight content into more serious and researched reporting, constantly evolving. They were producing more content of all kinds, and after a few years, they had several different series that were all doing their own thing.

The Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent economic hit, unfortunately, forced the company to cut salaries. However, CEO Peretti committed to giving up his own salary until the end of the pandemic and managed to keep their jobs.

Putting BuzzFood on the Map

It takes money to make money. In 2006 BuzzFeed not only started off as a company but also enlisted the help of MIT Media Lab, which offered their firm non-equity assistance.

In the beginning, it was a small project and didn’t require much to survive. Over time, though, BuzzFeed grew to demand more money, and funding endeavors were aimed to produce larger amounts.

From the year 2008 up to 2016, BuzzFeed conducted 7 financing rounds, Series’ A through G, raising close to an impressive half a million dollars in funding.

Media campaigns, sponsored content, and native advertising increased revenue for the company, with 2014 being an extremely good year for BuzzFeed when they passed $100 million in revenue. That same year they raised $50 million in their Series E funding round, an over 100% increase from the previous round where they made $19.3 million.

BuzzFeed most recently raised $50 million in debt financing in 2020. Later that year, in a funny turn of events, BuzzFeed acquired HuffPost, Peretti’s previous entrepreneurial venture that had been one of the early investors of BuzzFeed.

In 2021, BuzzFeed announced its plan to go public via a special purpose acquisition company merger with 890 5th Avenue Partners. The company sets its aim on a $1.5 billion valuation and is also looking to acquire Complex Networks.

BuzzFeed will trade the ticker symbol “BZFD”.

BuzzFeed Today

The New York-based company stands firm, employing people in numbers ranging up to the thousands. They’ve virally spread and “infected” many of the internet’s crevices, and a lot of BuzzFeed series and channels have evolved into their own unique thing.

BuzzFeed’s continuous success is nothing to snub at. The company has won two Webby awards in 2017 - one for Best News App and another for Best Interview/Talk Show. Just a year later, in 2018, BuzzFeed News was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2021 BuzzFeed was awarded the honor of a Pulitzer for its investigative series about the Xinjiang internment camps.

Today BuzzFeed has offices in 18 cities across the world and has grown to over 1,500 employees, and it doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. Whatever the future of BuzzFeed may hold, one thing is for sure - everyone will hear about it. After all, if anyone knows how to share information - it’s BuzzFeed!