BuzzFeed Raises $50M from Andreessen Horowitz | Hacker News Reader

BuzzFeed Raises $50M from Andreessen Horowitz

nytimes.com

81 pointsminimaxir111 comments

> "Most of BuzzFeed’s revenue is derived from BuzzFeed Creative, the company’s 75-person unit dedicated to creating [ads that pretend to be news stories]"

Maybe BuzzFeed has cracked the code for online "journalism" being profitable. But if this is the method, I feel bad for consumers.

You mean like the New York Times' "Sponsored Content"?

[ads that pretend to be news stories]

John Oliver recently commented on this stuff (so called "Native Advertising") on Last Week Tonight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_F5GxCwizc

I don't see any reason to feel bad for consumers. Journalism couldn't get much worse than it already was. At least native advertising is still more explicit than, say, defense contractor GE beating the war drum via NBC/MSNBC. Or companies buying ad slots on major news networks as insurance against negative reporting on them.

> Journalism couldn't get much worse than it already was.

This is such a poor attitude that totally flies in the face of history and the situation for journalists in other places in the world, like Mexico, where hundreds of reporters have been executed in the last few years. Journalism as a profession is just fine, monetizing it might not be.

Correction: Journalism in the US

In the US, the profession is not fine. The major news outlets regularly bury stories the administration finds objectionable (e.g., NY Times on the Bush surveillance). They reiterate propaganda talking points (e.g., NY Times not using the word "torture" until this week). And they generally support the overall goals of each administration (majority of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11). Washington reporters are all too happy to be part of the insiders network and scorn people who aren't (such as Glenn Greenwald).

> The major news outlets regularly bury stories the administration finds objectionable

You seem incredulous. "regularly bury stories" is quite an unsubstantiated claim and you listed one example for which I have seen no evidence that this happened and if it did that the reason was to please a White House administration. Yet you make the claim with great conviction.

As for the Iraqi War drumming, I think that was a problem the NY Times had and was largely the result of the now discredited and very much resigned Judith Miller.

> "one example for which I have seen no evidence"

The evidence for the NY Times editor burying this story is well-documented. The only reason they ever published it was because the writer was going to publish it in his own book. Quote from wikipedia: "Former NYT executive editor Bill Keller decided not to report the piece after being pressured by the Bush administration"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times#Delayed_publ...

Other links:

"New study documents media’s servitude to government" http://www.salon.com/2010/06/30/media_258/

"The NYT’s journalistic obedience" http://www.salon.com/2011/02/21/nyt_16/

"The War Photo No One Would Publish" http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/08/the-war-...

"Propaganda model" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model

>The only reason they ever published it was because the writer was going to publish it in his own book.

This is an interesting interpretation.

There was legal pressure from the Justice Department and an implicit threat from the Bush Administration that the New York Times could be on the hook for revealing "state secrets" and be held responsible for associated repercussions.

Whether you feel that way or not, there is some conflicted, moral debate about Snowden. It's not like the NYT didn't have and want to bust the story, but the ramifications weren't clear cut, so they delayed. I'm sure you're willing to put your professional career and perhaps freedom on the line at any time, right? In the end, the story got out, as it always tends to do.

The fact that people even use the NY Times and Buzzfeed in the same sentence, as if it's the same business, is hilarious.

>majority of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11

I'm not sure how that's the fault of the mainstream news media, rather than an ignorant population.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_advertising

I like to think that consumers will eventually develop a mental immunity to BuzzFeed-style headlines, and then they'll be a bit stuck.

There's only so many times a human can click on "Ten Amazing Things About Something Or Other That We Bet You Won't Believe" before it finally clicks in their brain that hey, wait a minute, last time I read one of these it wasn't _that_ amazing...

But its already evolved from "These Things Will Amaze You" to "I Saw This And I Couldn't Believe What I Saw" (headlines shifted to first person) and will continue to evolve.

As long as buzzfeed have the data they can stay ahead of the curve.

It's only a matter of time before browser-based "killfile" extensions treat linkbait & native ads in the manner that banner ads have been treated. It may be temporarily profitable to prey on temporary trust, but the curve evolves on all sides of the market.

If algorithms are used to write human-hostile headlines, algorithms will be used to filter human-improving content. Ask Demand Media how their Google traffic is doing post Panda algorithm updates.

Take a look at the August 1985 issue of Cosmopolitan and see how tired they are of the formula. The Chilling Lure of Cocaine - Could You Be Hooked? The Bottom Line on Office Sex. 25 Ways To Ignite A Love Affair.

Seriously, all real titles from one month picked at random.

It never ceases to amaze me how long unsustainable things stick around for

If something's been around for a long time, it must be somewhat sustainable.

True. But knowingly using up finite resources doesn't seem to deter people.

Or it's not unsustainable?

I made my own personal stand. I refuse to click any BuzzFeed-style headlines.

To be fair, I don't think anyone thinks buzzfeed is journalism.

With featured content such as "The 20 Most Australian Hashtags Ever"[1], it's nothing more than light entertainment

[1]: http://www.buzzfeed.com/smwsydney/the-20-most-australian-has...

BuzzFeed wants to be journalism, and they're making a noticeable effort to paint themselves as journalists. They have a DC bureau. They have a White House correspondent. They have field reporters. They have political editors. They even fire reporters for plagiarism[1]. Anecdotally, I know many people that have told me they "go to BuzzFeed for the lists but end up staying and reading the news."

[1]: http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/editors-note-an-apology-to-...

Exactly. Think of them like a television network.

A major television network (eg. CBS) airs both in-depth news coverage, trashy reality shows, fictional comedies/dramas, and sports. More and better timeslots go to things other than news, those shows are advertised more, and the most successful non-news shows have more viewers than the nightly news, but the presence of those other shows doesn't mean that it's fair to say CBS doesn't do journalism.

And yet we're talking about online publications. There's a reason we have CBS.com and CBSNews.com. And ABC.com and ABCNews.com. And NBC.com and NBCNews.com. If websites behaved like television--with different content available at different times--your analogy would be stronger. But they don't. It's all there all the time. And for that reason, BuzzFeed's crap is much harder to separate from any "real" content.

And Buzzfeed reporters are being interviewed on NPR about Ukraine (I think) and other serious world locations.

"Top 10 reasons why Ukraine is in more trouble than you think"

BuzzFeed readers are happy. You can feel bad for consumers only when a traditional news outlet turns into a BuzzFeed. I guess the ones that handle that transition delicately will survive.

Truth is, that out of the huge amount of trash coming from BuzzFeed it's hard to tell what is an ad and what is not. So, considering the quality involved, it's a smart move.

If they put inaccurate summaries within quotes the way you just did, that wouldn't be very good either: "custom video and list-style advertising content that looks similar to its own editorial content" != "ads pretend to be news stories"

Native advertising done well is actually a rising tide that lifts all boats. Regular advertising can be as crude as "Coke is awesome, buy Coke!" and no-one really wants that. Native advertising, on the other hand, could be an intricate feature about how Coke cans are made and the history of soda cans.

Would I rather have lots of screamy obnoxious ads in magazines, on TV, or on the Web.. or would I rather have well produced content that is clearly marked as being sponsor backed? The latter. And this is why it's taking off, because no-one clicks on banner ads, lots of people run ad blockers, and both media outlets and advertisers are responding by providing what readers do want and will engage with.. indeed, I predicted this years ago on Hacker News itself ;-) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3956158

Now, can native advertising be done in a shitty, underhanded way? Absolutely. But so can journalism. So can reportage. But just because some journalism is shitty and biased doesn't mean journalism is shitty, and nor is native advertising when it's done right, it's better than display advertising because people are actually likely to consume it.

> Maybe BuzzFeed has cracked the code for online "journalism" being profitable

Cue a torrent of branded content and native advertising apologists.

Native advertising is to journalism what virtual casinos are to video games. I used to be an apologist for a virtual slot machine—I even wrote some code for one. But once you get out of the system, it's so obvious: virtual casinos are unequivocally bad for the gaming ecosystem.

Indeed, anything that makes its money primarily by exploiting people at the expensive of competitive creativity—like casinos or native advertising—is bad for the ecosystem.

I think many people in journalism will have to discover organically that native advertising is unequivocally bad for the non-fiction ecosystem. It will make tons of money, sure, but their integrity is worth far more.

"It will make tons of money, sure, but their integrity is worth far more."

Tell that to them when they go out of business.

So I went to buzzfeed.com and was expecting misleading headlines. Instead I was met with "23 Adorable Quokkas That Will Instantly Make Your Day Better", clicked the link and saw 23 pictures of Quokkas.

Most of the stuff on the site seems to be these kind of lists, which I honestly have nothing against. They are linkbaits, sure, but not misleading and I'm seldom disappointed after clicking one. I don't see BuzzFeed claiming to be The Economist or about high quality journalism at all. They seem to focus on serving articles that are easy to digest and sometimes that's exactly what I want.

In one of the experiments, there were two groups: One was asked to write a original creative essay and other was asked to use a template created by an expert and just fill it out. One of such popular template comes in the form of "X number of reason why Y is not true". Although these bullet points doesn't seem such a "creative" content, in the experiment these kind of template-based approach won hands down VS asking people to come up with something original. Why? Because most people suck at being original and creative. It requires years of experience + some level of genius gene and avoiding pitfalls and keeping delicate balance to be original. So if you can't hire 75 Oscar Wilds, then your best bet to create the popular content is follow the templates.

BuzzFeed's model is simple. You can hire pretty much average Joes who can be assigned some interesting topic everyday like "Cheap Private Islands". These Joes will then do research on Internet for few hours and fill out the template with what they found: "25 Amazing Private Islands That You Can Rent Now". Is this click worthy? Absolutely.

I think people who frown upon this don't get "entertainment industry". When you want a TV series or a movie, the goal is not to educate you but entertain you. To provide you some amusement and excitement in your day - however short living that may be. If you click on BuzzFeed's link and if you found it did provided you amusement, they did your job and in return you gave them some CPI. This is no different than watching a soap opera. In other words, Internet is replacing TV as the source of entertainment and BuzzFeed is now a core provider of content in this arena.

BuzzFeed are the Zynga of journalism. Great at getting you in, but lacking in substance.

When their current social network-driven linkbait approach starts to fail I don't see how they can differentiate themselves from other news sites. Zynga tried to turn themselves onto a destination and failed miserably.

Is there anything to learn from Demand Media's trajectory? They wrote search-engine-bait rather than social-network-bait, but didn't bother to create cover traffic / quality journalism.

Quality wins in the long run and BuzzFeed is not focused on quality. Their company should be called Linkbait, Inc. They're the problem, not the solution. I'd bet against this if I could.

If I believed quality won in the long run I would too, but I think this is a smart investment.

I think that BuzzFeed's quality will drastically improve in time.

To me, they're building a platform for journalism/media. They might be in the nascent stage where LinkBait is a dominant strategy, but I'd bet that high-quality journalism will become an increasingly integral part of BuzzFeed's business as it matures.

Why should they succeed at making money by putting out high-quality journalism where others have failed?

Quality journalism doesn't pay in a dollars in to dollars out basis. A carefully-researched article that takes a week-long trip to the Congo to write will get no more and possibly fewer clicks than "Ten Amazing Shark Facts That Will Make You Shit Your Pants" that takes twenty minutes on wikipedia.

Well, perhaps the linkbait articles that you describe will help offset the cost of eventually producing high-quality journalism.

That's an optimistic view, especially as they are moving swiftly in the opposite direction with their "native advertising" push. That's why they are an attractive investment, and that is anti-journalism.

He might be right though. They're probably hedging their bets here.

They have more in-depth content but I imagine it's a tiny part of their overall traffic: http://www.buzzfeed.com/longform

That's the path Buzzfeed has purported to take since the beginning, and as much as I dislike their current offering, they have struck true to that path. I remember when buzzfeed first came out and it was nothing but the lists of images stolen from reddit (pretty similar to 9gag). Now they have a decent amount of original content, and I suspect their goal is to improve the quality of content over time. That said I think they will always be more entertainment focused but there isn't anything necessarily wrong with that.

What does "wins" mean? Makes money?

Disrupters rarely start with quality. Mini mills were strictly inferior to integrated steel mills, web-based software was less powerful than desktop software, digital photography was inferior to film. (Many of these are from Clay Christensen.)

The history of progress & technology is of fast, simple, low-end solutions getting better over time to the point where they're strictly superior to the legacy alternatives. I have little doubt that Buzzfeed, or another upstart media company, will someday be able to do "real" journalism better and faster than the NYT.

(If anyone else believes this, come help me make it happen: http://www.cafe.com/developers)

Journalism is not a technology. It serves an important civic and moral purpose that isn't accounted for at all when you frame it as yet another case of 'disruption'.

I absolutely agree that it serves an important civic & moral purpose, but that is precisely why journalism needs to adopt new technology to reach people on their level.

I'm not seeing how BuzzFeed is adopting new technology nor how adopting new technology is what journalism needs.

I see BuzzFeed as a company that's found a way to exploit people's pull towards instant gratification. But it serves a terrible purpose which has short term benefits for the company but little benefit for others.

They're similar to payday loan companies. Many argue that they're meeting a market need. They maybe but they're doing it in an exploitative way. That's bad for everyone.

BuzzFeed isnt journalism, and I don't think anyone actually thinks it is.

Journalism may not be a "technology" per se, but like technology it's a means to an end (the civic and moral purpose), NOT the end itself - although you could be excused for confusing the two, considering the pompousness with which the trade toasts itself.

"Journalism is not a technology."

Depends; there's always the (no longer so quaint) Soviet usage of the term.

> Journalism is not a technology.

It is a domain of technology, the same as computing is.

> It serves an important civic and moral purpose

Which is orthogonal to whether or not it is a (domain of) technology. Medicine, unquestionably, is a domain of technology, and it serves an important civic and moral purpose, too.

Journalism may be a largely social domain of technology, but social technology is just as real as digital technology, or any other kind.

buzzfeed creates a lot of listicle contentless articles, but they do also have some well-written pieces.

A recent piece on the AUMF and its history was an excellent read http://www.buzzfeed.com/gregorydjohnsen/60-words-and-a-war-w...

What is the percentage of "journalistic penance" articles relative to listicles and ads-pretending-to-be-journalism? Is BuzzFeed seeing cross-article conversion from listicle traffic to quality-journalism articles, or is there a subsite/index where a separate audience is being aggregated for the quality articles?

The part that caught my eye is that Ze Frank is working there, and is leading the Motion Pictures division.

That's... incredible.

I'm looking forward to what they produce, video-wise, simply because Ze Frank is there to shepherd their efforts.

Great word selection there.

shepherd: "A person who herds sheep"

I want to support Ze but not Buzzfeed, this is causing conflicting emotions for me :-(

How many "quality journalism" articles or content pieces must an outlet produce per month, and to what level of traffic exposure must they promote those quality articles, in order to recruit more talent like Ze?

I don't think it comes down to "quality journalism" it's all about money. That's what online "journalism" is ... ad revenue from clickbait titles. I have yet to see anything of high quality investigative journalism from Buzzfeed/ViralNova/Upworthy/etc. They're click-bait farms and they provide no real "journalism" value.

An interesting thing I think nobody seems to be talking about with this deal is the marriage between media platforms and venture capital [1]

There are big incentives for investors to take part in media plays. Look at some recent patterns:

- PandoDaily backed by Peter Theil, Tony Hseih, SV Angel Lerer Ventures, etc…

- BusinessInsider backed by Bezos, Marc Andreeson, RRE, and more (to the tune of $30M+!)

- Washington Post owned by Bezos

- BuzzFeed itself was co-founded by Kenneth Lerer of Lerer Ventures (same team behind HuffPo)

Even if there are firewalls and a commitment to journalistic autonomy/integrity, when you invested in a media company, your interests align with theirs from the very top.

[1] http://crewlab.net/buzzfeed

Reminds me of The Onion's spoof of Buzzfeed called Clickhole http://www.clickhole.com/

FWIW, here's Chris Dixon's blog post on the subject, which includes additional context on BuzzFeed's technological chops:

http://cdixon.org/2014/08/10/buzzfeed/

> BuzzFeed has technology at its core. Its 100+ person tech team has created world-class systems for analytics, advertising, and content management. Engineers are 1st class citizens. Everything is built for mobile devices from the outset. Internet native formats like lists, tweets, pins, animated GIFs, etc. are treated as equals to older formats like photos, videos, and long form essays. BuzzFeed takes the internet and computer science seriously.

The last line, about taking "computer science seriously"...maybe BF doesn't have a dev team of the likes of Google and Facebook, but it must certainly be one of the best in the media business. I've looked through their job postings from time to time, and unlike most major media companies, the job descriptions treat engineering/dev positions as the complex, specialized fields that they often are...what I mean is that at a news company, a dev is expected to do many different things...not because the news company really wants a "full stack" developer or will pay the salary for what that entails, but because there are so many legacy technologies to juggle, and since the traditional news company has only so much money to spend on tech...a Java developer could be expected to crank on the CMS and also figure out video delivery solutions for the media company's bespoke legacy system...and maybe also do some front-end design. At BuzzFeed, even though it seems the organization is relatively flat, with not many layers/walls between tech and editorial, when they want a MySQL developer, they just want someone who can do some serious administration and performance hacking...not a MySQL dev who also might also be expected to hack on some animal quiz code.

I think besides the quality of their CMS (which is pretty damn good, no matter what you think of the editorial content)...one of their most impressive feats was rebuilding the entire site, basically from scratch, during the week that Hurricane Sandy flooded their servers in lower Manhattan. In fact, I believe Gawker had their servers in the same area, but was reduced to creating a Tumblr and posting to it for some time after the hurricane.

edit: Also, another thing I admire: despite their technological chops, they tend to be fairly conservative about how they push the constraints of the web. Their lists are simply lists that work in any browser, any device...because text and static images work perfectly fine in conveying a message. Even their gigantic longform stories don't do crazy shit...for being a "gimmicky" tabloidesque site, BuzzFeed seems to have great confidence in the power of plaintext and big photos...compare this to major news organizations trying to parallax-scroll everything for every occasion.

Interesting, but not particularly surprising. Despite many people's hate for Buzzfeed they are quickly building up a powerful journalism team. I suspect they will be the biggest media/journalism/content powerhouse online within a few years (they technically already are).

Is that a loose use of the word journalism or is there work I don't know about? They definitely have a wildly successful content team but I don't follow buzzfeed closely.

Watch John Oliver's Last Week Tonight video segment on native advertisement https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E_F5GxCwizc (10 min long). There is a bit on BuzzFeed where he points out that many of the posts that are "top" are really from paid advertisers.

Saying BuzzFeed is developing a journalism team is probably not the best wording. I would suggest BuzzFeed is building up a great PR, advertising, and marketing engine. They will make money. But is it journalism?

They are developing long form features and op-eds, no?

Without a very thick, tall, barb-wire-topped wall between editorial and sales, BuzzFeed will never be a respectable source for journalism.

So longer as they are running ads as content, no amount of long-form writing and New Yorker-esque vocabulary will move them from the "clickbait" side to the "journalism" side.

Oh, so you believe in free and objective journalism? I have bad news for you...

Journalism.

Are you sure you understand what that word means and/or implies?

Quantcast, based on direct numbers from Buzzfeed, shows Buzzfeed's traffic essentially flat this year - https://www.quantcast.com/buzzfeed.com

Is this a concern? What is the future growth potential?

this is not 1999, "eyeballs", I mean, "traffic" growth means little when you are able to monetize the traffic you have and grow that (even if your traffic isn't growing)

This is interesting, especially in the context of this interview Andreesen did in Stanford Graduate Business School: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYYsXzt1VDc where he talks about consuming news and how current news is ripe for disruption because it exists on a fragile framework of selling "objectivity", and he seems genuinely interested in how this can be changed.

Buzzfeed has the audience, but maybe only a tangential focus on what we are used to as 'news', I wonder if this is the result of that thinking, ('what we know as news is changing') or something completely different.

Marc Andreessen, in March of this year, explains his perspective on journalism & BuzzFeed in the video below at 41:00 minute mark.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYYsXzt1VDc

He covers topics like:

- why objective journalism started due to monopolies

- technology in journalism

- content creation

This video should answer most of the questions in this thread as to why he'd make an investment.

Edit: formatting

The most puzzling part about this article is that apparently BuzzFeed has an editor-in-chief.

When will advertisers understand that linkbait/clickbait is more effective at attracting bots than humans?

Or do they already realize this? Does anyone have any metrics on where Buzzfeeds CPMs trade versus other news sites/blogs?

Buzzfeed should pay a load of that to "Reddit"

Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_F5GxCwizc

You won't believe what happened next.

I want to believe BuzzFeed has found the future of sustainable and profitable news.

I get how being a full-stack tech news startup can do things like create great lists/linkbait.

But I don't understand how the tech gets you profitable journalism and news.

Journalism and news have less connection to profit than linkbait does.

I wasn't trying to be incredulous... genuinely looking for understanding in to how they get an advantage in journalism with modern tech!

Note: Original article title is "A Move to Go Beyond Lists for Content at BuzzFeed", which is not particularly explanitory, which is why I changed it in the submission.

Honest question: How do we as users know when it is ok to editorialize headlines and when it isn't?

Does it matter? There's no punishment for having the title of your submission changed beyond wasted whatever effort you put into coming up with a new title. If you feel your title is better, submit it and see if the moderators agree.

Then why do the site's guidelines specifically state "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait."?

I'm fine with the mods changing the titles, but I don't like the fact that the rules don't apply equally to everyone.

The rules apply equally to everyone. The article's title is currently "50 Million New Reasons BuzzFeed Wants to Take Its Content Far Beyond Lists". That's obviously linkbait, so we didn't revert the submitter's title.

> That's obviously linkbait

This is a whole new meta that my brain is really having a hard time grokking.

Sure, it's a meta ironic reference to Buzzfeed linkbait by the NYT, but the point stands. If I ironically mimic somebody screaming, I'm still screaming.

The title wasn't link bait -- it was a journalistic choice by the New York Times author to mock BuzzFeed.

Once again, I think you guys made the wrong choice. Once again, I'll point out that if you want to do heavy handed moderation, you need to spend more time understanding why something is the way it is, which means you'll need to spend more time doing it.

Once again I'll point out that this is why we didn't do heavy handed moderation at reddit -- it's just too hard to get it right.

Editorialize is not a synonym for change. Editorializing is never a good idea, changing a headline is fine if you think the new one more accurately describes the content.

That may be true, but from the guidelines: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait."

So now I'm not sure which is ok, because the guidelines clearly state that I am supposed to use the original title. That makes me think that any change would be considered editorializing.

the guidelines clearly state that I am supposed to use the original title

Yes, unless it is misleading or linkbait. Those exceptions are critical.

It wasn't link bait. See my reply above.

This was an unusual case, that was made more unusual that the headline was changed to make it even MORE confusing.

That's why I added the clarification note.

As a result, any company invested in by Andreessen Horowitz is now of lesser value, lower integrity, and less worth of promotion in my opinion. We can talk and discuss and debate "free market" and monetizing content and whatever other rationalization you have for this investment, but in the end, BuzzFeed is not real journalism and does not conduct itself ethically (looking at you, BuzzFeed writers taking content from Reddit and only sometimes giving credit), and as a result, I think that's a message AH is sending, "integrity, ethics, and quality is not important, just $$$"

Edit: once again, anything that goes against the grain of the HN-hivemind is being downvoted without explanation :-) For a site that prides itself in not being Reddit, HN sure acts like Reddit wrt downvotes.

A16Z also invested in PandoDaily: http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pandodaily

Thanks! I'm going to add that site to my blacklist of sites not to visit.

I'm serious on that. I can't vote investments out of office, but I can stop using sites/services and stop promoting them when they take investments from VCs/investors with questionable ethical investments. I'm sure it's a (somewhat) financially sound investment, but that doesn't mean I will go along with it as a consumer or (bootstrapped) startup founder.

Honesty and integrity have become null and void in Silicon Valley and I'm completely fed up with the bullshit. Cut the crap already, ya know? It's the same beef I have with the founders that try to save face when a similar product or service comes out. I know they're frustrated/upset/disappointed, but the whole, "oh, they're a good service too, btw our product..." crap that I've seen on HN lately.

I'm well aware that my idealism does not make perfect business sense, but business is not the end all be all of life, and I'm completely over Silicon Valley propping up bullshit to market bullshit with more bullshit on top. One of these days there will be a VC firm that only invests in transparent and ethically-sound businesses, and I will be doing whatever I can to give my money to those start-ups.

Your comment is the essence of the HN hivemind so not sure what you're talking about. Try posting a positive comment about BuzzFeed and you will get downvoted to oblivion.

The essence of HN hivemind is to worship the "free market" and that capitalism is the end all be all, IMO (that's my experience from having lurked here for several years).

Criticizing one of the biggest VCs for HN startups received multiple downvotes and yet no one explained their reasoning for the downvotes, where I was factually incorrect in what I said, etc.

My comment wrt the downvotes is that HN users loves to claim that they're not at all like Reddit, yet having lurked there for 5+ years (with multiple accounts for the same time), Reddit is at least more honest with the whole, "I don't agree with your opinion, have a downvote" whereas HN is a more silent downvote. I don't care that I'm downvoted, that's fine by me (muh fake internet pointz!), but to see how often HN users try to feel smug and superior over other communities while doing the same thing is frankly hilarious and sad.

I don't know if I agree. I get the feeling the majority of people on HN are left-wing. Just look at the comment threads about basic income.

I think there's plenty of US-liberals in HN too, but it should be noted that there are self-labeled capitalist libertarians advocating for BIG, at least as a "less-bad" welfare system. See e.g. Bleeding Heart Libertarians[1] or the discussions on Cato[2].

[1] http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/

[2] http://www.cato-unbound.org/2014/08/04/matt-zwolinski/pragma...

That's like saying "Facebook isn't a real social network" (only an online social network). Doesn't really matter, they were still a good investment.

You are the epitome of hackernews-er.

If you say so :-)

Buzfeed longform is really good, the idea is that they want to do more of this and with video as well:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/longform

This was a great story:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/susanelizabethshepard/wildcatting-a-...

Buzzfeed is not a Journalist company, it's an entertainment / advertisement company.

What AH bet on was a new way to serve Ads (Native advertising) to costumer, and a business with exploding revenues (30M$ in 2012, 60M$ in 2013, 120M$ planed in 2014, ...). It will be crazy for AH to let this opportunity to invest go away.

It's against the HN guidelines to go on about getting downvoted. Please don't.

Complaints about the HN hive-mind are also tedious. And they're (mostly) evenly distributed across ideologies, so they say more about the complainer than they do about HN.

> It's against the HN guidelines to go on about getting downvoted. Please don't.

Technically it's not, it's discouraged, direct quote:

> Resist complaining about being downmodded.

I have no qualms with downvotes, but I do have issue with people not explaining their rational for either up or downvotes. By simply downvoting/upvoting and moving on, discussion and debate cannot occur and no one can have their opinion challenged.

There are an order of magnitude more votes than comments on HN. Asking people to supply a comment with every vote would quickly degrade the signal, overwhelming it with noisy "I agree" or "you're wrong"s.

People occasionally explain downvotes. They are not obligated to.

Good observation. Why aren't they obligated to?

You don't have to ask people to supply a comment for every upvote. But you can ask them for downvotes. There are an order of magnitude less downvotes than upvotes.

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