Media Briefing: A history of media companies getting into the social platform business, in light of BuzzFeed’s plans

Can BuzzFeed tackle ‘SNARF‘ with an ‘Island’?

You read that right. BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti published a nearly 3,000 word memo on Tuesday blaming tech platforms for “destroying” the internet by allowing “SNARF” content — which stands for “Stakes/Novelty/Anger/Retention/Fear” — to proliferate.

Peretti’s solution to combat SNARF (in addition to a repositioning of BuzzFeed’s flagship site, HuffPost, Tasty and BuzzFeed Studios) is to build a new social media platform. The platform, which is currently being developed, aims to “spread joy” and “enable playful creative expression,” using artificial intelligence technology, Peretti wrote. A link to a website to sign up for early access reveals the project is being called “BuzzFeed Island.” Details like where it would be first available — or any type of timeline —were not provided by Peretti.

It’s a lofty initiative. “Noble,” as one media analyst called it, in a conversation with Digiday.

What is old in media is (seemingly) always new again. And though there have been a few media companies that launched their own platforms designed for user-generated content and engagement, most of them sputtered out and died.

Building versus sustaining a social platform are different struggles though it doesn’t cost all that much to launch them. Each seemed to fade due to a variety of factors, including failing to construct a sustainable advertising business, maintaining the infrastructure to evolve with changing user behaviors, and retaining resources — especially as they came up against large social networks from big tech companies.

It’s proven to be difficult to break through in an area dominated by Meta (Facebook and Instagram), X (formerly Twitter) and — the latest — TikTok. Just look at platforms like Threads and Bluesky that have potential, but have yet to capture competitive engagement. Or platforms like Clubhouse that seemed to break through the surface, but couldn’t sustain momentum.

If BuzzFeed succeeds, it might be one of the first digital media companies to do so. But when asked about the value of another platform created by a media company, the industry touted Peretti’s opinion, rather than the idea itself, citing the fact that there are very — if any — details on the upcoming social platform.

“It’s always worth taking seriously [Peretti’s] predictions and perceptions of social media,” said Ben Smith, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Semafor, who was the top editor of BuzzFeed News until 2020.

“[Peretti] is certainly a visionary, and I will never discount his vision,” said Jeff Jarvis, media critic and journalism professor.

Giants like Meta and TikTok have their millions of users. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for new entrants — especially if the TikTok ban goes through and leaves a hole to be filled. Audience attention has to go somewhere, right?

Here are some media companies that have tried to launch — or grow through investments — their own social platforms:

Advance and Reddit

This is perhaps one of the few examples of a media company’s investment in a social media platform that has panned out rather well.

Reddit was founded by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005 before it was sold to Condé Nast in 2006, for about $10 million. In 2009, Reddit launched ads on the site. Two years later, Reddit’s operations were spun away from Condé Nast, and the social media company began operating as a subsidiary of its parent company, Advance Publications. Reddit launched an IPO and went public in 2024.

Things started to really kick off for the company last year. Reddit started signing advertising deals with sports leagues, and signed content licensing deals with OpenAI and Google. The company reported its first profit in Q3 2024 (of $348.4 million) with nearly 100 million active users. Advance retains a majority stake in Reddit.

BusinessWeek and Business Exchange

BusinessWeek launched a site in September 2008 called Business Exchange, aimed at hosting user-generated content. Business Exchange hosted topic pages with links to articles and blog posts from other sources. It also allowed users to create and comment on the different topic pages, as well as share and engage with aggregated news feeds.

However, it’s unclear what happened to Business Exchange; it is no longer a live site. By the time McGraw-Hill sold BusinessWeek to Bloomberg in 2009, Business Exchange was not named as one of its assets.

Yahoo and Tumblr

Yahoo didn’t launch Tumblr, but it did own the microblogging and social networking site founded by David Karp for over a decade. Tumblr launched in 2007 and was acquired by Yahoo in 2013 for $1.1 billion. 

When Verizon bought Yahoo in 2017, Tumblr and Yahoo moved under its Oath subsidiary (renamed to Verizon Media Group in 2019), and struggled to monetize. Despite the fact that Tumblr had a sizeable user base, it never could figure out how to effectively monetize that audience with advertising. It also failed to produce innovative ad products under Yahoo’s ownership. Tumblr had 642 million visitors in July 2018, though that number fell to around 400 million by January 2019.

In 2014, at least 84 million posts were published every day. By 2018, that number had dropped over 50%, to 30 million, according to CNBC. Within months of introducing stricter content moderation policies to attract advertisers, Tumblr lost about 30% of its user traffic in 2019.

Tumblr ended up getting acquired by Automattic — owner of WordPress — in 2019 and was migrated to WordPress.

For what it’s worth, Tumblr wasn’t Yahoo’s only foray into microblogging sites. Yahoo! Meme launched in 2009 from the company’s Latin American team — but that initiative never really took off and was shut down in 2012.

CNN and iReport

In 2006, CNN launched a citizen journalism platform called iReport, where people could upload stories, pictures and videos of breaking news and events happening around them. Once verified and approved by a team of producers, those stories were often distributed on CNN’s other platforms.

In 2012, iReport had over a million visitors. But unable to compete with social platforms like Facebook and Twitter, visitors dropped to around 500,000 monthly unique visitors in May 2015. iReport was removed from CNN’s website that year. CNN officially shuttered iReport in November 2015.

Disney and Club Penguin 

Club Penguin was a multiplayer online game for kids created by Disney in 2005. Users could choose from different cartoon penguin aviators and enter a virtual world to play online games. Two years after it launched, the platform had over 30 million user accounts, which grew to over 200 million registered user accounts by 2013. It was bought by the Walt Disney Company from New Horizon in August 2007 for $350 million dollars.

But its users started shifting to mobile gaming. As a result, Disney shut down the game in 2017. The company tried to keep up with changing user behavior by launching a mobile version, but it never took off and was abandoned a year later.

What we’ve heard

“If you want to join that open, federated, distributed party, good. If you want to start a new proprietary network? Good fucking luck.”

– Jeff Jarvis, media critic and journalism professor, on BuzzFeed’s plans to launch a social media platform.

Dotdash Meredith’s business grows

IAC’s Dotdash Meredith grew revenue and traffic in the fourth quarter of 2024, according to its latest earnings released this week.

Dotdash grew its traffic by about 8% in 2024. IAC aims to continue to increase that audience this year, as well as expand its D/Cipher ad targeting tool to sell third-party inventory, allowing advertisers and agencies to target audiences and buy ads on other sites.

By the numbers:

• Dotdash Meredith’s total revenue of $522.1 million in Q4 2024 was up 10% compared to the same quarter in 2023.
• Digital revenue was $311 million, up 10% year-over-year.
• Performance marketing revenue was up 22% year-over-year, thanks to 39% growth in affiliate commerce.
• IAC expects $330-350 million of total Dotdash Meredith adjusted EBITDA for 2025, up from $295.4 million in 2024. 

In a letter to shareholders, IAC CEO Joey Levin said Dotdash Meredith will launch new branded consumer products and experiences this year. 

Numbers to know

19%: The percentage of answers from AI assistants (including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini) that introduced factual errors when citing BBC content.

14%: The percentage decrease of the number of New York Times staffers tweeting on a given day, after the publisher updated its social media policies to discourage reporters from spending too much time on Twitter (now X).

20: The number of PopSugar editorial employees who will join the 300-person Vox Media union.

$97.4 billion: The amount X owner Elon Musk offered for the assets of OpenAI.

What we’ve covered

Podcasters are finding different ways to measure videos’ role in growing incremental audiences

• Podcast orgs and publishers aren’t using videos of their audio shows to try to grow listenership. Well, they are trying to do that — but there’s not really a good way to measure if that strategy actually works well. 
• Instead, podcasters are framing their video production efforts as a way to attract incremental audiences, by producing more video from their audio shows to grow viewership and measure audience growth holistically — a prime example of the convergence between audio and video podcasts.

Find out how podcasters are drawing correlations between a podcast’s video audience growth and the show’s overall audience growth here.

What we’re reading

LA Times owned Patrick Soon-Shiong is building a new right-wing media company

Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong is talking to Republican consultants and talk show hosts as he works on building a new media venture, according to Status. The entity, currently called LAT Next, aims to feature personalities that will appeal to MAGA followers.

Media companies hit by government cancelling subscriptions

Politico, BBC and Bloomberg are some of the companies hit by the White House’s order to cancel the General Services Administration’s media contracts, Axios reported. It’s one of a few agencies that has had to cut subscriptions to publishers.

The Bulwark becomes profitable

Politics-focused media company The Bulwark has its first profitable year in 2024, after launching in 2018, Intelligencer reported. The Substack has 76,000 paid subscribers. YouTube content is bringing in between $150,000 to $300,000 a month.

Disney makes changes to its DEI-focused initiatives

Disney is making changes to its DEI programs, Axios reported. The company removed a part of its website that highlights stories and talent from underrepresented communities, for example, as well as replacing an evaluation of executive compensation that focused on diversity and inclusion.

NowThis doubles revenue

NowThis doubled its revenue in 2024 and achieved profitability for the first time, Adweek reported. The company generated an adjusted profit of $4.6 million.