As I was walking in River North I stopped short after seeing this sign for “Buzz Feed”. If you don’t know the name, they are a very successful internet site (is that what you call it nowadays?) that creates their own content that typically goes “viral” or pushes out existing content. You know, the ones with cats, cute animals, funny GIFS, etc…
It is strange seeing the physical manifestation of all the time-wasting crap on the web that most of us enjoy from time to time. If you go to their “about” page on their web site (I probably am literally the first person to do this) you can see the usual types of people that you’d expect to run a web site (or mobile content site? I’m not sure what to call it anymore). I looked at their jobs site and didn’t see any open ones in Chicago so I’m not sure what goes on there besides the little plaque.
Another aggregator is “Gawker Media” that has a bunch of sites (mobile sites?) that we visit a lot especially Deadspin, but also LifeHacker and many others. These sites, like Buzzfeed, are a big challenge to “traditional” media because 1) they sell a lot of advertising 2) they create their own content (or borrow it) 3) they aren’t really journalists (mostly). For instance Deadspin absolutely breaks stories or “piles on” when something happens (like Sandusky in Penn State) but often they just take what’s out there and call it like they see it. Deadspin in particular could care less what journalists / media / companies think of them and they are immensely likable as a result. Gawker too breaks stories like when they had long-term unemployed write in about their plight or Wal-Mart employees started writing in about how miserably that company apparently treats their staff.
The future of media (?) in my own neighborhood…
Cross posted at LITGM
Buzzmedia does not seem to be related to BuzzFeed. It is related to something called SpinMedia, which does indeed have an office at that address.
http://www.spinmedia.com/