????于是，我就開始思考如何產(chǎn)生收入。我從來沒想過在網(wǎng)站上發(fā)布橫幅廣告，部分原因在于，我們投資這個(gè)平臺(tái)是為了在社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)傳播內(nèi)容。我們的團(tuán)隊(duì)當(dāng)時(shí)使用它來創(chuàng)作一些有趣好玩的東西。那時(shí)還沒有記者，我們只是在探索如何發(fā)現(xiàn)我們是不是跟某位受眾連接在一起？人們是否愿意分享這種內(nèi)容？如何為人們提供讓他們感到興奮、從而愿意分享的內(nèi)容？

????所以，對(duì)于我來說，發(fā)布橫幅廣告并沒有多大意義。更有意義的是，打造一個(gè)使用同一平臺(tái)發(fā)布品牌內(nèi)容和廣告的版本。于是，我告訴品牌商，“你們必須講故事。”這其實(shí)是雜志業(yè)數(shù)十年來非常擅長(zhǎng)的事情——?jiǎng)?chuàng)作其實(shí)已成為產(chǎn)品組成部分的廣告。這是網(wǎng)站完全沒有做到的事情，很大程度上就是那些擁擠的小橫幅廣告惹的禍。如果你拿起一本高端雜志，撕掉所有的廣告頁面，它的品質(zhì)往往反而會(huì)下降。你知道嗎，如果你取出一本時(shí)尚雜志的所有廣告，你就將失去多達(dá)一半的圖片。于是，我們就真的采取了這種方式。我們說：“那么，為什么網(wǎng)絡(luò)不能這么干呢？為什么我們不能制作擁有自己的頁面，人們?cè)敢恻c(diǎn)擊、參與、分享并互動(dòng)的品牌內(nèi)容和廣告呢？”

????我們創(chuàng)建了一種完全專有的廣告形式。推銷它真是個(gè)苦差事。許多人的反應(yīng)是，“哦，看看吧，這不是美國互動(dòng)廣告局(IAB)標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，業(yè)界沒這么玩的。我們其實(shí)也不喜歡橫幅廣告，但這種方式很奏效。”然而，有幾個(gè)人，包括通用電氣公司(General Electric)首席營(yíng)銷官貝絲?康斯托克，走到我們面前說：“我們打算創(chuàng)新，想試驗(yàn)一下這種方式。”通用電氣是一家享譽(yù)世界的巨型公司，而我們當(dāng)時(shí)還是一家非常小的網(wǎng)站。我們從那個(gè)時(shí)候其一直在跟他們合作。

????目睹了我們?cè)缙诘某晒χ螅渌恍┢放萍娂姳硎荆骸叭绻@種廣告形式適合通用電氣——他們講述了一個(gè)引人入勝的故事，獲得了10倍于橫幅廣告的點(diǎn)擊率，而且被不斷共享——我們也想試一下。”一旦嘗到了甜頭，人們就會(huì)一而再、再而三地嘗試。

????BuzzFeed與雜志是什么樣的關(guān)系？

????我們與一些雜志網(wǎng)站結(jié)成合作伙伴。我們建立了一個(gè)合作伙伴網(wǎng)絡(luò)，讓其他出版商用我們的技術(shù)來探測(cè)哪篇文章正受到追捧。比方說，如果你在我們的合作伙伴之一《紐約客》( The New Yorker)工作，你就可以收到一個(gè)提醒信息，由此獲知網(wǎng)站的哪篇報(bào)道人氣正在上升。他們還可以獲得一個(gè)顯示內(nèi)容傳播方式的儀表板。

????如果你觀察一下BuzzFeed首頁的右側(cè)導(dǎo)軌，你將看到加入這個(gè)合作伙伴網(wǎng)絡(luò)的出版商。點(diǎn)擊某個(gè)出版商，它共享次數(shù)最高的故事就會(huì)顯示在網(wǎng)站上。這是我們與雜志合作的一種方式。

????你們是否將建立更多類似這樣的合作關(guān)系？

????沒錯(cuò)。網(wǎng)絡(luò)上現(xiàn)在有超過4億的獨(dú)立訪客。他們都在獲得我們的數(shù)據(jù)科學(xué)和技術(shù)帶來的某些好處。

????當(dāng)你看到雜志的網(wǎng)站時(shí)，你認(rèn)為哪些方面是對(duì)的，哪些方面是錯(cuò)的？你認(rèn)為他們?cè)谀男┓矫孢€可以做得更好？

????我瀏覽雜志網(wǎng)站的主要方式是，有人在Twitter上發(fā)布了某個(gè)故事，或者把某個(gè)故事放入我的Facebook新聞源。我認(rèn)為最大的挑戰(zhàn)是，一些雜志的移動(dòng)閱讀體驗(yàn)非常糟糕。用戶得點(diǎn)擊之后才能讀到故事，然后會(huì)出現(xiàn)一些類似桌面的彈出式廣告或帶有小x的重疊式廣告。人們費(fèi)勁力氣想看一看這篇故事，但在移動(dòng)設(shè)備上很難發(fā)現(xiàn)那個(gè)能夠消除廣告、從而看到故事的小x。文章的底部經(jīng)常有分頁，9頁，甚至更多。所以，大家必須要找到、點(diǎn)擊小數(shù)字2。點(diǎn)擊后，閱讀界面又會(huì)彈出另一個(gè)廣告。誰有耐心經(jīng)歷這樣的閱讀體驗(yàn)啊，除非你認(rèn)為這篇文章足夠好。

????因此，一定要在移動(dòng)設(shè)備上測(cè)試雜志網(wǎng)站的所有東西。應(yīng)用程序很重要，我認(rèn)為應(yīng)用是雜志業(yè)譜系的一部分——盡管這么多年來，訂閱一直非常重要，但移動(dòng)網(wǎng)絡(luò)真的也很重要。原因是，如果我下載了一個(gè)雜志的應(yīng)用，我往往會(huì)分享某篇文章，它就將進(jìn)入Facebook。人們更有可能通過移動(dòng)設(shè)備登陸Facebook，如果他們讀不到這篇文章，你就失去了一個(gè)獲得新讀者的機(jī)會(huì)。

????你過去或者現(xiàn)在經(jīng)常讀哪些雜志？你喜歡哪些雜志？

????我真的很喜歡在網(wǎng)絡(luò)上閱讀，因?yàn)槟憧梢猿浞掷盟胁煌膬?nèi)容源。因此，Twitter和Facebook的確是我尋找好文章的主要途徑。還有的時(shí)候是通過電子郵件。BuzzFeed有一個(gè)深度報(bào)道分區(qū)，也就是那些12,000字或6,000字的文章。我們定期發(fā)送一個(gè)深度報(bào)道郵件，附有每周最佳深度報(bào)道作品的鏈接。這是我尋找大量長(zhǎng)篇雜志文章的另一種方式，也就是借助BuzzFeed深度報(bào)道編輯的力量，因?yàn)樗麄兠刻於荚陂喿x各種文章。我們也有一些原創(chuàng)的東西，但這封電郵通常包含1篇我們自己的深度報(bào)道，3篇或4篇來自其他雜志的文章。（財(cái)富中文網(wǎng)）

????譯者：葉寒???

????So I started thinking about how to generate revenue. The idea of putting banners on the site never appealed to me, in part because we were investing in this platform for distributing content on the social web. Our team was using it to make fun, entertaining stuff at that time—we didn't have any reporters at that point—and we were looking at how to really detect whether we were connecting with an audience, and whether people wanted to share this content, and how to give people content that they were excited about to share.

????So banners didn't make much sense to me. It made much more sense to build a version that uses the same platform for branded content and advertising. And so we told brands, "You have to tell a story." This is actually something the magazine industry has been great at over decades—making advertising that actually adds to the product. It's something that websites have completely failed to do, and largely it's the fault of trying to cram things into little banner ads. If you take a high-end magazine and rip all the ads out, it's often a worse product. If you take all of the ads out of a fashion magazine, you lose half the photography, you know? So we really took the approach of, "Well, why can't the web be like that? Why can't we make great branded content, advertising, that has its own page that people want to click on and engage in and share and interact with?"

????We created our own form of advertising that was totally proprietary. It was a real hard slog trying to sell it. People were like, "Well, look, it's not IAB standard, and it's not the way the industry works. And we don't really like these banners, but it's just sort of the way it works." But we had a few people, including Beth Comstock, the CMO of General Electric, come to us and say, "Well, we want to innovate. We want to experiment." General Electric is a giant company. At the time, we were very small. And we've been working with them ever since.

????A bunch of other brands saw some of the early success we had and said, "Oh, look, if it works for GE and they're getting 10X the click-through rate of banners and they're getting sharing and they're telling a compelling story, then we'll try it out, too." Once people try it, they renew and renew and renew.

????What is BuzzFeed's relationship with magazines?

????We're partners with some magazine websites. We have something called a partner network that lets other publishers use some of our technology to detect when something is taking off. So if you work at The New Yorker, for example—we are a partner with them—you can get an alert that shows that one of the stories on their website is starting to take off. They can have a dashboard that shows some of how their content is spreading.

????If you look at the right-hand rail on the front page of BuzzFeed, you'll see the publishers in our network, their most-shared stories trigger and show up on the site. So that's one way we work with magazines.

????Will you establish more partnerships like that?

????Yeah. There are over 400 million unique visitors in the network now, and all of them are getting some of the benefit of our data science and our technology.

????When you see magazines' websites, what do you think is right, what do you think is wrong, what do you think they could do better?

????The main way that I see magazine websites is someone who has tweeted a story or put a story into my Facebook newsfeed. The biggest challenge I see is that some magazines have a very bad mobile experience. You'll click to see a story, and then there will be some kind of desktop-looking pop-up ad or overlay ad with one of those little x's, and you're trying to read the story, and it's hard on a mobile device to find out where the little x is to get rid of the ad and see the story. At the bottom of the article, it will be paginated, and it'll be like nine pages or something. So you have to find the little number 2 to click that. And when you click that, it will pop another one of those ads up. It has to be a really good article for you to go through that kind of [experience].

????So, test all your stuff on mobile devices. Apps are important, and I think apps are part of the pedigree of the magazine industry, which is where subscriptions have been so important over many years, but mobile web is also really important. Because if I have an app for a magazine, and I share something, that's going to Facebook. The person is more likely than not accessing Facebook on a mobile device, and if they can't read the article, then you missed an opportunity to bring in new readers.

????What magazines do you read, what magazines do you enjoy, historically or today?

????I really like reading on the web because you get the best of all different sources. So really, Twitter and Facebook are the main ways that I find stuff. Sometimes e-mail. We have a long-form section on BuzzFeed that has, you know, 12,000- and 6,000-word pieces, and we do a long-form e-mail that links out to the best long-form pieces each week. That is another way I discover a lot of long-form magazine articles—through the long-form editors at BuzzFeed who are reading stuff. We have some original stuff, but usually it's one of ours and three or four from other magazine sources.