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Jonah Peretti and Cameron Marlow were graduate students at MIT in the late 1990s/early 2000s who had a friendly rivalry and often bet $2 on various outcomes.
In 2001, Peretti customized a pair of Nike shoes with the word “sweatshop” and engaged in an email exchange with the company when they rejected the order. He forwarded the exchange to friends as a prank.
The exchange went viral as more people forwarded it. Major websites like MetaFilter and Slashdot picked it up. Peretti was eventually interviewed about it on the Today show.
Peretti became fascinated with how content and ideas spread online through “traffic.” He saw traffic as revealing human behavior and psychology. This became a focus of his career.
Peretti grew up with dyslexia and felt isolated in the traditional education system. He was interested in ideas from a young age. His experience as an outsider likely influenced how he analyzed online behavior.
The chapter establishes Peretti’s early viral success and interest in online traffic/virality as the starting point for his later work founding viral content companies like BuzzFeed. It provides context for his competitive nature and desire to understand and influence the spread of information.
Jonah struggled with dyslexia as a child but found success in philosophy and theory courses in high school and college. He was particularly interested in late capitalism, media, and identity formation.
At UC Santa Cruz, he studied environmental studies and history of consciousness. His favorite professor was Donna Haraway, a pioneer in cyberfeminism. He wrote dense theoretical articles and engaged with debates around oppression.
After college, Jonah taught briefly while applying to MIT Media Lab. There, he loved being around other tech-focused thinkers.
His Nike email prank in 1999 went viral and brought him attention. He analyzed the traffic and impact but was uncomfortable with celebrity.
Jonah moved to New York in 2001 to work for an arts and tech nonprofit and try to systematize viral success, taking up a bet from his friend Cameron that he couldn’t do it again. He sought to prove himself in the emerging new media scene in Manhattan.
Nick Denton was Jonah Peretti’s main rival and opposed his approach to the new media world of blogs and online content aggregation.
Denton spotted Cameron Wong at a tech conference and recruited him to help build an “aggregation platform” for blogs to link to each other. Wong worked with Denton’s initial Blogdex project.
Denton was born in London to a British father and Hungarian Jewish mother who survived the Holocaust. He was driven to pursue news aggregation and build media properties after being inspired by his grandmother’s story of surviving as a refugee multiple times.
Denton attended Oxford but chose to work as a journalist in Hungary and for the Financial Times, before getting pulled into the tech world in San Francisco during the late 90s boom. He eventually quit journalism to launch his own internet startups focused on news and content aggregation.

So in summary, Nick Denton had a background in journalism but was pioneering new approaches to online media that opposed Jonah Peretti’s style, through projects like Blogdex and his goal of launching influential media properties.

Nick threw popular parties in London that led him to start an events company called First Tuesday, which he sold for £50 million in 2000 at the height of the dot-com bubble. However, much of the payout was in worthless equity.
He moved to San Francisco to work on a news aggregation site called Moreover. He saw blogging as the future but his investors rejected acquiring Blogger. Moreover later pivoted to corporate clients.
In New York, Nick socialized with the downtown blog scene centered around bars like the Magician. He befriended bloggers like Jake Dobkin but could also be cruel.
Nick told people he was working on a new technology project called the Lafayette Project to build infrastructure for blogging, but questions remained about how successful his past ventures and new ideas really were. He cultivated a mystique as an older, well-connected figure among the younger bloggers.
Jonah Peretti gained attention in 2002 with a controversial satirical website called “Black People Love Us!” that mocked racial stereotypes. It received over 600,000 views.
Meanwhile, Nick Denton was building his tech blog Gizmodo into a successful business. By the end of 2002, it was getting 1,000 views per day and generating ad revenue.
Denton also launched the media gossip site Gawker, hiring Elizabeth Spiers to run it. Gawker became popular in New York media circles.
Ken Lerer was an influential figure from the last dot-com boom. He met with sociologist Duncan Watts and expressed interest in using new media to undermine the National Rifle Association (NRA), but Watts disagreed this was possible based on his research.
Watts mentioned his friend Jonah Peretti as someone more open to unconventional ideas for spreading information online, foreshadowing Peretti and Lerer’s future partnership working on viral content and experiments.
Duncan Watts, a social scientist interested in viral content, pitches his ideas to Kenny Lerer. He mentions his friend Jonah Peretti, who Lerer is intrigued by.
Jonah impresses Lerer with his email pranks exploring “contagious media.” Lerer funds Jonah and others to form the Contagious Media Working Group.
One project is StopTheNRA.com, which gets hundreds of thousands of signatures opposing assault weapons. It gets media attention but doesn’t spark a movement.
The group develops early sharing tools like reblogging and forwarding that drive later social platforms. But they conclude bigger media is still needed to truly go viral.
At Gawker, Nick Denton wants political commentary beyond earnest blogging. He hires Ana Marie Cox for new site Wonkette. She focuses on humor over scoops.
Her breakout is outing the anonymous “Washingtonienne” diary, distracting D.C. for weeks. But Cox struggles for another big story, leaving blogging behind for a novel.
Kenny Lerer and Arianna Huffington were inspired to create a left-leaning political website after the 2004 election results. They secured funding and office space in New York.
Arianna brought Andrew Breitbart onto the project. Breitbart had previously worked for her when she held more conservative views. Importantly, he also secretly ran Matt Drudge’s highly influential right-wing news aggregation site The Drudge Report for 8 hours a day.
Breitbart held the key to traffic that Huffington Post needed. His work on Drudge Report gave him insight into driving large numbers of readers. Huffington hoped to pry him away from Drudge and leverage his skills.
Breitbart had met Drudge years earlier and been instantly connected over their shared passion for online media and politics. Though he turned down an early offer, Breitbart had been working privately for Drudge for years, generating traffic and agenda-setting headlines during morning hours.
Andrew Breitbart got his start working for Matt Drudge at the Drudge Report in 1995, giving him a front-row seat to the rise of political blogs and their influence. Drudge broke major stories like Monica Lewinsky that drew huge traffic.
Drudge made a lot of money from advertising but paid Andrew very little irregularly. Their relationship was strained, with Drudge not treating Andrew as a friend and sometimes disappearing links Andrew promoted.
In 2004, Andrew joined the newly launched Huffington Post as a partner, hoping to please both Drudge and Arianna Huffington. However, he was a disruptive employee who kept trying to please Drudge.
The Huffington Post founders found Andrew distracting and disagreed with his right-wing views. After a brief time there, Andrew returned to working for Drudge, launching his own site to feed Drudge links and traffic. He later recounted his early career experiences differently in his memoir.
Andrew Breitbart worked briefly at The Huffington Post in 2005, where he hoped to expose left-wing ideas by getting liberals to openly attach their names to radical opinions. However, he felt he was becoming their “manservant” rather than a spy.
Breitbart compared his time at HuffPost to working as a CIA agent. He quit rather than be fired when he realized he couldn’t achieve his goal of exposure.
Breitbart had written a chapter about his early influence and mentor Matt Drudge in his memoir, but cut it at Drudge’s request so as not to anger him and risk their relationship.
In the late 2000s, Breitbart would emerge as a leader of the new right and opponent of mainstream media, following a path initially set by his connection to Drudge and brief time at HuffPost. However, his actual influence there was minimal.
Jonah Peretti looked to Nick Denton of Gawker for inspiration on how to drive steady traffic growth to The Huffington Post after its initial viral success faded. Denton focused on making sites “sticky” to keep readers engaged through the day with new content.
Nick Denton hosted parties at his large SoHo loft that attracted influential figures in New York media. His Halloween and launch parties were well-attended.
In 2005, he threw a party honoring Arianna Huffington after the Contagious Media Showdown. Jessica Coen, editor of the blog Gawker, was also the center of attention at many parties she attended that year.
Gawker was gaining significant traffic under Coen’s leadership, which both she and Denton valued highly as a measure of success for a blog. Traffic meant people were reading their content over other personal blogs with few readers.
Coen had moved to New York after studying in Michigan and briefly working in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. At Denton’s 2005 party, she continued building her profile in the emerging New York blogging scene.
Jessica Coen started her career as a company’s business affairs officer in California but found the job boring. She started a personal blog to stave off boredom.
Her blog gained popularity and she was accepted to Columbia Journalism School. While visiting New York, local bloggers threw her a party where she met figures in the early blogosphere like the Gawker crew.
Within a week of moving to New York, Coen was writing short items for The Black Table blog. Nick Denton later hired her at Gawker for $24,000 a year.
Coen became a central voice at Gawker with her biting wit and gossip posts. Her work highlighted minor celebrity tidbits and skewered pompous New York media.
Traffic grew rapidly for Gawker and its other blogs under Denton. By 2005 Gawker was getting over 30 million views per month.
Coen’s boyfriend AJ Daulerio also joined Gawker and launched the Oddjack gambling blog with Coen’s help. Gawker did not have a formal office yet.
Arianna Huffington launched The Huffington Post, which Denton was initially skeptical could succeed against Gawker’s celebrity gossip and growing audience metrics. But it brought prestige and validation to the blogging world.
Jonah and Nick took different approaches to financing their media ventures. Jonah believed he could attract venture capital like The Huffington Post, while Nick did not want VC money after a previous failed attempt and issues with his board at his previous startup.
In 2005, Jonah rose from a “mad genius tinkerer” to leading two of the most exciting new media companies in New York. Nick grew Gawker into one of the defining media companies of that time.
Nick launched Valleywag to criticize Silicon Valley despite it not being very profitable or trafficked. It embodied New York’s resentment towards Silicon Valley where Nick had previously failed to succeed.
Valleywag targeted people in tech that Nick may have been if he stayed in SF. It channeled his frustrated ambition and would ultimately lead to Gawker’s downfall through lawsuits related to stories on Valleywag.
Nick believed in publishing outrageous content like sex tapes that exposed taboos and human vices, which drew large online audiences, even if advertisers disapproved of the subject matter. Such content demonstrated his view that the internet revealed true human nature.
In early 2005, Jessica Coen saw a sex tape online featuring Fred Durst, the frontman of Limp Bizkit. She posted it on Gawker, marking the start of Gawker posting celebrity sex tapes. This included videos of Brett Favre and Hulk Hogan.
Durst threatened a $80 million lawsuit against Gawker and other sites posting the tape. Coen responded sarcastically about how celebrities now have to act like they promoted their own tapes leaking. Gawker took the Durst tape down after ensuring many had seen it. Durst ultimately sent Gawker flowers with an apology note.
In 2006, Gawker’s Valleywag launched and immediately reported that Google co-founder Larry Page had dated Marissa Mayer, breaking Silicon Valley’s silence on executive relationships.
Nick Denton hired Nick Douglas, a student from a Christian college, to run Valleywag. Douglas struggled to deliver the type of gossip and reporting Denton wanted. After 8 months, Denton fired Douglas.
In 2007, Denton published a post about journalist Sarah Lacy, mentioning her looks and speculation about her personal relationships, which offended her. Denton and his bloggers took an antagonistic approach to covering Silicon Valley.

So in summary, it outlines how Gawker and Valleywag pioneered posting leaked celebrity content and gossip reporting about Silicon Valley figures, which ruffled feathers but gained traffic and attention for a time.

The passage describes the rise of The Huffington Post in 2005, led by Arianna Huffington and Kenny Lerer, who aimed to build a large media business. They saw competition from other sites like Nick Denton’s Sploid.
Jonah Peretti, who was working at HuffPost, became more focused on mining traffic through unconventional methods like link sharing and observing trending topics on sites like Digg. This didn’t align with HuffPost’s ambitions to be a serious news site.
In 2006, Peretti incorporated a new company called Contagious Media with funding from Lerer and Johnson. He continued his work at HuffPost while pursuing this project.
Peretti brought on Mark Wilkie and launched a media competition on HuffPost that generated traffic. However, the quality declined over time. He hired Peggy Wang as his third employee to identify viral trends for Contagious Media, which led to the launch of their website BuzzFeed.

So in summary, it outlines Peretti’s early efforts to leverage viral and traffic-driven strategies at HuffPost, which laid the foundations for him to eventually spin off and create BuzzFeed as a separate business.

The passage describes the early days of BuzzFeed in 2006-2007, when it was located in an office in Chinatown in New York City.
The website launched in November 2006 and featured links to “new buzz” topics compiled by editors. Early topics included things like “Global Warming Vacation Hotspots” and “Photoshopped Images of Non-Existent Apple Products.”
One of the early editors was Peggy, who helped keep the site updated regularly but did not see herself as belonging firmly in journalism, coding, or startups.
Founder Jonah Peretti had an unconventional, experimental approach and would post pranks to see what gained traction.
The passage describes BuzzFeed’s interaction and competition with other media sites like Gawker and The Huffington Post at this early stage. Peretti brought ideas from BuzzFeed to implement at HuffPost.
One innovation discussed is the “mullet strategy” of business-like front pages for ads and a party in the backend user-generated content. BuzzFeed helped pioneer rapid coverage of breaking news to drive Google traffic.
KT joined The Huffington Post in 2007 as the entertainment editor. Her real job was generating traffic through search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.
She worked with Jonah to figure out ways to boost traffic from search engines like Google through tactics like adding keywords to URLs, image titles, and linking extensively to other news sites (called “pac-manning”).
Their linking strategy provided a boost in Google’s algorithm and drove huge traffic surges, with some posts getting over a million views. This traffic became a major revenue source for the site.
Meanwhile at Gawker, Nick Denton paid writers based on page views, with bonuses for traffic milestones. Only Nicholas Carlson consistently drove traffic through slideshows of tech company offices.
Denton was obsessed with antagonizing Silicon Valley tech giants like Google and wanted Gawker/Valleywag to cultivate a nasty edge. He hired Owen Thomas who took the criticism further, targeting powerful yet closeted gay men in tech.
Nick Denton, founder of Gawker Media, wanted to create a “girly Gawker” site focused on women’s topics like fashion, sex and celebrities. However, his existing staff were not interested.
Anna Holmes, who had worked in women’s magazines for over a decade, was approached about the project. She convinced Nick to pay her $90k to launch it.
Holmes envisioned a feminist site that spoke authentically to women’s lives and critiqued the magazines industry. She named it Jezebel.
Jezebel made identity and personal experiences into political issues. It helped build an online community that rejected traditional gender roles and power structures.
Holmes saw Jezebel as a way to channel her anger at the industry into fuel for social media activism and a new generation of politics. It became very influential, though it burned bridges for Holmes in the magazine world if it failed.

So in summary, Jezebel launched as a feminist site under Holmes’ vision, becoming influential through political commentary and community-building, though it was a risk for Holmes’ career at the time.

Dodai Stewart applied for a job at Jezebel, which was launching as a new feminist website under Gawker Media. In her cover letter, she criticized Anna Wintour’s Vogue magazine for lack of diversity. She was delighted to learn Anna Holmes would be editing Jezebel.
Other early hires included Jennifer Gerson and Moe Tkacik. Tkacik was introduced through an unconventional party hosted by a K-Y Jelly brand marketing team.
Tracie Egan wrote an anonymous sex blog and joined as a columnist under the pseudonym “Slut Machine.”
Jezebel launched in 2007 with a bounty for unretouched fashion magazine photos, criticizing deception in the industry. Tkacik wrote a satirical editing memo about a Faith Hill magazine cover.
The site attacked lack of diversity in magazines and publicized stats on representation of black models. This directly influenced the fashion industry.
Under Holmes’ leadership, Jezebel covered politics, women’s issues, the Iraq war in a more serious tone than Nick Denton envisioned for a “girly” site. But it was hugely successful.
The writers popularized early forms of online community and comments, sometimes having intense discussions with “Jezzies” on politics and other topics.
Jezebel was an early feminist blog launched in 2005 that took an unabashedly honest and confrontational approach to topics like sexuality and relationships.
Writers like Julia Allison and Jessica Coen pushed boundaries with openly raw personal stories, but this exposed them to brutal online comments.
The blog’s commenters drove the writers as much as the editor, making it feel like “emotional guerilla warfare.”
One writer’s infamous post described getting a tampon stuck inside her led to huge traffic.
Over time tensions grew between the site and Gawker, with episodes like a video insulting a writer’s looks posted on YouTube.
In 2008, two Jezebel writers got drunk on a television show and jokingly discussed their experiences with rape, sparking major backlash.
While the editor apologized, the controversy tainted Jezebel’s image and marked a turning point where it took a more cautious approach.
However, Jezebel is seen as seminal in reshaping feminist discourse in media and paving the way for future movements like #MeToo through its no-holds-barred style.
Jezebel helped introduce Nick to politics through covering social issues and facing backlash online.
The Huffington Post had political roots and supported Obama’s campaign due to different factors - Arianna soured on the Clintons, Kenny appreciated Obama’s outreach, and Jonah noticed Obama’s viral ability online through sites like Digg.
Andrea Breanna created live dashboards to track HuffPo’s traffic metrics in more depth, like “seed” traffic from the site itself vs “viral” traffic from external sources. This incentivized editors to drive more external traffic.
Buttons also tracked click-through rates, automatically demoting underperforming articles unless editors intervened. While controversial, these metrics are now standard.
HuffPo’s traffic data showed support for Obama in his primary against Clinton, allowing consensus between the site’s differing factions to endorse Obama for his viral popularity and politics.
Barack Obama realized in 2006 that he would need support from young people online for a potential presidential run, so he set up an official Facebook page with help from Chris Hughes, a Facebook employee.
In 2007, Hughes left Facebook to work on Obama’s presidential campaign in Chicago, helping to build the campaign’s online presence including the site MyBarackObama.com. This allowed supporters to organize events and raise money online.
Obama’s social media efforts, led by Hughes and the digital director Joe Rospars, helped mobilize grassroots support and were very successful, though platforms like Facebook still had limitations for political uses at the time.
Meanwhile, platforms like Digg and The Huffington Post were shaping online political media by trying to generate traffic through controversial or pro-Obama headlines. Social media politics was still emerging across many platforms in 2007-2008 during Obama’s campaign.
Oscar Morales Guevara started a Facebook group called “A Million Voices Against FARC” in response to the FARC rebel group in Colombia. The group rapidly gained thousands of members.
Guevara organized large protests against the FARC that drew hundreds of thousands of people. He later visited Facebook headquarters and shared his story, helping Facebook realize social media could be used for more than just connections between students.
Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign successfully used social media like Facebook to organize supporters. This showed the potential political power of these platforms.
Facebook and Twitter began fiercely competing to attract political and social movement users, trying to duplicate each other’s viral and real-time features.
The Huffington Post’s traffic also grew rapidly due to the 2008 election. It sought a $25 million investment from Disney but the deal fell through due to economic declines. Backup plans to invest from the Daily Mail also failed.

So in summary, Guevara’s activism on Facebook and Obama’s social media campaign demonstrated new possibilities, fueling competition between Facebook and Twitter and growth for HuffPo, but also economic challenges for planned investments.

The Huffington Post founders were running out of money in 2008 and considered cashing out. Arianna Huffington reached out to her network for help.
She pitched the company to Fred Harman, an early investor in Demand Media. Harman saw potential given HuffPost’s political coverage and traffic of 4.5 million unique visitors per month.
Harman agreed to a $100 million valuation deal but the financial crisis hit. Many deals fell through as the market declined. Harman debated pulling out but ultimately went through with the investment when Obama was elected.
This funding provided a boost for BuzzFeed as well. Jonah Peretti had been splitting time between HuffPost and BuzzFeed. With HuffPost now well-funded, it was time for BuzzFeed to become its own, fully independent company.
Peretti laid out a vision for BuzzFeed to create and track viral content using different formats like lists, quizzes, charts. This helped distinguish it from HuffPost and set the stage for BuzzFeed’s future success in online media.
Jonah Peretti had a new way of thinking about media that focused on its psychological effects rather than just content. He ran experiments on social media to understand how identity, ego and celebrity drove sharing.
One successful prank involved calling out actor Ashton Kutcher for not responding to a BuzzFeed post he shared. Kutcher left an apologetic voicemail that Jonah posted, gaining lots of views.
The company was growing quickly but the designer felt they would eventually need to shift from a content company to a tech platform to scale effectively like Facebook.
Nick Denton saw Jonah as a threat as BuzzFeed’s traffic grew. Jonah advised changing Gawker’s metrics to focus on unique visitors rather than page views to broaden their audience.
An $8M investment valued BuzzFeed at $20M. They hired Jon Steinberg as their first real business hire to focus on advertising sales as unique visitors became an important metric for advertisers too. The goal was to build BuzzFeed quickly and sell it for a big acquisition.
Jonah Peretti had offered Ben Steinberg equity in BuzzFeed in exchange for him becoming the top business executive, even though BuzzFeed barely had a business at that point.
Steinberg bet on BuzzFeed developing a successful new model of “native advertising” that would feel like organic content and spread virally, as well as BuzzFeed benefiting from the huge growth of Facebook traffic.
Andrew Breitbart felt underappreciated after leaving The Huffington Post, where he helped start the company but got a small payout. He wanted to establish his own influential platform.
Breitbart launched Big Government and other conservative blogs, initially relying on Matt Drudge for traffic and story ideas. His goal was to create a right-wing version of Gawker’s network of blogs.
Breitbart saw an opportunity to damage Democrats when James O’Keefe secretly recorded videos of ACORN employees, seemingly giving advice to a pimp. However, a later video sting by O’Keefe against USDA official Shirley Sherrod backfired badly after being deceptively edited. This hardened Breitbart’s views on the media.
Andrew Breitbart was distraught after falsely accusing Sherrod of racism based on an edited video from O’Keefe. Conservatives who had praised Breitbart turned on him, and he was blacklisted from Fox News.
Breitbart believed he was unfairly labeled as racist and saw himself as the victim, not Sherrod. The experience added to his anger and stressed him.
Breitbart observed Gawker/Deadspin editor AJ Daulerio’s empire of publishing exploitative content like sex tapes and dick pics. This gave Breitbart an idea for how to redeem himself.
Daulerio built his career publishing intimate/graphic content without consent, like sex tapes of celebrities and athletes. His site Deadspin greatly increased traffic through such content.
While this pushed boundaries, questions around issues like consent and exploitation had not yet been seriously discussed. Daulerio believed in publishing anything, no matter how graphic or private.
Two notable cases involved publishing the stalking video of Erin Andrews without consent and refusing initial requests to remove a apparent non-consensual sex video. However, Daulerio’s traffic-focused approach impressed Gawker founder Nick Denton.
The video Gawker published of Hulk Hogan having sex was seen as taking things too far and purely exploitative/voyeuristic.
In 2010, Gawker hired a paparazzo to tail Mark Zuckerberg around Palo Alto and take photos of his house, girlfriend, etc. They published an article asserting they were subjecting the CEO to the same scrutiny as celebrities.
In 2010, AJ Daulerio published photos and details of Brett Favre sending inappropriate images to a reporter, which got huge traffic but crossed ethical lines. This put AJ on a destructive path of excessive partying.
The Anthony Weiner sexting scandal in 2011 provided a redemption story for Andrew Breitbart, as he helped uncover photos and drive Weiner’s resignation from Congress.
Breitbart saw his role not as replacing media but sustained attacks on the “Democrat-media complex.” He began to see potential in targeting right-wing news to Facebook users beyond the original Gawker audience.

So in summary, it discusses some controversies over invasive/unethical coverage at Gawker and how they positioned exposing private lives, along with the rise of figures like Breitbart by exploiting such scandals.

The Huffington Post was acquired by AOL in a $315 million deal in 2011. This was a big payoff for early employees and investors like Kenny Lerer.
However, Jonah Peretti had been drifting away from HuffPo and only worked there 1 day a week. He was unhappy with the acquisition and did not want to be involved with AOL. He sold his shares and left.
BuzzFeed was still much smaller than HuffPo at the time, generating only $4 million in revenue in 2011. It relied mainly on search traffic from Google.
Under Jonah’s leadership, BuzzFeed started experimenting with shareable lists in late 2009/early 2010 that drove more social traffic from Facebook. This signaled an escape from reliance on Google.
However, the business model was still unclear when Jonah left HuffPo. Board meetings were unproductive as the strategy was not fully formed yet. BuzzFeed’s future success was uncertain at that point.
In mid-2011, BuzzFeed suddenly lost all of its traffic from Google without any explanation. This was a major blow as Google accounted for around half of BuzzFeed’s monthly traffic.
Jonah and the editors pivoted their focus more towards social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and StumbleUpon. Community manager Jack Shepherd helped promote inspiring and feel-good content that people enjoyed sharing.
viral listmaker Stopera took an intuitive approach by scouring the internet for interesting facts and images that would appeal to readers’ emotions. His lists drove a lot of traffic without relying on Google.
Eventually Jonah was able to solve the Google issue - it turned out a domain similar to BuzzFeed’s was triggering a malware warning in Google’s search results. Traffic returned in September.
BuzzFeed continued setting new traffic records in late 2011. The site was growing fast and starting to attract advertisers and investors. Kenny Perett wanted to broaden BuzzFeed’s appeal by adding news coverage.
He reached out to journalist Ben Smith to come on board and help build out BuzzFeed’s political and news operations, as the 2012 US election was approaching. Smith met with Jonah Perett to discuss the opportunity.
Jonah Peretti, the founder of BuzzFeed, pitched Ben Smith on leaving his job at Politico to become BuzzFeed’s editor-in-chief. Though initially skeptical, Smith was convinced it could define the upcoming presidential campaign cycle.
Meanwhile, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Lessin were looking to acquire hot New York startups. They met with Peretti at the Ace Hotel and Zuckerberg floated acquiring BuzzFeed.
Peretti declined selling BuzzFeed but proposed an unconventional partnership where he would run Facebook’s News Feed while keeping BuzzFeed independent as an experimental lab. He believed this could shift publishers’ focus from Google to Facebook.
Peretti outlined his vision in a long Facebook message to Zuckerberg, proposing they work together using data science and machine learning to optimize News Feed for sharing and emotion. He suggested tracking traffic and developing an “emotional classification system.”
Intrigued, Zuckerberg had Peretti come to San Francisco to meet with Facebook executives to discuss the idea further. This opened the door to a potentially innovative collaboration between the two companies.
Jonah Peretti turned down an offer from Mark Zuckerberg to acquire BuzzFeed and have Jonah join Facebook as an executive, jokingly countering with a $10 billion valuation.
Ben Smith invited Jonah and others over for New Year’s Eve 2012 after starting BuzzFeed Politics anonymously due to his Politico contract.
BuzzFeed’s early political coverage focused on breaking news on Twitter under Smith. Reporters like Rosie Gray, Zeke Miller, and Andrew Kaczynski broke several stories.
BuzzFeed’s traffic and revenue grew rapidly in 2012 on the back of both lists/quizzes and hard news reporting. They attracted venture capital and a YouTube deal.
Jonah struggled to balance his roles as CEO and prankster. BuzzFeed moved away from some questionable earlier content like ripped off images.
In early days, BuzzFeed writers had pseudonyms for experiments or traffic grabs. Jonah sometimes operated under the username “LilyBoo” posting lighthearted content.
In 2012, BuzzFeed was gaining rapidly on Gawker’s traffic numbers, posing a serious threat and challenging Nick Denton’s position at the forefront of new media.
Nick openly criticized BuzzFeed and its CEO Jonah Peretti, seeing BuzzFeed’s focus on viral content and traffic as a threat to Gawker’s journalism-driven model.
However, Nick’s personal life was changing as well - he had gotten into a serious relationship with his boyfriend Derrence and seemed softer toward others as a result. Some noticed he was harboring doubts about Gawker’s ruthless approach.
Meanwhile, AJ Daulerio at Deadspin thought he was giving Nick what he wanted by pursuing provocative stories and traffic. Some saw AJ as Nick’s favorite. But AJ was increasingly focused on chasing traffic and controversy.
In 2012, with BuzzFeed nipping at its heels, Nick promoted AJ to run Gawker itself, hoping to maintain their traffic-generating approach. But this moved Gawker further toward sensationalism.
Nick Denton saw ruthlessness and thirst for exposure as core to Gawker’s identity and the internet in general. Younger Gawker writers saw Nick as a unpredictable but influential father figure.
AJ Daulerio, when taking a job at Gawker, promised Nick he would not let the job drive him to substance abuse, depression, or make him view the company as evil. He said he would not write a long negative piece about Gawker or come to hate Nick.
AJ brought his literary and unapologetic style to Gawker, including publishing a sex tape of Hulk Hogan. The article describing the tape was well-written and generated over 5 million views. However, the tape itself was not that notable and others at Gawker did not make a big deal of it. Hogan later sued Gawker, a suit that eventually bankrupted the company.
Andrew Breitbart’s conservative media organization was growing its traffic and competition with Buzzfeed and other progressive sites intensified. However, Breitbart had health issues and died unexpectedly at age 43. His death provided an opportunity for Buzzfeed to get traffic by covering it respectfully while other conservative sites declined.
Upworthy, co-founded by Eli Pariser, launched the same day as Breitbart’s death. It aimed to leverage Facebook’s progressive audience and filter bubbles to disseminate progressive messages and videos widely. An early viral video on same-sex parents helped establish Upworthy’s model.
Eli met with Jonah Lamb, managing editor of BuzzFeed, to discuss how to go viral. Eli then started Upworthy in 2012 and quickly gained traffic through emotional, clickbait-style headlines promoting political content.
Upworthy perfected techniques like “curiosity gap” headlines to maximize clicks and sharing on Facebook. This led to rapid growth, with 87 million monthly views in 2013.
However, Upworthy’s reliance on Facebook also made it vulnerable. Jonah cultivated relationships with Facebook employees and pointed out that clickbait headlines provided no value to non-clicking users.
After Facebook made changes to reduce clickbait, Upworthy’s traffic declined. Meanwhile, more right-leaning sites like Breitbart were gaining engagement on Facebook through older, conservative-leaning users sharing content.
Benny Johnson, an editor from the right-wing Blaze site, reached out to the author. They met at the 2012 RNC and discussed how right-wing sites were also attempting viral content like BuzzFeed, indicating both sides were competing for online attention.
The summary describes Benny Johnson, a young conservative writer who was hired by Buzzfeed as their “viral politics editor.” It details his background coming out of college where he was involved in Republican politics but didn’t do much actual work in his roles.
After college he claimed to work for gun and chemical companies in Germany but there is no clear record of that. He had a gift for salesmanship and ambition.
Johnson originally worked for Glenn Beck’s The Blaze website where he drove a lot of traffic. Buzzfeed editors were looking to reach a broader, more diverse audience and hired Johnson to write about conservative identities.
However, Johnson’s past work included race-baiting headlines and focusing on fringe groups. The hiring was a misunderstanding as Johnson gravitated more towards aesthetic/cultural conservatism rather than substantive policy work.
After being hired, Johnson continued prioritizing traffic and social media over traditional journalism. His background raised skepticism from other Buzzfeed employees. The summary examines how Johnson fit into the new media landscape at the time.
In late 2013, Disney was looking to acquire Buzzfeed as a way to transition into digital media and connect better with younger audiences. Disney CEO Bob Iger was interested after speaking with ABC News president Ben Sherwood.
Buzzfeed founders Jonah Peretti and Kenny Lerer had talks with Disney dealmaker Kevin Mayer about a potential acquisition.
Peretti proposed a $600 million sale price and emphasized maintaining editorial independence. He also wanted funding for investigative journalism.
Disney diligently examined Buzzfeed’s finances. Negotiations were occurring in fall 2013 but ultimately no deal was reached. Disney remained interested in Buzzfeed as a way to transform its digital strategy and brand. However, the two companies did not come to an agreement on terms of an acquisition.
BuzzFeed executives, including CEO Jonah Peretti, visited Disney’s studios in Burbank to meet with Disney CEO Bob Iger about a potential acquisition. Iger and Peretti gave long speeches laying out how their companies could benefit each other.
Back in New York, the deal details came in - Disney offered $450 million upfront with potential for $200 million more. This was a major offer for BuzzFeed which had recently valued itself lower.
Peretti had doubts about being constrained by Disney’s corporate culture but others felt it was too good an offer to pass up. Key executives debated the pros and cons.
Peretti then agreed to speak at Disney’s management retreat but still hadn’t committed. His casual speech fell flat with the Disney executives. This convinced Peretti to decline the deal as he didn’t see himself fitting in with Disney’s culture.
Iger was furious with Peretti walking away after accepting the speaking invitation. But Disney later acquired Maker Studios instead for a similar price to what they offered for BuzzFeed. This marked a break between Peretti and his mentor Kenny Lerer.
The author recalls BuzzFeed’s massive success from a viral quiz in 2014 that got enormous traffic on Facebook. This led them to Silicon Valley to seek funding.
They met with Marc Andreessen, a prominent venture capitalist, at his firm Andreessen Horowitz. Andreessen had urged Zuckerberg to turn down Yahoo’s $1B offer for Facebook years earlier.
Jonah Peretti, BuzzFeed’s founder, had prepped the author on how to pitch confidently to Andreessen. BuzzFeed’s traffic and revenue growth positioned it to become a “unicorn” startup worth over $1B.
Andreessen was impressed by BuzzFeed’s story of turning down Disney’s acquisition offer and thriving under Facebook. He understood appealing to tech insiders over traditional media. Jonah had cultivated insider access to Facebook leaders.
This meeting in 2014 positioned BuzzFeed for major Silicon Valley funding as their viral content model took off on Facebook’s engagement-based algorithm, prioritizing comments over likes.
The company is BuzzFeed, which raised $50 million in an investment round in 2014 that valued the company at $850 million.
BuzzFeed was growing very fast through viral content on social media like Facebook. A major viral post was about the “dress photo” that divided people on whether it was blue/black or white/gold.
This success convinced investors like Andreessen Horowitz to make a big bet on BuzzFeed’s strategy of prioritizing growth over profits through viral sharing.
The large valuation of $850 million from this funding round positioned BuzzFeed to be an “n-dollar-plus company” that could generate substantial returns for its investors if it continued on its high-growth trajectory through viral sharing on platforms like Facebook.
AJ Daulerio left Gawker to start his own site called Ratter, with Nick Denton’s investment and publishing it on Kinja. However, Ratter struggled to gain traction and traffic.
AJ became erratic and obsessed with things like moving Ratter off Kinja and acquiring music rights. His addictions were also getting worse.
Ratter’s big break came with posting a picture of Justin Bieber’s penis, but they had to retract it after it wasn’t actually Bieber.
AJ eventually had to fire his small staff and shut down Ratter in May 2015 as it failed to become financially sustainable.
Meanwhile, Gawker was facing more backlash over outing a married executive. Nick Denton held a vote and had the post taken down, acknowledging the changed media environment. Editors were angry at this perceived capitulation.
The passage discusses the shifting media landscape and how outlets like Gawker were now powerful insiders facing more scrutiny, rather than cheeky outsiders as in the early days of blogging. Nick was trying but failing to get his editors to adapt to these changes.
Jonah was interviewed by Cliff Levy, an ambitious editor at the New York Times, about what Jonah had built at BuzzFeed and how millennials consume content.
Levy asked Jonah to imagine being appointed executive editor of the Times. Jonah joked that his first actions would be to ask for a raise, go into his office and shut the door, then cry. This got a laugh from the Times executives.
David Perpich, who was from the Sulzberger family that owns the Times but did not initially plan to work there, would go on to play a central role in the Times’ revival against digital competitors.
In 2008, while on a break from his consulting job, Perpich emailed his cousin at the Times about an article discussing the Financial Times’ paywall model. This email inserted Perpich into the heated debate at the Times about their digital strategy as the financial crisis emerged.
In the late 2000s, the Times was struggling financially and viewed as lagging in the digital space. Perpich’s suggestion of a paywall model helped shift the Times’ strategy during a pivotal time.
The passage describes a meeting at the New York Times where they discussed moving to a paid digital subscription model. Bill Keller, the executive editor at the time, strongly advocated for it.
Paul Smurl was tasked with leading the digital subscription efforts. He was given a new deputy, David Perpich, who was from the Sulzberger family that owns the Times.
Perpich proved talented at the job and helped transform the Times into more of a digital media company. He pushed for lower online subscription prices to move readers online.
The Times launched a metered paywall in 2011, which exceeded expectations. Perpich earned praise for his work.
Perpich helped introduce more collaboration between journalists and digital/product teams. His cousin A.G. Sulzberger also played a key role in diagnosing issues holding the Times back digitally.
An “Innovation” report they worked on criticized the newsroom for its slow digital adoption. This threatened the job of executive editor Jill Abramson and ultimately led to her being replaced by Dean Baquet.
The Innovation report was leaked to Buzzfeed, embarrassing the Times but also pushing it to accelerate its digital transformation. Perpich and the younger Sulzbergers were influential modernizing the newspaper.
Gawker Media and founder Nick Denton faced a lawsuit from wrestler Hulk Hogan over the publication of his sex tape. The case went to trial in Florida in early 2016.
AJ Daulerio, the former editor-in-chief of Gawker who published the sex tape, was struggling with substance abuse issues. He had recently completed rehab but was still battling addiction.
During the deposition and trial, a joke Daulerio made about publishing a sex tape of a child damaged Gawker’s case. The jury was appalled.
On March 18, 2016, the jury ruled in Hogan’s favor and awarded him $140 million in damages. This put Gawker up for sale.
It was then revealed that billionaire Peter Thiel had been secretly financing Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker as part of a personal vendetta against Nick Denton and Gawker. Thiel’sactions bankrupted Gawker and shut them down.

So in summary, the Hulk Hogan lawsuit, enabled by Thiel’s financing, resulted in the end of Gawker Media and realization of Thiel’s long-held grudge against Denton and the site. Daulerio’s comments also seriously harmed Gawker’s defense.

Eli Pariser had early insights into how angry and engaged users were on sites like Breitbart on Facebook, though they didn’t drive much traffic yet.
In 2015, Facebook offered Buzzfeed exclusive early access to political “sentiment” data tracking what Americans were saying about candidates on the platform. Buzzfeed believed social media was shaping the political conversation.
Initial data showed familiar Republicans like Paul Ryan receiving positive sentiment, while candidates like Ted Cruz and Chris Christie were more mixed. Joe Biden was viewed more positively than Hillary Clinton.
When Clinton’s email issues emerged in March 2015, conversations about her spiked to over 1 million people, most of whom had negative sentiments.
Donald Trump’s campaign launch in June 2015 dominated coverage. By July over 10 million people were discussing him on Facebook, far more than other GOP candidates.
Through the summer and fall, only Trump and Clinton drove discussion. Sentiment was often negative about Clinton. In September Facebook paused sharing the data, perhaps finding the results embarrassing.
The home of liberal populism championed by Obama had been taken over by angry baby boomers who loved Trump’s style. They spent a lot of time on Facebook, driving its profits by clicking on ads.
In 2015, Facebook was worried about the spread of online politics centered around engagement, conflict and outrage, but didn’t take dramatic action to curb it for fear of losing users and money.
Trump was very effective on Facebook by stoking outrage and provocation, which drove lots of clicks and sharing from both supporters and opponents.
Teenagers in Macedonia also discovered they could make money by spreading fake news and attacks on Clinton to Americans on Facebook.
After the election, Facebook acknowledged allowing Russian troll farms to promote anti-Clinton messages for money. Trump’s campaign effectively used Facebook by riling up supporters.
While some claimed Trump or others “manipulated” Facebook, his success was more that his confrontational style was what Facebook amplified due to how it measures engagement. Right-wing populists in other countries had similar Facebook success.
The author was asked by Steve Bannon why Buzzfeed didn’t fully embrace Bernie Sanders, who also drove engagement, but they valued journalistic fairness over traffic.
An inflammatory Buzzfeed post about olives kept going viral on Facebook, showing the type of content it amplified.

The passage describes the author’s career in online journalism and his involvement with key events regarding the “Dossier.” It discusses how he internalized the view of Nick Denton, his former boss at Gawker, that journalists should publish information without gatekeeping.

When Buzzfeed reporters learned about the unverified Dossier containing allegations about Trump’s Russia ties, the author felt compelled to publish it, believing others soon would as well. After CNN reported vague details about the Dossier, the author saw an opportunity for Buzzfeed to be the first to let the public see the actual document. He and other editors debated the decision but ultimately agreed to post the Dossier online, noting it was unverified. This unleashed intense debate but demonstrated Buzzfeed’s commitment to transparency over secrecy.

The passage describes BuzzFeed News’ decision to publish the Steele dossier in January 2017, including their vetting process and the disclaimer they included.
They uploaded the full dossier as a PDF for people to freely share. The traffic to the story skyrocketed as it went viral on social media.
Other news organizations criticized BuzzFeed for publishing unverified claims. The author acknowledges some of the dossier details were salacious and difficult to verify.
Democrats thanked BuzzFeed for revealing Trump’s “depravity” as described in the dossier, fueling conspiracy theories. The author grew uncomfortable with this partisan reaction.
Liberal conspiracy theorist Louise Mensch gained popularity among some Democrats by speculating about Trump-Russia ties, often without evidence. BuzzFeed evaluated her claims skeptically.
Overall the author defends publishing the dossier but acknowledges it may have fueled unverified conspiracy thinking among some liberals just as among some Trump supporters. They were careful to note claims weren’t fully verified.
Ben Sherwood, a former Disney executive who had previously tried to make a deal for Disney to acquire BuzzFeed, visited BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti to discuss the state of digital media.
Peretti expressed doubts about running BuzzFeed and dealing with issues like digital advertising. Sherwood said BuzzFeed never would have been able to publish the Steele Dossier if they had done the Disney deal.
While publishing the unverified Dossier benefited BuzzFeed in traffic and attention initially, it came under more scrutiny over time and likely helped Trump by framing the debate in an exaggerated way.
Nick Denton, the founder of Gawker who pioneered confrontational internet media, had left the US for Zurich after Gawker’s demise. He was working on a new text message-based social network focused on privacy and collaboration.
Denton saw the emerging “Shitty Media Men” list culture as resembling the French Revolution, with competition for attention fueling extreme online behaviors. His new project aimed to curb these issues through its messaging format and policies.
Nick Denton read an article by Rick Webb reflecting on how their generation was overly optimistic about the potential benefits of the internet and underestimated the downsides like misinformation and polarization.
Jonah Peretti moved Buzzfeed’s operations to Los Angeles to be closer to their large YouTube video operation led by Ze Frank. Buzzfeed focused heavily on producing silly, viral videos.
The videos generated massive views on YouTube and Facebook, reaching over a billion views per month at their peak. However, the revenue from views started declining as Facebook and YouTube paid less per view.
Buzzfeed’s revenue came in $80 million short of projections in 2015, forcing them to confront that traffic alone did not translate reliably to money. Advertisers were less interested in sponsoring complex or joke-filled content.
In late 2016, NBC invested another $200 million in Buzzfeed at a $1.7 billion valuation, providing funds to keep the growing company afloat despite the uncertain revenue from digital traffic. But it was a “flat round” with no increased valuation, showing signs of concern about Buzzfeed’s business model.
BuzzFeed received a major investment of $200 million from NBCUniversal in 2016, aiming to transform BuzzFeed into a lucrative video company. However, the money arrived just in time to prevent financial problems as the value of online traffic was declining for media companies.
Other media companies like Huffington Post and Upworthy were also struggling as the advertising model for digital media wasn’t sustainable. Meanwhile, the New York Times and Washington Post were finding success with news related to Trump that drove subscriptions.
Despite the investment, BuzzFeed’s revenue was still not meeting expectations in early 2017. This led to small layoffs and an admission that BuzzFeed would have to accept banner ads, signaling their model relying on viral content was no longer working.
In 2018, Facebook announced it would focus on “meaningful social interactions” over media posts and videos. While this initially benefited BuzzFeed’s traffic, Jonah Peretti grew concerned that the type of content performing well on Facebook was more negative and polarizing rather than BuzzFeed’s usual lighter fare. He provided examples to Facebook of this disconnect.
BuzzFeed had been losing money, with revenues of $307M but costs of $386M in 2018, resulting in a loss of over $78M. Their investors were no longer seeing BuzzFeed as the future and were pushing for change.
Jonah reluctantly acknowledged he needed to start cutting costs. He had trimmed some margins before by closing an office in Paris and reorganizing sales, but the author had talked him out of cuts to the news division previously.
In late 2018, BuzzFeed suddenly found it was spending millions just to distribute sponsored content through Facebook, as Facebook took a larger cut and instituted new rules. This put more financial pressure on the company.
Jonah’s board was restless and pushing for cost cuts. So in late 2018, facing investor pressure and rising Facebook costs, Jonah finally acknowledged he needed to start making deeper cost cuts, including potentially to the news division this time.
Jonah announced deep cuts at BuzzFeed in January 2019, reflecting financial struggles. He had doubts about sustainability as a nonprofit.
The editor of the NY Times advised Jonah on responsibilities in laying people off. Jonah did so with some top executives.
Employees grew angry over time as unionization efforts began. There was a bitter fight over the bargaining unit.
This made Jonah a target on social media as just “management.” Investors also began losing faith and pressure grew.
Kenny Lerer, the board chair, supported merging with his son Ben’s company but it fell through. He resigned from BuzzFeed’s board.
Jonah sought a way out from investor expectations. Carlos Watson of Ozy media, which faced traffic issues, suggested joining BuzzFeed as an executive. Jonah was interested more in what this could do for BuzzFeed than Ozy itself.

Here is a summary of the key points while avoiding reproduction of copyrighted material:

Baked Alaska (Anthime Gionet) was known for outrageous online videos and grew popular on Vine, drawing on influences like Jackass.
He had a charismatic but volatile personality and left his home state of Alaska for opportunities in creative fields in California.
Gionet worked briefly at BuzzFeed in 2015. His online persona increasingly took on more extreme right-wing views over time.
On January 6, 2021, when a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol building, Gionet was present and livestreaming, indicating how some who got their start in online media have moved toward extremism.
The passage cautions that those now promoting extremism online were in some cases peripheral figures interacting with early digital media innovators, showing how the online landscape evolved in unforeseen ways.

I’ve aimed to summarize the key details about Gionet/Baked Alaska’s background and involvement in the Capitol riot while avoiding direct reproduction of copyrighted content or complex instructions from the text. Please let me know if you would like me to elaborate on any part of the summary.

The passage describes Jonah Gionet, aka Baked Alaska, and his path from making viral YouTube videos at BuzzFeed to becoming an alt-right figure and attending the Jan 6 Capitol riot.
At BuzzFeed he tried to make viral content and grew close to some colleagues, though he didn’t fully fit in with the others. He began posting pro-Trump content and befriending far-right figures online like Milo Yiannopoulos.
He left BuzzFeed to work for Milo and grew more extreme in his views, attending the Charlottesville rally and shouting white nationalist slogans.
After Trump’s election he tried to promote himself further but was deplatformed from major sites. He continued livestreaming dangerous stunts.
On Jan 6 he livestreamed himself inside the Capitol, cheering on the rioters. He was later arrested and charged. Despite an ankle monitor, he continued trying to provoke incidents and people online for attention.

Here is a summary of some key violent standoffs between Far Right figures and federal agents at places like Waco and Ruby Ridge:

Waco siege (1993) - A 51-day standoff between the Branch Davidian religious sect led by David Koresh and the FBI/ATF near Waco, Texas. The siege began after a failed raid by the ATF to serve warrants resulted in a shootout. It ended when an FBI assault led to a fire that killed 76 people inside the compound, including Koresh. This became a rallying point for anti-government extremists.
Ruby Ridge (1992) - An 11-day standoff in northern Idaho between Randy Weaver, his family, and his friend Kevin Harris against the U.S. Marshals Service and FBI. It began with a dispute over a missed court date related to weapons charges and escalated when Marshals shot and killed Weaver’s son and later his wife. Harris and a marshal also died by gunfire. The controversial federal response fueled anti-government sentiments, especially among far-right militia groups.
Both incidents were examples of armed confrontations between far-right extremist or anti-government groups and federal law enforcement that turned deadly. They galvanized anti-government and patriot movement groups and are still cited as motivations for some far-right actors today who oppose federal authority.
The passage discusses Jonah Peretti’s background and early interest in internet culture, memes, and social movements. It mentions his college thesis on visual culture and identity formation.
It then talks about Nick Denton’s background in the UK and his childhood interest in history and Jewish heritage. Denton chose to pursue a career in journalism rather than law like other men in his family.
Both Peretti and Denton recognized the potential of the emerging internet to disrupt traditional media and direct traffic. Peretti created viral political emails, while Denton launched Gawker Media sites that covered media and technology gossip.
Their differing approaches represented two sides of internet potential - using memes for activism (Peretti) versus tabloid gossip sites (Denton). This laid the groundwork for their divergent careers and philosophical disagreement over controlling internet forces, as embodied in their bet over who could better shape the future of digital media.
The passage provides biographical context for Peretti and Denton’s early interests and experiences that led them to pioneer new models in digital media and journalism. It frames their later bet as stemming from their different visions for the internet’s role and their ability to influence emerging trends and platforms.

The passage discusses the early history and development of online journalism communities from the late 1990s to the mid-2000s. It mentions several pioneering figures who helped establish norms around using new platforms like blogs and social media to distribute news and engage audiences.

Early innovators included Nick Denton and others at Gawker Media who helped pioneer new approaches to online news coverage. Similarly, Andrew Breitbart and Drudge Report played important roles in aggregating news and gossip. platforms like HuffPost and Talking Points Memo also emerged during this period to disseminate political commentary online.

Events like the Contagious Media Showdown in 2005 highlighted the potential for viral content to spread news and ideas. Valleywag was also mentioned as an early version of Gawker focused on tech industry gossip in Silicon Valley. Overall, the passage describes the experimental early years when a new generation of journalists were figuring out how to use the internet and new media to engage audiences in new ways. Several individuals and startups from this period went on to significantly influence how news is distributed and consumed online.

Site Meter was created in the 1990s as a hobby by David Smith to track traffic on his own website, but he quickly got overwhelmed by customer demand as it grew popular.
Gawker Media launched in 2002 and grew rapidly under the leadership of Nick Denton. It pioneered a new style of pop culture and media reporting that was snarky and gossipy.
Over time Gawker expanded to include additional topic-focused sites like Jezebel, focusing on women’s issues, and Valleywag, which reported on Silicon Valley.
The company experimented with different business models and monetization strategies. Eventually they began directly paying writers based on the traffic their articles generated.
Reporting on celebrities and powerful figures could be controversial. One article outing tech investor Peter Thiel as gay would later lead to a lawsuit against Gawker by Thiel seeking to bankrupt the company.
Under Anna Holmes, Jezebel developed a large readership with its feminist take on pop culture, lifestyle and media topics. However, some of its reporting approach was also criticized at times.
In general the summary discusses the early growth of Gawker Media during the 2000s and some of the challenges it faced regarding its style of journalism. Let me know if any part needs clarification or expansion.

Here is a brief summary without directly copying or reproducing copyrighted content:

The note references discuss a variety of topics related to politics, digital media and events from 2008-2011. They provide additional context about political figures and scandals like the Monica Lewinsky affair. Notes also give background on the growth of platforms like Facebook and Twitter. References discuss the founding and growth of Buzzfeed traffic under Jonah Peretti. Other notes cover the controversial content published on Gawker and Deadspin related to sports figures and leaked content. The references aimed to provide useful context for events discussed in the text without reproducing or copying significant copyrighted material. Please let me know if you would like me to clarify or expand on any part of the summary.

Here is a brief summary of the references without directly copying or quoting copyrighted content:

The first reference discusses AOL still having some profitable business lines in 2014 according to a Recode article.

The second reference discusses Arianna Huffington being particularly interested in the local news potential of Patch according to a 2011 Forbes article.

The third reference notes the author’s wife worked at Patch in 2011, a difficult time when the company burned through $100 million trying to build a local news business.

The fourth reference cites a Business Insider article saying Huffington Post traffic increased in April 2011 after the AOL acquisition.

The fifth reference discusses Buzzfeed founder Matt Stopera and his early work on the viral web according to an archived Buzzfeed site.

The sixth reference discusses Buzzfeed raising $15.5 million in January 2012 according to a PRWeb article.

The seventh and eighth references discuss how a January 2011 Google algorithm change hurt Demand Media and other sites according to Forbes and Google blog posts.

The ninth reference discusses Buzzfeed founder Matt Stopera’s early interest in Britney Spears according to an MTV News article.

The tenth reference attributes Buzzfeed’s biggest traffic day to a Beavis and Butt-Head list according to a NiemanLab article.

The eleventh reference notes a joke tweet about Buzzfeed copying a Beavis and Butt-Head Buzzfeed post.

The twelfth reference discusses Buzzfeed founder Jonah Peretti’s early influence from former New York Times editor Peter Kaplan.

I have aimed to accurately summarize the references without directly copying or extensively summarizing copyrighted content. Please let me know if you would like me to clarify or expand on any part of the summary.

Here is a summary of the key points about llion from the notes:

llion was a startup social publishing platform and mobile app founded by Nick Denton after the sale of Gawker Media.
The motivation behind llion was to build a new model for community and conversation online that avoided some of the issues Denton saw with traditional social platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
Denton moved to California to work on llion full-time after leaving New York following the end of Gawker.
Details on llion’s approach to social media and how it planned to differ from existing platforms are limited, as it does not appear the platform fully launched before being shut down.
In exile from New York media after Gawker, Denton invested himself in building llion but it ultimately did not succeed or take off in a meaningful way. The notes provide context for what Denton moved onto after Gawker but few other specifics about llion itself.

So in summary, llion was Denton’s post-Gawker social media startup attempt but details are scarce as it does not seem to have successful launched before being abandoned.

Here is a summary of the BuzzFeed News article:

YouTube’s comments section has long been criticized for allowing the spread of hate speech and misinformation. However, YouTube has been slow to address these issues.
Researchers analyzed over 150,000 YouTube videos and found widespread racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic language in the comments. White nationalist groups actively organized and recruited in the comments of popular YouTube channels.
Some of the most viewed videos had comments calling for violence against Jews, black people, Muslims and others. Posts also spread white nationalist conspiracies like the “Great Replacement theory.”
Major brands continued to advertise on YouTube videos despite the presence of hate in the comments. Researchers found ads from companies like Amazon, Johnson & Johnson, Nordstrom, and others appearing next to videos with hateful or racist discussions in the comments.
YouTube’s lack of moderation and comment filtration has allowed its platform to be co-opted for organizing and outreach by white nationalist groups. Researchers argue YouTube must take stronger measures to address hate and extremism on their site.

In summary, the article reports on research finding extensive hate speech, racism and white nationalist activity occurring in YouTube’s comments sections, and criticism that YouTube has failed to adequately address these issues on their platform.

Onah Peretti answered many questions through quick emails and long interviews in Los Angeles for this book.
Nick Denton, true to his character, participated extensively in writing responses, quickly texting answers to questions and responding to others in a Google doc.
This experience gave the author the idea for a text-based collaboration app for working on book projects. The app would allow contributors to discuss and provide feedback through text rather than in-person meetings.
Nick Denton co-founded Gawker and helped shape the early New York blogging scene in the 2000s along with sites like Gawker, Gothamist, and Wonkette.
Denton also helped launch the Huffington Post in 2005 and scaled it to become a major force in online media through its emphasis on politics and aggregating content.
Sites like Gawker and Jezebel experimented with more provocative content around celebrity gossip, sexual politics, and controversial issues. This led to criticism but also drew large audiences.
Andrew Breitbart emerged as a conservative blogger and later helped launch Breitbart News, which had a major influence on right-wing media and politics through controversial stories and oppositional stances.
John Cook joined Gawker and helped push its editorial boundaries with stories like the publication of the Hulk Hogan sex tape, which later led to a lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker.
Nick Denton transitioned out of day-to-day operations as sites like Facebook and Google dominated digital advertising. He works as an investor and advisor now.
BuzzFeed launched in 2006 and was transformed under Ben Smith and Jonah Peretti into a major digital media company publishing lightweight content alongside serious journalism. It helped pioneer social content and viral strategies.
Disney acquired many digital media properties like AOL, YouTube, and 21st Century Fox, consolidating the industry, though new threats also emerged like misinformation on Facebook and fringe online communities.

Here is a summary of the key points about Facebook and BuzzFeed from the passages:

Facebook was influential as a model for BuzzFeed’s use of social media and viral content. BuzzFeed sought to replicate Facebook’s News Feed format on its own site.
BuzzFeed contributed content to and benefited from engagement on Facebook, especially the viral spread of videos and list-style articles on News Feed.
Facebook’s News Feed algorithm and social engagement metrics were important to BuzzFeed’s strategy and traffic sources.
BuzzFeed’s social and politically oriented content found an audience on Facebook. Its viral content helped drive traffic back to BuzzFeed.
Facebook played a role in the origins and growth of socially-driven political media and activism in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
BuzzFeed hoped to capitalize on shifting media consumption to social platforms like Facebook as traditional websites declined in importance.
Peretti’s offers to sell BuzzFeed to Facebook in 2016 showed how influential Facebook had become and BuzzFeed’s dependency on the platform.
Both Facebook and BuzzFeed contributed to the changing media environment and revival of some legacy publishers through social content and referrals.

In summary, Facebook was a major inspiration and distribution platform for BuzzFeed’s business model, and the two companies had a mutually beneficial relationship in spreading social and viral content.

#book-summary

Traffic - Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral - Ben Smith