Almost 15 years since its founding BuzzFeed, the home of internet quizzes, listicles and insane clickbait, is going to join the public markets by virtue of a SPAC (learn more about SPACs here).
For BuzzFeed this is a big moment. Once heralded as the next big thing in digital media, the company has had tough years as the stream of traffic from social media giants became less reliable, and advertisers increasingly wanted the precision targeted advertising that Facebook and Google were able to offer.
Nevertheless this deal is set to value BuzzFeed at a cool $1.5bn — down just slightly on its $1.7bn valuation from 2016 — and if BuzzFeed's own forecasts are to be believed then the company is set to go on a tear. As part of the deal BuzzFeed is set to acquire Complex, and management are hoping to more than double revenues by 2024, by growing its direct commerce business significantly.
Clickbait... and Pulitzer
Although BuzzFeed is best known for its clickbait listicles and obscenely silly quizzes such as "Build A Nacho Plate That'll Have Your Mouth Watering And We'll Reveal What Your Engagement Ring Will Look Like" — which is a real quiz that we found in 10 seconds on their website — more recently BuzzFeed has been doing some serious journalism.
Two weeks ago BuzzFeed News, the sister site of BuzzFeed, won what is arguably the highest honor in journalism — a Pulitzer Prize. The award came for BuzzFeed's series of articles that used satellite imagery and in-person interviews to expose the infrastructure that was detaining hundreds of thousands of Muslims in China's Xinjiang region.
BuzzFeed is growing up (kinda) — but can it live up to those lofty forecasts? Time will tell.
