Do me a favor: read these 240 lines.It will knock you around.I swear to you

• Nobody knows what a future could look like for journalism on the Internet.But Jonah Peretti, the founder and boss of Buzzfeed, has an idea: "Imagine a Vokuhila hairstyle.Everything looks sorted and solid from the front, anarchy and chaos, tastelessness and fun prevail at the back - this is how the Huffington Post (Huffpo) works.The opposite is buzzfeed: the chaos is in the foreground with us.And only when you are looking for you can find the seriousness."

Vokuhila hairstyle, vice versa?Let's try to understand Peretti's sloping metaphor because he is probably the smartest head in online journalism, was co -founder of the Huffpo, and his second invention is currently Buzzfeed the hottest address in the industry.So hot that it was easy for him to collect $ 46 million risk capital.

In the BUZZFEED pull, other new providers of journalistic content - Vox Media with a website that explains news, business service Business Insider, the aggregator Upworthy or the animal lovers The Dodo investors convince.The young companies flowed up to amazing sums: Vox Media raised $ 80 million capital, which significantly smaller Upworthy twelve million dollars.

These internet companies pursue a concept that has so far been hopelessly considered: they rely on content produced by themselves. „Als wir 2006 anfingen", erinnert sich Peretti, „wollte kein Investor für eine Idee zahlen, die auf lebenden Journalisten, Reportern oder anderen professionellen Mitarbeitern beruht.Everyone told us: 'If you use the content of other media or have users send you, it works.But you don't get any money if employees are paid in your pitch.‘ " Das hat sich offenbar geändert.Do the investors now believe that journalism can be earned good money on the net?

„Natürlich nicht", sagt Andrew Parker, dessen Fonds Spark Capital acht Millionen Dollar in Upworthy steckte."But the location is a little less bad than before." Außerdem gibt es so viel anlagesuchendes Kapital, dass seine Besitzer bereit sind, Wetten mit niedrigen Gewinnchancen abzuschließen.In the hope of landing a lucky hit like the Huffpo investors who made a good cut when AOL bought the company in 2011 for $ 315 million.

People like Parker are ready to invest if you either discover a company that focuses on a promising niche - like Upworthy.com, which deals with lurid films, photos and stories the fate of the poor and exploited all over the world.Or if you find a website that opens up new sources of income like Buzzfeed.

A look at the homepage of Buzzfeed on 9.June 2014, 11.50 a.m. New York time. Die Hauptmeldung mit dem großen Foto eines Kindergesichts: „Idiocalypse Now – the 35 Dumbest Things That Ever Happened"; darunter kleiner: „15 Things Only Women Named Katie Will Understand"; „41 Life-Saving Beauty Hacks Every Girl Should Have in Her Arsenal"; „Lil Kim Named Her Daughter Royal Reign"; „There Is A Statue Of Spiderman in South Korea With A Giant Boner But It’s Being Taken Down".What is striking: The homepage does not praise kitten films with which buzzfeed became famous and attracts up to 130 million unique visitors in some months.

This is the part of the website that Peretti means when he talks about the reverse Vokuhila.First, the boulevardeskes page offers.Anyone who presses the small news button will reach the sphere in which serious journalists do their work. Die bislang erfolgreichste lange Reportage mit dem Titel „Why I Bought A House In Detroit For 500 Dollars" lasen 1,5 Million Besucher, viele Katzenvideos erreichten mehr als zehn Millionen.

But Lerer Ventures, the most important investors from Buzzfeed, have not transferred an eight -pointed amount because they hope that animal films and magazine journalism will import their use.This is what you expect from Perettis not exactly modest business model.He wants to change the advertising industry as fundamentally as Amazon did with retail.

When journalists advertise

The idea for buzzfeed is based on a bet that Peretti completed 13 years ago as a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (with) with his friend Cameron Marlowe. Peretti hatte bei Nike ein Paar Sportschuhe mit individuellem Design bestellt – mit der Bitte, das Wort „Sweatshop" (Ausbeutungsbetrieb) darauf zu drucken.Nike rejected this, an amusing email discussion developed with an employee who sent Peretti to friends.From this, a hit on the net and Peretti was invited to a TV talk show, where he discussed with representatives of Nike about the working conditions of the group.

So Peretti bet with Marlowe: I will find out how viral phenomena work on the Internet, I will repeat it as desired and use this principle to start a company.Marlowe, who wrote his doctoral thesis on this topic, held against it that it was impossible to artificially create something like the Nike email.The human networks are too complicated, too unpredictable.And despite more than 22,000 cat films on Buzzfeed, Marlowe says today: "The bet has not yet been decided." Denn die meisten Filme und auf Listen beruhenden Artikel (Listicles) interessieren weniger als tausend Leute.Despite all the analyzes, the hits are random strand.

It is just as insecure whether Buzzfeed Peretti's second forecast will redeem and revolutionize the world of advertising.Advertisers do not know how to deal with the Internet;Many of their banners and films are ignored by the audience.Most people don't like any advertisements, and some know how to avoid them.Peretti's solution: He has more than 200 employees in Manhattan produced advertising on behalf of customers who come like online journalism à la Buzzfeed.The crazier the idea, the greater the chance that she circumnavigated on Facebook, Twitter or other social networks.

This so -called native advertising is the real viral phenomenon that produces peretti.Because everyone now wants to be there. „14 Underrated Places You’ll Really Want To Move To" – Werbung für ein Umzugsunternehmen. „18 GIFs That Are Just Unbelievably Beautiful" – Pepsi. „12 Things That The £ 1400 UK Dividend Could Buy" – Warnung der britischen Regierung an die Schotten, das Königreich zu verlassen.

Volkswagen, Virgin Mobile and General Electric also work with Buzzfeed.Algorithms support the makers of advertising in their work.A key click provides the information: Which topics and formats are currently going particularly well with the users of Facebook who want to move soon and like to eat cookies?When asked whether the ethics of journalism do not require a strict separation of advertising and editing, Peretti says: "The classic media have made the mistake of treating advertising as a necessary evil.Now you can no longer afford that, but it's too late."

Emily Bell, director of the Institute for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, sees it similarly: "We have to try new things, because the conventional principle no longer works.This may be uncomfortable for journalists at first, but at the moment I see no other way out than to experiment." Der sogenannte Tausender-Kontaktpreis für Onlinewerbung auf einer konventionellen Nachrichtenseite liegt zwischen einem und zwei Dollar.Buzzfeed demands ten.

The father-and-son team Ken and Ben Lerer from Lerer Ventures, which was one of the early investors of the Huffpo, shot money again this year.Ken Lerer says: "It doesn't matter whether Buzzfeed invented natives marketing or whether it was only in the right place at the right time.At the moment they are in the center of this boom, and of course we like that." Gerüchte um einen Verkauf von Buzzfeed werden lauter mit jedem Milliarden-Deal, den andere bekannte Internetmarken abschließen.

Manipulative headings are HIT

On the other side of the East River in Brooklyn, a smaller company called Upworthy, which is often mentioned with BuzzFeed in one sentence, although these two have no more in common than the Porsche art director traveling social worker.

Eli Pariser, former chief activist at Moveon.Org, and Peter Koechley, a editor -in -chief of the satirical magazine "The Onion", founded Upworthy in March 2012.A little later the project was considered the fastest growing website ever, measured by the number of visitors.And it keeps a second internet record: No other municipality sends articles on the Internet as often as the readers of Upworthy, in December they did about eight times as often as the users of the next best competitor.The credo of the website is "Things that Matter. Pass ’em on" – was zu funktionieren scheint.

Upworthy does not produce itself, but can be sent to videos and texts that have been made somewhere in the world by journalists or users.The employees who call the curators have to filter exciting stories from the murderer from submissions and develop the perfect heading, which is then evaluated by a small part of the readership.The most popular headline wins - and the text ends up on the homepage, hoping to become a viral phenomenon: "Watch the first 54 seconds.That’s all i ask. You’ll Be Hooked After That, I Swear" (ein Film über Straßenkinder, die Instrumente aus Müll bauen); „His First Four Sentences Were Interesting.The Fifth Blew My Mind. And Made Me A Little Sick" (ein Film über Obamas Gesundheitsreform); „The Things This Four-Year-Old Is Doing Are Cute. The Reasons He’s Doing Them is Heartbreaking" (noch ein Straßenkind).

Of course, the mockery about this type of headlines is limitless - especially in the classic media, which are insulted and stunned to the success of Upworthy.Is this social kitsch, or - worse - explores Upworthy stories to increase its market value?The website has up to 88 million visitors per month, even Guardian.com or foxnews.com rarely.But the headings are so stylish that "The Onion" will bring a Persiflage of Upworthy.And CNN sends tweets like this: "14-year-old girl stabbed Sister 40 Times.The Reasons Will Shock You."

Pariser knows the criticism: "We are only concerned with carrying the message into the world.The stories of the poorest third of the world's population are totally underrepresented in the media, and we are right to change that.Emotional, manipulative headings are our strongest weapon with which we draw attention to us."

While the center of Buzzfeed is a business model, the idealism is in the center at Upworthy.Both concepts seem to work.The companies do not publish numbers, but the investors are satisfied with the prospects.They do not expect to make a profit from ongoing operation, they are enough if the market value of their companies increases.Paris and Peretti try to develop a new kind of journalism for a new generation of readers and consumers.Others spoil the target group that has read the newspaper so far, but realizes that the quality of their sheet was decreasing with every round of termination in the editorial team.

This includes Vox Media, a company based in Washington D.C., which includes journalistic websites such as The Verge (science and technology), SB Nation (Sportblog), Eater (Essen) or Curbed (real estate).In April VOX came.com about a page with sophisticated journalism, specializing in American domestic politics.VOX had succeeded in recruiting Ezra Klein, one of the most famous bloggers in the country, from the "Washington Post".Shortly after the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought the newspaper for $ 250 million.Klein came Melissa Bell, who was responsible for all online activities at the »Post«.She says: “At the first meeting with Vox's people, it was clear to us after ten minutes that we wanted to change." Das Gehalt sei nicht entscheidend gewesen.

Try quality

Like all classic print media, the "Washington Post" is caught in a work rhythm that is determined by the printing machines.That is why your editorial system - to the affection of the online online - is not tailored to the Internet.Melissa Bell and Ezra Klein work on their new employer with the Chorus program, which has developed VOX and attracts the envy of the industry.Editors can easily edit, illustrate their stories, photos and films, post them in social networks, communicate with readers and incorporate all kinds of special effects.Chorus is the main reason why VOX is in a reputation to be one of the best employers in the industry.

The stories, the VOX.Com produced with 25 journalists, have more in common with the thoroughly researched and slightly stubborn journalism of monthly magazines such as "Harper’s" or "The Atlantic": "John Oliver Explains why we should get Rid of the fifa." Das Konzept könnte sich nicht gründlicher von Buzzfeed oder Upworthy unterscheiden.Small and Bell do not rely on funny lists, but on a kind of wikipedia of quality journalism, a constantly updated archive on all important topics.

That VOX.com ever will import its costs, is considered unlikely.The company boss Jim Bankoff follows a strategy that is like conventional media companies: with quality he wants to attract the educated and wealthy.Political journalism has so far been missing in the portfolio, and with Ezra Klein's commitment, Vox achieved a scoop.The number of unique visitors of all websites of the group increases continuously to more than 75 million.

Ob das reicht, um operative Gewinne zu erzielen, verrät Vox nicht. Aber wer erwartet schon, in Zukunft mit Journalismus Geld zu verdienen? Jeff Bezos wird mit der »Washington Post« auch keine sensationelle Rendite auf seine Viertelmilliarde Dollar Einsatz erzielen. ---