BuzzFeed’s Native Advertising is OMG WIN!

Posted by Jon Thomas, 13 Dec 2012

OMG. This may have been my hardest assignment yet. 

BuzzFeed is killing it on the interwebs lately (WIN), and not just because it creates some of the most shareable content around. It’s “killing it softly,” so to speak, monetizing its wildly successful site by partnering with brands to create branded content that people actually consume, enjoy and share with their audiences.

But why was this a difficult assignment? To write about BuzzFeed means one has to peruse BuzzFeed. And when one peruses BuzzFeed, time is sucked into a vortex while one reads journalistic masterpieces like “40 Reasons Honey Boo Boo Became a National Treasure in 2012” and “12 Days of Grumpy Cat Christmas.” Minutes quickly become hours, and deadlines come and go. But Grumpy Cat doesn’t care.

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Is Frictionless Sharing a Boon or Black Hole for Brands?

Posted by Katie Edmondson, 04 Jan 2012

As frictionless sharing becomes the norm for applications like Spotify and Huffington Post, it feels like we’re at the cusp of an era of increasingly intense oversharing. Facebook’s new sharing mechanism has already contributed to a distinct decrease in manual curating and the rise of automated sharing through software. But the real question is: Will frictionless sharing create a true paradigm shift in the way we interact and share on the web? And what are brands to do about it?

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The Three Most Important Words in Advertising

Posted by Luke Dringoli, 29 Oct 2010
"There is angst in ad land over the complexity of media," writes Story Worldwide CEO Kirk Cheyfitz in his latest article for the Huffington Post. You can say that again! Luckily, everything that follows this introductory sentence serves to unravel the complexity in this "how-to and how-come piece" about Paid, Owned, and Earned media. There's been a lot of talk about those three categories lately, and yet, they're still pretty confusing. What follows is the ultimate demystifier.
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Google: News Industry Savior, or Stubborn Ad-o-holic?

Posted by Luke Dringoli, 26 May 2010
The Atlantic's June cover story lavishes praise on Google, pointing to the search giant as the woeful news industry’s surefire ticket back to profitability. This is a nice idea—one that helps us all sleep a little better at night—but in reality, Google doesn't have any concrete solutions yet. Rather, author's optimism springs from a general feeling he got from interviewing Google execs. They seems to really care about the news. According to a piece by our very own Kirk Cheyfitz (CEO here at Story) published over at Huffington Post, Google has actually done little to help foster the meaningful, dynamic, and entertaining ad content that can support quality journalism. With a monopoly on search, they're engorged by stale, old-world web advertising. Is Google here to help?
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Who’s In Charge, Sources or News Directors?

Posted by Andrea Fjeld, 07 Jan 2010
The home page of Huffington Post carried another media report Wednesday by Story Worldwide’s CEO and Chief Editorial Officer Kirk Cheyfitz. “For Tiger Photos, NBC Caves in to Annie Lebovitz” discusses the restrictions the photographer demanded and got from TV networks that wanted to use her images. Kirk's not happy with what this might say about the media’s volatile climate.
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A Difference of Opinion

Posted by Andrea Fjeld, 04 Nov 2009
In September, The Huffington Post surpassed the Washington Post in terms of unique visitors. "The Huff Post was up 26% year-over-year to 9.4 million uniques, while uniques at the Washingtonpost.com dropped almost 30% to 9.2 million," reports Jennifer Saba at Editor & Publisher. Look out, media giants. You are never safe.
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Facebook + FriendFeed: Total (Social) Domination

Posted by Luke Dringoli, 21 Aug 2009
In a bid for web supremacy, Facebook has snatched up the bulk of your digital life for a healthy 47.5 million bones (U.S.). Your online existence (besides what you already "accomplish" on Facebook) comes their way this summer through the media tracker FriendFeed. Prepare to adjust your regular web routine.
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The Comment HuffPost Doesn’t Want You to See

Posted by Kirk Cheyfitz, 16 Jun 2009

So, some guy named Jarvis Coffin wrote this rather ridiculous post a week ago on Huffington Post titled "Reports of the Death of Advertising Are Exaggerated." (They aren't, by the way.) I was directed to it by a friend, so I read it word for word. Then I dashed off a comment because the web is all about interaction, right? So I interacted.

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