BuzzFeed knock-off website draws in more visitors than the real thing

BuzzFeed knock-off website draws in more visitors than the real thing

Drawing 58 million visitors in September, Playbuzz is the now 2nd largest viral media outlet.

It’s hard not to immediately notice the similarities between BuzzFeed and PlayBuzz. The design, content and even tone are similar, with quizzes posing questions such as, “So you think you know country music lyrics?” and “Which magical creature are you?” Even its name, PlayBuzz, is markedly similar. Those likenesses, PlayBuzz cofounder and CEO Shaul Olmert noted, are primarily superficial and disappear upon closer examination.

The Israel-based viral media platform was the second most-shared site on Facebook in September, with its quizzes responsible for seven of the 10 most-shared stories. “Really, the center of our business is in business to business,” Olmert said. “Our goal is to create a platform that every publisher and blogger and friend can use for free, and it helps them enhance their business in terms of creating more engagement,”

It’s a little jarring to hear the leader of one of the hottest digital properties, a site that has in just months built the kind of consumer appeal that other outlets would be happy with in a decade, say that his company is focused on other businesses. But Olmert is steadfast in his vision, which he described as “the YouTube of playful content.”

Seeing the success of viral media sites and taking a page from Youtube’s business model, Olmert figured it only made sense to create a way for others to make, post and share the kind of content that had become popular on social media. PlayBuzz drew almost 58 million unique visitors in September, beating other viral media outlets, including Upworthy (43.5 million) and SB Nation (32.4 million).

This is where PlayBuzz’s position as a platform instead of a content creator is interesting. The site already has thousands of business partners that create content on its site, including MTV, AOL, Weather.com and Cosmopolitan. Users can also create their own content for free.

Most of the staff is dedicated to account management and site development. “The fact that we don’t employ 500 content editors, but the content is actually created by the community is very powerful, and that’s why I think we are the solution for the viral era, the social era,” Olmert said.

Being the solution for the social era is an aggressive claim, but one backed up by PlayBuzz’s success. The site leapfrogged BuzzFeed in September to have the second-most shares for the month, trailing only Huffington Post.

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