Last Friday BuzzFeed announced it would wind down its traffic partner network in order to focus more on video.
Reported Quartz' John McDuling, a note to network participants read:
BuzzFeed has decided to wind down its existing partner network over the coming months. The partner network was an extremely valuable product for us and for partners but its place has changed as the industry has evolved and BuzzFeed has grown into a fully staffed, global news and entertainment organization over the last few years.
BuzzFeed, despite its success, is an anomaly and is still trying to decipher a path to long-term viability. A weird mix of strong investigative reporting and silly lists, its quirk is undeniable, as many of its content partners and readers can probably attest. Still, there's no way it could be a bad thing to let BuzzFeed refer web traffic to you, no matter what kind of content they're initially consuming on the viral site.
By hosting links and top headlines from a group of 200 publishers on the BuzzFeed site and a Fre.sh platform, those organizations got the benefit of BuzzFeed traffic and demographics while BuzzFeed received a trove of data about what kinds of other news its readers enjoyed, and how they navigated other pubs' sites, so they could better plan their own content, McDuling, a corporate reporter, explained.
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