WRD 210 - Buzzfeed Essay PDF

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WRD 210 - Buzzfeed Essay...

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Ethan Haas April 2nd, 2020 WRD 210 Prof. Michael Pennell Buzzfeed Essay Writing Buzzfeed posts can be fun and straightforward, but quizzes can also be powerful marketing tools. Quizzes have become much more engaging over the past few years because people figured out how they can make quizzes fun using a formula. A lot of that has to do with how a quiz is styled. I did not want to create an emotional intelligence quiz or a personality quiz; instead, I put together something that users can complete in a few minutes and then share to get other's thoughts. This type of quiz can fuel a discussion on social media, such as Facebook comments or on Twitter comments. Such discussion creates engagement, which leads to more people sharing, and that generates traffic. I got my content from just searching on google for an image of Joe Exotic. I chose my headline, "Did Carole Baskin kill her early husband?" by finding what was trending right now on the internet. A new documentary about this came out this year called "The Tiger King," and it has shown to have a lot of attention. Although captions might not be as important as the headline, it is essential to keep the caption as direct as possible. I made the caption, "Well, did she do it?" to try to lure the user in. I think the quiz would be viral on an app such as Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat, which would be added to the Buzzfeed story for people to take the quiz. I found that BuzzFeed, in particular, combines images and text to great effect even the text-only quizzes use a lot of colors in order to look more lively. BuzzFeed itself is simple to use and create. However, there's a couple of significant downsides to using its platform. What I have

found is that some people use Buzzfeed for personality quizzes, which can be collectively used to target an audience. Whether our data will be used to develop algorithms to draw more people in is up to those who want to take our privacy away from us. It is said that Buzzfeed collects data in bulk, and that is what lead the population to get targeted by Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 scandal. I know that Cambridge is not the only company out there that has been analyzing our traffic to be used to drive higher engagement. Facebook has said to have banned such personality quizzes because this type of engagement can be used against our privacy. Another downside is that a significant amount of the most looks like spam. Most users know what spam looks like and do not want to participate in spam. In all, Buzzfeed can be used for great marketing techniques and efforts, even if that's simply sharing them on social media, but can be used against us without knowing.

Citations: Harding, Xavier. “It's Not Just Facebook - Online Quizzes Also Collect Data about You.” Mic, Mic, 31 Mar. 2018, www.mic.com/articles/188678/its-not-just-facebook-online-quizzes-alsocollect-data-about-you. “How I Made It to the Front Page of BuzzFeed Twice.” Barby, 8 Feb. 2017, www.matthewbarby.com/buzzfeed-front-page/. Kastrenakes, Jacob. “Facebook Bans Personality Quizzes after Cambridge Analytica Scandal.” The Verge, The Verge, 25 Apr. 2019, www.theverge.com/2019/4/25/18516608/facebookpersonality-quiz-ban-cambridge-analytica....