Jonah Peretti

Friday 21 May, 2021

You don't want everyone to see a piece of content. You want the people who are really excited about the content to see it."

This week's quote is by is an American Internet entrepreneur, and a founder of BuzzFeed, and the The Huffington Post - Jonah Peretti 

He has been called a "viral marketing hot dog" by the New York Times,  "the poster boy of guerilla media" by AlterNet and a "computer-whiz" by The New Yorker. 

Buzzfeed is the first social news organisation that has been providing entertaining content and latest news. Peretti is known for his experiments with viral media, tracking online social behavior and building innovating technology to amplify this buzz. 

While studying educational technology at MIT, he became interested in why there are some things that seem awesome and don't go anywhere and other things that seem silly but get spread to millions of people?  He conducted various experiments online including the parody website BlackPeopleLoveUs.com, which depicted a couple's reputation among the Afro-American community and a widely forwarded email thread known as the "Nike Sweatshop Emails" in which Peretti exchanges several emails with a Nike representative over why "sweatshop" was not allowed to be printed on his custom Nike sneakers. 

He forwarded that email to some of his friends and somehow it reached millions of people. That made Peretti more interested in the concept of "viral content" and what makes a content shareable.

Peretti has said in one of his interviews, "It is this mix of pure emotional shareable content with informational content that makes BuzzFeed a true social media publisher."

The essence of understanding the science and art behind shareable content is to understand the difference in behaviour of people on different parts of the web. For example, Google is used for connecting audience with useful information, while Facebook is used to connect people with friends and family, giving them a means to express themselves. Therefore, when people use Google, they assume nobody is looking, while on Facebook they know everyone is looking. Knowing that, people will never share links or posts that they are embarrassed about looking at.

At DDSN we understand and employ Peretti's principle of improving user engagement through continuous testing and analytics. "We see most social traffic now from mobile, so if your site doesn't work well on mobile, it guarantees that nothing you do will be shared," Peretti says.

DDSN have mastered the art of responsiveness and accessibility over a period of 23 years in perfecting user experiences on websites, apps and other digital platforms. Our processes are a perfect combination of continuous development, professional implementation and analytics, which helps our customers grow in this competitive online era.


Today's Quote

 Graphic depicting Jonah Peretti and his quote "You don't want everyone to see a piece of content. You want the people who are really excited about the content to see it."


Who is Jonah Peretti?

Jonah H. Peretti is an Internet entrepreneur, a co-founder and the CEO of BuzzFeed, co-founder of The Huffington Post, and developer of reblogging under the project "Reblog".

He is a graduate of the MIT Media Lab and has taught at NYU and the Parsons School of Design. His work has been covered by Time, the Economist, Fortune, and Business Insider and he has appeared as a guest on the Today Show, Good Morning America and CNN.

Fast Company named Jonah Peretti as one of the "New Faces of Social Media" and named BuzzFeed as one of the “50 Most Innovative Companies” in 2012. Business Insider listed him as one of the “11 Rising Tech Stars to Watch in 2012.”


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At DDSN we continuously optimise digital experiences for a variety of our customers in manufacturing, education, government, not for profit and associations to help them stay ahead of their competitors and improve user experience.

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