Buried in the news that BuzzFeed raised $50 million in new funding on Monday is the fact that the 550-person company has reorganized itself. BuzzFeed now consists of separate business units for its Web content, its video content, its branded content, and its distributed content.
BuzzFeed公司获得5000万美元新融资的消息本周一抢占了很多版面，但很多人可能未曾注意，这家550人的公司已于日前进行了重组。重组后的BuzzFeed由网页内容、视频内容、品牌内容和分散内容四个独立的业务部门组成。

The most formidable of the group is BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, the new name (and with it, an expanded mission) of the company’s video operations. BuzzFeed is known for its highly shareable lists and native advertising experiments, but the company’s two-year-old, Los Angeles-based video operation has been quietly growing like a weed. In an interview with Fortune, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti said he believes the video business could become as big or bigger than BuzzFeed.com. “Video is a huge, mega-trend, and the fact that it’s being viewed on mobile at such a high rate and being shared at a high rate aligns all these things together,” he said. “Digital, video, mobile and social can all be the exact same thing: someone sharing a video they love that they viewed on their mobile device.”
四个部门中，最强大的是它的视频业务部门，它的新名字叫做BuzzFeed动画公司（BuzzFeed Motion Pictures）——你从中也可看出它的扩张野心。BuzzFeed是美国知名的新闻聚合网站，最为人所知的是它各种被广为分享的榜单和原生广告实验。它的视频业务部办公室位于洛杉矶，虽然只成立了两年时间，但却像野草一样在悄悄地疯狂生长。BuzzFeedCEO约拿o佩雷蒂在接受《财富》采访时表示，他认为BuzzFeed的视频业务有可能达到甚至超过BuzzFeed.com网站本身的规模。他指出：“视频业务很大，也是大势使然。它在移动设备上被播放和分享的频率很高，因此它将数码、视频、移动和社交融合在一起——某人在移动设备上看到了一个自己喜欢的视频，然后把它分享在社交网络上。”
In the last two years, the company has produced between 1,800 and 1,900 short videos with a total of 1.7 billion YouTube views. About 27% of its videos have garnered more than 1 million views each. The video business has slightly more than 100 employees and recently unveiled a new 20,000 square-foot studio space in Los Angeles.
过去两年，该公司大约制作了1800到1900条视频短片，在YouTube上的总点击率超过了17亿次。其中有27%的视频短片都拥有100万以上的点击率。目前BuzzFeed的视频业务只有100多名员工，最近它刚在洛杉矶给一间20,000多平方英尺的新工作室揭了幕。
Now, with the establishment of BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, the company will expand beyond its bite-sized, one- to three-minute videos to make serialized content and longer-form features, including documentaries. The company says it will collaborate with traditional Hollywood studios, though it declined to discuss how specifics of any business partnerships.
随着BuzzFeed动画公司的成立，该公司将不再满足于两三分钟的短片，而是开始摄制连续剧式的长篇作品，包括纪录片。该公司表示将与传统的好莱坞制片公司展开合作，不过它没有透露任何具体合作的细节。
BuzzFeed Motion Pictures is run by Ze Frank, an early viral video star who joined BuzzFeed in 2012. One month ago, Jonathan Perelman, the general manager of video and vice president of agency strategy at BuzzFeed, moved to Los Angeles to ramp up the unit’s business operations, which includes a creative team making sponsored videos for brands.
BuzzFeed动画公司目前由扎o弗兰克负责管理。扎o弗兰克原本是一个网络红人，他于2012年加盟BuzzFeed。一个月前，BuzzFeed的视频总经理兼代理战略副总裁乔纳森o佩雷尔曼也搬到了洛杉矶协助BuzzFeed动画公司的业务运作。现在该公司还有一个专门为各大品牌拍摄赞助视频的创意团队。
We spoke with Peretti, Frank, and Perelman about BuzzFeed’s big bet. Below are excerpts from interviews with each, edited and condensed for clarity.
我们与BuzzFeed的高管佩雷蒂、弗兰克和佩雷尔曼等谈到了BuzzFeed在视频业务上的大赌注。以下是这次专访的简要文字摘录，为了阅读清晰起见作了编辑和压缩。
Ze Frank, president, BuzzFeed Motion Pictures
BuzzFeed动画公司总裁扎o弗兰克
How will Buzzfeed Motion Pictures content be different from the video content we’ve seen so far?
BuzzFeed动画公司的内容与我们看过的其它视频内容有什么区别？
The business we’ve built over the last two years is focused on short form, specifically the notion of experimenting and iterating. That continues to grow and we’re incredibly excited about the short form business because it’s opened up this bank of knowledge for us. It opened up a way for us to identify really interesting aspects of culture that seem to be important to media, like focusing on identities and the way that people seem to relate to a lot of the niche aspects of identity which we think are underserved.
我们过去两年的业务主要围绕着视频短片，特别是带着试验和迭代的想法。它一直在持续增长，另外我们之所以对短片非常兴奋，还因为它为我们打开了一个知识的宝库。它为我们打开了一扇门，让我们能够发现文化的一些非常有意思的方面，这些方面似乎对媒体业也非常重要。比如对自我的关注，人们对自身一些得不到满足的方面似乎特别容易发生共鸣。
The second piece is, when we start talking about serializing content and creating mid-range series for release on the Web broadly, it’s a great place to interface with the more traditional skill sets of Hollywood.
其次是连续剧，以及在网络上播放的中等长度的电视剧。它也是一个与好莱坞传统拍摄技巧相结合的好地方。
The third piece is [the working group] Future of Fiction, where we're bringing in [producer] Michael Shamberg and [actor and comedian] Jordan Peele, and that's an all-out collaboration with Hollywood as it is today. We’re trying to see whether, through that, we can inspire each other on how I.P. is generated, how we can make some incremental gains in reducing friction in the process. And to expose the traditional market to data-driven learning.
第三是我们的Future of Fiction工作组，在那里我们引入了制片人迈克尔o沙姆伯克和喜剧演员乔丹o皮尔，可以说我们不遗余力地与好莱坞展开了合作。我们想知道通过这样做，我们能否在如何生成I.P.、如何通过减少摩擦来获得额外的收益等方面启发对方。同时也促使传统市场必须进行数据型学习。
What’s the actual business arrangement with traditional Hollywood?
与传统好莱坞制片公司达成了哪些具体的业务安排？
I can’t speak to specifics, but it’s a pretty broad swath of potential types of arrangements. The goal is to build content and properties and to think of them in a trans-media way, where the place they live isn’t defined from the start.
我不能说细节性的东西，但是有可能合作的范畴是很广的。我们目的是要构建内容和财产 ，并且用跨媒体的视角去思考它们，它们所在的领域一开始并没有明确的定义。
The majority of your viewership comes from YouTube, correct?
你们的观众主要来自YouTube，对吗？
We are still in a position where YouTube is the majority, but that ratio has been declining over time. We’re at around 150 million-plus views a month on YouTube, but all-in across Yahoo, AOL, Facebook, and all those things, we’re at 250 million. A critical part of this growth has been understanding the relationship between content development and platform. What changes when you syndicate broadly and there’s different models and ways of thinking about content in different platforms? "Buzzfeed, off Buzzfeed" [The company’s new distribution unit —Ed.] is going to take that to another level.
目前我们的主要观众仍然来自YouTube，但是这个比重正在随着时间而下降。我们每个月在YouTube上大约有1500多万名观众，但是如果再加上雅虎、美国在线（AOL）、Facebook等等，我们的观众群就有2500万人。这种增长的一个关键部分，在于理解内容开发与平台的关系。如果你可以把内容分散得很广，有不同的模式和方法让可以你在不同的平台上推广视频呢，会有什么不一样吗？公司新的推广部门“BuzzFeed, off BuzzFeed”（意思是BuzzFeed制作的内容，但不在BuzzFeed上播放）将把这种思路带到另一个水平。
Would you prefer to own the distribution rather than outsource it?
你是喜欢自己拥有分销渠道还是外包？
There are definitely advantages to owning distribution pipes, but I don’t tend to think of the advantages in the same way that I think traditional folks think about it. The idea is not a monopolistic intention. Those days are gone. But owned distribution means you can get a lot more data. Ideally it’s a blend where we’re looking at lots of audiences, but you also have a segment that’s owned.
自己拥有分销渠道无疑是有好处的，但是我对这些优势的看法和传统人士的看法并不一样。我并不倾向于垄断渠道，那种日子已经过去了。但是拥有渠道意味着你可以获取更多数据。理想化的方式是混合式渠道，你既有大量观众，同时又有自己掌握的部分。
What have you done that works best and what doesn’t work at all?
你们的哪些工作做得最好，哪些根本没有效果？
The biggest gamble that we took in setting up this studio was on the operational and managerial side. We architected teams within the short-form group that were generalists and faced with the expectation that they’d produce one to two videos a week, if not more. The second thing was we took away the idea of pitch up and approval down, and tried to get people to think along experimental lines where the media is always focused on a problem they are trying to solve.
我们在设立这间工作室时，最大的赌注是在运营和管理方面。我们从短片团队内部抽调人员成立了团队，他们都是多面手，而且我们希望他们每周至少可以制作一两部视频。其次，我们否定了那种把宣传调门定得很高、把标准定得很低的观念，并且试图让大家觉得媒体总是关注他们想要解决的问题。
Those are two high-minded principles and that’s one of the most surprising things to me is the degree to which that worked. It has created a very autonomous, but earnest, team that has lots of different visions. It’s a form of letting go, organizationally, but what it’s taught me that I don’t think the complexities of the modern media landscape can really be understood by individuals. It has to mimic the complexity of the network itself. We need lots of different viewpoints thinking about this stuff at the top level.
这是两个定得很高的理念，而且最让我感到惊讶的，是它起到的效果。它催生了一支非常自主、热忱而且有很多不同愿景的团队。它是一种在组织上让大家放手去干的形式，同时它也教会我，现代媒体界的复杂性可能无法被每个个人所理解。它一定会复制网络本身的复杂性。我们需要在最高层面从不同的观点思考这些东西。
That sounds like pure chaos.
听起来好像只是很混乱。
It’s surprisingly not. What I find fascinating is if I go out and walk around and see what people are doing, rarely do people tell me the individual video they’re working on, but the bigger problem. They say, “I’m doing post-literate pieces, where I’m reducing the reliance on what language the video is in, and can see the success by its international growth.” It’s a really difficult problem and these folks are doing six to 10 videos and studying the result.
令人吃惊的是，它并不混乱。有意思的是，如果我走出来看看大家在做什么，很少有人告诉我他们在制作哪一个单独的视频，而是会跟我说一些更大的问题。比如他们会说：“我在做后文字主义的视频，我在视频中减少了对某一种语言的依赖，而且通过它在国际上的增长看到了它的成功。”这是一个非常困难的问题，而他们会做6到10个视频，然后研究其效果。
What are some other problems?
其它一些问题是什么？
How the delivery mechanism changes some of the ways you might think about the presentation of the content. Things like autoplay inside Facebook. That’s not trivial. That’s a pretty massive adjustment. There’s moment of no-sound presentation of what you’ve made and you have to take that seriously. That has implications of how you set things up and the ordering of the content. Another one is that mobile generally has an interesting relationship to sound. There are a lot of people thinking about how you can do things that are non-sound reliant, but where adding the sound adds some value.
内容的交付机制如何在某种程度上改变内容的展示方式。比如Facebook的自动播放，这并不是小事，而是一次非常重大的调整。曾几何时，你制作的内容甚至是没有声音的，因此你必须重视它。内容如何构建以及内容的顺序都会产生影响。另一个问题是移动设备与声音有着很有趣的关系。有很多人关心如何做不依赖声音的内容，但是加上声音就等于加上了一些价值。
People will notice something in the audience reaction or a spike the data and then they follow it up and try to make sense of what’s happening. Travel videos around travel in your 20’s are resonating huge in Gen-Y, so there’s now a format class called “Gen-Y Aspirationalism, Subclass: Wanderlust,” and so people are focusing on trying to figure out why that is.
他们会注意观众的一些反应以及数据的异常，然后他们会跟进并试图理解究竟发生了什么事。旅行视频一般会在“80后”一代中引起巨大的反响，所以现在又有一类视频叫做“80后的渴望”，下面还有一个小类别叫“旅行热”。所以我们想知道为什么会有这种情况。
Jonah mentioned you both shared a philosophical approach to why things go viral.
约拿提到，你们俩曾经分享过为什么视频会走红的一个哲学方法。
I came out where in 2007 in the middle of producing this year-long video blog, and I was shopped around. The way that I worked, and increasingly, the people that are coming to Hollywood to work, is fast-paced, it’s iterative, the production is the same day as the distribution, and they’re interacting with audiences and getting data in real time. It was obvious that I had to sacrifice that way of working in order to do anything in this town. In a way, what I’ve built is the studio I wish existed at that time.
我是在2007年做视频博客时走红的，当时也有人买我的作品。我工作的方式，以及越来越多进入好莱坞的人工作的方式，都是快节奏的，是重复的，内容的制作和销售在同一天。而且他们也与观众进行实时互动并获取数据。显然不论我想在这座城市做任何事，都得牺牲掉那种工作方式。在某种程度上，我所建立的正是我当时就想拥有的一座工作室。
Jonathan Perelman, GM of video, VP of agency strategy, BuzzFeed
BuzzFeed公司视频总经理、代理战略副总裁乔纳森o佩雷尔曼
Can we expect will video overtake rest of the BuzzFeed’s business in terms of revenue?
在收入上，视频业务是否会超过BuzzFeed的其余业务？
I’m working hard to make that happen. We are still much earlier in the process than what [the website] BuzzFeed has. I’m really inspired by the growth we’re seeing on the branded video front. I hope we can be just as big.
我正在努力实现这个目标。和BuzzFeed网站本身相比，视频业务还处在比较早期的阶段。但品牌视频业务的成长对我启发很深，我希望它们可以增长得一样大。
Can you share some of those growth numbers?
你能透露一些增长数据吗？
I’ve seen a 100% increase over the last year of brands doing multiple videos with us. Ever since the NewFronts this spring, we’ve seen over 50% growth in interest and pitches coming in. We released 55% more branded videos in the months following April than in the months from January to April. The revenue has growth 400% in the past eight months.
去年与我们合作多部视频的品牌数量增长了100%。自从今年春天推出NewFronts以来，外界对我们的兴趣和宣传提高了50%。今年四月以后我们推出的品牌赞助视频要比一至四月多出55%。在过去8个月里，公司的营收入已经增长了400%。
What chunk of the videos that BuzzFeed makes are branded?
BuzzFeed制作的多少视频是品牌赞助的？
Probably around 5%. We’re investing more in this now with the new funding. We have 14 producers and that will more than double in the next few months.
大约有5%左右。新融资到手后，我们马上将向这方面投入更多资金。我们现在有14名制片人，这个数字在未来几个月里就会翻一番。
How does your team work with the rest of the BuzzFeed video team?
你的团队如何与BuzzFeed视频团队的其他人合作？
We’ll get an inbound lead from a brand, and it’s our job to come back to them with ideas as to how to tell the story in a unique, interesting way. Once they agree, it’s a process where my team and the creative video folks work with the brand and agency to refine the idea. The best work happens with that collaboration. It’s not simply a BuzzFeed thing where we have all the answers, or the brand saying “This is how you have to do it.” We understand our audience and shareable, creative video and the brand understands the brand and brand message, and when you combine those two together is really great shareable content.
首先我们会从一个品牌那里带来一个拍片机会，然后我们要回到客户那里，告诉他们怎样把故事以独特、有趣的方式拍出来。一旦客户同意了，我的团队和负责创意视频的同事们就会与那个品牌或代理人合作，对创意进行精益求精。这种协作是最有效果的。因为这并不是BuzzFeed单方面的事，不是说我们有所有问题的答案，品牌方面也不会说“你们必须按照我说的这样做。”我们了解观众，了解观众喜欢分享哪种创意视频；而客户则了解他们的品牌和品牌信息。将二者合而为一，就会产生非常好的分享内容。
Have any of them used your content for a TV spot?
他们中是否有人把你们拍摄的内容用于电视宣传？
We are working on several now with the thought process of that. We’re producing mainly 90-second to three-minute spots. To turn into a 30-second spot is tough but it’s a request from some clients.
我们目前正在接触的客户中，就有几家有这样的想法。我们主要拍摄的是90秒到3分钟不等的短片。把片子压缩到30秒以内是很难的，但的确有些客户是这样要求的。