So a news brand built for — and dependent on — a social media audience, could be facing the same algorithm-induced issues that occurred in 2016. BuzzFeed News was “a social media ecosystem company, and the ecosystem went away,” said a former BuzzFeed exec who spoke on the condition of anonymity, “… HuffPost was a pre-social media company. And then got kind of eclipsed by BuzzFeed in the social media age. BuzzFeed spokespersonFrom January-March 2023, 31% of BuzzFeed News’ traffic direct, compared to 57% of HuffPost’s traffic, according to SimilarWeb data. Most of the social traffic was coming from Facebook for both publications — 56% of BuzzFeed News’ social traffic was from Facebook, compared to 55% of HuffPost’s.

Source: Huffington Post April 24, 2023 12:31 UTC