BuzzFeed and VICE were the digital media unicorns of the 2010s.
In this fast emerging era of social media, smartphones, and video, these two companies had seemingly figured out the secret sauce on how to go viral in this new online world.
They were fast, nimble, and hungry - free from the bureaucracy, editorial norms, and newsroom traditions of legacy media.
They covered taboo topics, wrote for relatability rather than prescription, published without paywalls or regwalls, and reinvented content from static text into dynamic, interactive social pieces.
It was free content delivered at an unprecedented pace, volume, quality, and swagger and their regular virality fueled organic distribution to millions around the world.
Backed by flourishing viewership, BuzzFeed and VICE fundraised their way to multi-billion dollar valuations, using the investment to elevate production value, expand genres, and build newsrooms of their own.
As these startups expanded into journalism, the line that once divided legacy media and digital media vanished.
BuzzFeed and VICE soon started collecting Emmys and Pulitzers for their work.
The viewership quality and virality was visible, and it wasn't hard for the public and venture capitalists to imagine that BuzzFeed and VICE had become for millennials what The New York Times and CNN were for boomers.
Brands and advertisers who were eager to sell to this new generation began diverting spend away from these legacy publications and towards these red-hot digital media startups.
