BuzzFeed is known for pulling story from Tumblr, Reddit, Twitter, imgur, Facebook, Whatsapp [YEP] and making it CLICKBAIT/LINKBAIT. Every entity has revenue model & this works best for BuzzFeed. One of my friend wrote a nice post Quantifying the Clickbait and Linkbait in BuzzFeed Article Titles
It was my prejudice that did me wrong at the time: https://twitter.com/ponnappa/status/611811575268163584
However, I decided to visit the site to find if they are now in fact producing original content. But I found otherwise [30 mins task, because I follow r/india & Quora]. Check out the stories along with original sources and how BuzzFeed made story out of it.
1. About scoring 33% in exam.
There was a discussion thread on /r/india about the a kid scoring 33% in all his papers, we all laughed commented after seeing the poster and BuzzFeed copied it happily from there making story out of it.
2. On flipkart fake discount.
A user on r/india posted a picture of how one of the seller on Flipkart inflated the price and made fool of buyers by giving discount. The complete discussion thread is here and there we have BuzzFeed again making story of the same.
3. Picking popular post from Facebook & making it Clickbait.
One of the most popular post on Facebook was how outsiders think about India, it was posted on https://www.facebook.com/thenonsensestate and this is how BuzzFeed made story out of it. They had no option but to give credit to original poster.
4. Destinations in India that look like Europe
There was this interesting thread on quora where users were discussing about good Indian destination that look like Europe and then you have post on BuzzFeed about same
5. Indian Army dogs are killed after retirement.
We all know it was all over social media and then Indiatimes folks wrote detailed story about it followed by super creative writer from BuzzFeed making story about same.
6. Artist in Bangalore drawing crocodile on road to bring attention about potholes.
This discussion was started on r/india with a user sharing story which was published on Indian Express It was all over social media and then our super journos from BuzzFeed wrote the same.
Incase you folks are wondering how am I so sure about this, well do check the date/time of original post & BuzzFeed one.
One more thing, If Andreessen Horowitz has funded them there must be some reason/value in it which certainly is not Journalism IMHO. They are definitely serving a specific set of people which is excellent and i have nothing against them.