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When BuzzFeed went online, it didn't initially make much of an impression (on us). It's undeniably well designed, with a clean, simple look and an obvious function: collating stories and related online discussion into chunks of buzz, tracking the buzz as such stories evolve. "Our aim is to aggregate authentic excitement that captures what real people are saying about the things they find most interesting," says the mission statement. Perfectly fine, but you've seen a million variations on this theme already, right? And BuzzFeed's methodology relies on bot-crawlers and editorial guidance, but not live reader-driven input, which means they're not doing much Drudge-style newsbreaking. But that's not really the point, and as 2006 wound down, the site really hit its stride with the content mix and editorial tone. The charm of BuzzFeed is that it 's almost relaxing to surf around among the organically growing topics of interest, rather than a frantic refresh-race to see the latest breaking exclusive.

BuzzFeed's groovy holistic nature comes from its founders, who happen to be three hombres from Huffington Post Land, among many other incestuously related ventures. They are: infectious media gremlin Jonah Peretti, indie film obsessive John S. Johnson, and HuffPo co-founder Ken Lerer (who is also co-creator of Thrillist founder Ben Lerer). And it doesn't hurt that they brought in Jason Kottke as "design advisor." As stories accumulate buzz-links via either human or automated action, such stories get short editorial remarks and a running tally of links. Despite appearances, it's not meant to be a Technorati-style link accumulator, since each buzz-particle is ostensibly vetted for quality/originality. The process seems to work best on calling out new angles for stories which have already gained a little momentum Web-wide, and it's also nice that the content menu is relatively omnivorous. That's not to say you won't see a little circle-jerk repetition in the links, but again, BuzzFeed's open nature allows very quick sifting and sorting right to those topics which interest you most (or at all). Worth watching.

BuzzFeed