The Current

So... BuzzFeed, eh? The home of the listicle launches in Canada

It's one of the most buzzed about media companies of the digital age. BuzzFeed, the internet meme-maker, is setting shop in here. We speak with Craig Silverman, the Canadian journalist who will be running BuzzFeed Canada and making Can Con go viral.
'Is Canadian a language?' That's from one of Buzzfeed's many viral online videos and the company is learning to speak Canadian now, launching in Canada. (Scott Beale/Laughing Squid/Buzzfeed)
If a video titled, "Guys Try Leggings For the First Time" showed up in your social media feed... would you be able to resist clicking on it? 

Ridiculous?  Maybe. But highly share-able.

After just a few days online, that video has already been viewed well over a million times and climbing  on BuzzFeed's YouTube channel. And those kind of numbers are par for the course at Buzzfeed -- proving they know how to create content that works on the internet, ridiculous or not. 

We're talking about BuzzFeed today because starting tomorrow, the new media titan officially launches its Canadian operations.... which will go by the name of BuzzFeed Canada.

To steer the new Northern operation, Buzzfeed has tapped Craig Silverman. He's known to journalists for his blog Regret the Error, which tracks media mistakes and mea culpas, as well as his website Emergent, which monitors viral rumours online.

Today, as part of our occasional series Eye on the Media, we were joined by BuzzFeed Canada's founding editor, Craig Silverman in our Toronto studio. 
 


This segment was produced by The Current's Howard Goldenthal.

(Music Bridge: APM Music)