Viral News platform Buzzfeed and other online sites like Jezebel, Us Weekly and Business Insider may have used the wrong reaction photo on Miley Cyrus's rancid performance in the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs). Slate News Magazine reported that the expressive photo of Will Smith and his children Willow and Jaden was not taken during Cyrus' performance, but was taken during Lady Gaga's milder, albeit weird performance.
The source was found to be from a Twitter post who made the wrong assumption. Regardless, even news outfits like Fox News and MSNBC followed suit and used the photo to emphasize the crowd reaction to Cyrus' most raunchiest performance yet. Buzzfeed's dedicated post on Cyrus and the Smith family's reaction had already garnered 1.3 million views, notwithstanding the site's other related posts.
Endgadget writer and Forbes contributor Sharif Sakr explained why even "hate" is a bankable emotion for marketers, that anyone who wanted to attract a lot of eyeballs to their products use it. In his April 16 article about HTC's viral video for the "One" smartphone, he wrote, "These things are largely subjective, but the overwhelmingly negative response to the video can now be treated as a useful case study in its own right. Even if the advert makes a comeback, and even if it crops up in movie theaters as HTC originally intended, the backlash against it has become a small part of marketing history that deserves to be analysed."
Buzzfeed is a New York-based technology platform dedicated to finding viral content. Founded by Jonah Peretti of the Huffington Post in 2006, the company reportedly earned around USD20 million in revenues for 2012. It has recently accumulated USD19.3 million in funding on January this year for expansion.
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