Buzzfeed was a cat picture site a few years ago. Even its founder says so. But Buzzfeed is a content giant now, with expertise in viral content-making that every web operation envies (openly or not). What happened? How did Buzzfeed grow so fast it’s now a serious news operation that reports from China and Ukraine alongside mainstream media stalwarts like the Wall Street Journal? Buzzfeed Quizzes happened. Lots of factors (like The Dress) pushed Buzzfeed up the content mountain, but the Buzzfeed Quiz became a phenomenon. Which member of KISS are you? Which Beatle are you? Which great writer are you? People couldn’t get enough — and they shared and shared.
Now for all the talk that the GOP never learns and is stuck in its ways, conservative Jeb Bush just lifted a page out of Buzzfeed’s playbook. Yup, Bush is attacking frontrunner Donald Trump with a Buzzfeed style quiz called: Which Candidate Are You? It probably won’t go viral like Buzzfeed’s What City Should You Actually Live In? (20 million views and counting). But it does make Jeb Bush look like he’s on the same planet as the rest of us. That’s something Donald Trump, popular as he is, rarely looks like.
