Reflection #3: Why are people so crazy about Tasty?

Why are people so crazy about Tasty?

Everyone must have seen them on Facebook, short and quick videos of tasty foods with its simple recipes and procedures. BuzzFeed has built a social empire using Facebook as the starting platform and then, expanding to other popular social media platforms. Tasty is a great example that dominated audiences. Tasty was launched in about a year ago, but since then, there are more than 50 million Facebook fans, and the number is still increasing. Facebook’s Tasty site has more views than their dedicated food site on BuzzFeed.com. Andreas Kaplan, an author of “Users of the World, Unite! The Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media” explains about the importance of “choosing the right medium for any given purpose depends on the target group to be reached and the message to be communicated” (65).

 Videos optimized for Facebook users

Cooking procedures and recipes are simple. They are not like that television cooking shows. The videos make the viewers to actually want to try to cook. Most of them are no longer than a minute. BuzzFeed have focused on people’s convenience to make sure they can move on, but still watch the contents of those videos. They have used a fast-motion, “a combination of stop-motion shots, simple onscreen instructions, and colorful ingredients and cooking tools” (Basu). Additionally, BuzzFeed have followed Facebook’s algorithm which means they took an early steps in publishing their content directly to Facebook rather than posting links to their website, Buzzfeed.com. Facebook’s autoplay feature, playing without sound, have benefit BuzzFeed.

                                             Niche audiences

BuzzFeed targeted on younger audiences by providing relevant content to increase the engagement because the young people are more active in using the social media platforms. Furthermore, BuzzFeed have focused deeper into specialized niche audiences. They are currently operating international versions of Tasty.

-          Proper Tasty: focusing on British cuisine

-          Tasty Demais: Portuguese cuisine

-          Bien Tasty: Spanish cuisine

-          Tasty Miam: French cuisine

-          Einfach Tasty: German cuisine

-          Tasty Japan: Japanese cuisine

-          Tasty Arabic: Arab cuisine

                                           Power of Platform

Andrew Gauthier, an executive video producer at BuzzFeed, and his team experimented which types of social media platforms had more video viewership. “A 73 second video was first published to YouTube, where it racked up more than 65,000 views in 22 hours. The next day, a shortened version of the clip – 65 seconds – posted to Facebook generated 4.4 million views, 19,500 shares and 52,000 likes in four hours” (Johnson). Tasty uses other platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat, but their accounts mostly serve to point people toward Facebook.

                                            Optimize for engagement

In order to allow users to engage more with the site, Tasty comments “on its own posts with “Pin it for Later” and “View full recipe” links” (Macarthy). This is specially to target “those who either don’t have time to watch the clip, or prefer to digest the content in other ways” (Macarthy).

Works cited:

Kaplan, Andreas M., “Users of the World, Unite! The Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media,” Business Horizons (2010) 53, 59-68

Macarthy, Andrew. “How Tasty Gets Billions of Facebook Video Views: 6 Secrets Any Business Can Use.” Social Media Today. November 03, 2016. http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-business/how-tasty-gets-billions-facebook-video-views-6-secrets-any-business-can-use. Accessed March 02, 2017.

Johnson, Lauren. “How Tasty’s Addictive Cooking Videos Helped BuzzFeed Build a Food Empire.” Adweek.com. October 30, 2016. http://www.adweek.com/digital/how-tasty-mastered-social-publishing-part-buzzfeed-s-plan-make-50-revenue-video-174325/. Accessed March 02, 2017.

Basu, Tanya. “How Recipe Videos Colonized Your Facebook Feed.” The New Yorker. May 18, 2016. http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/how-recipe-videos-colonized-your-facebook-feed. Accessed March 02, 2017.

Griffith, Erin. “BuzzFeed’s Foodie Channels Are Blowing Up on Facebook.” Fortune. January 19, 2016. http://fortune.com/2016/01/19/buzzfeed-tasty-proper-tasty/. Accessed March 02, 2017.