BuzzFeed Plans to Bring Its Brand of Viral Journalism to Japan

Yahoo Japan will help BuzzFeed navigate language and cultural difference in Japan, which can be a hard market for foreign companies to tackle, and also give its headlines an instant audience. The announcement marks a departure from practice for the social news website, which has gone alone in launching in Britain, Brazil, France, Australia, India, Germany, Mexico and Canada. We put a lot of thought into finding the right partner.

He wrote: “To get into the nitty-gritty on the details, we’ll provide the joint venture with BuzzFeed’s brand, proprietary technology platform, and philosophy and process for developing editorial content and native advertising”. “Beyond looking at pure reach, we wanted to find a team that has local cultural knowledge, established clients and strong revenue numbers”. Buzzfeed explained its decision to partner with Yahoo Japan, claiming it was a “perfect fit” for the move.

BuzzFeed did not disclose how much it is investing in the venture, but Coleman said it will own a majority stake.

BuzzFeed has signed a joint venture with Yahoo Japan, which until recently was the country’s top search portal before Google gained a slight lead.

Mr Coleman went on to add that 45 per cent of the website’s traffic came from outside the US during July, something which he described as “huge”. The company raised $50 million from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz in August last year, valuing it at $850 million. Comcast’s NBCUniversal is expected soon to conclude a $200 million investment in BuzzFeed at a valuation of $1.5 billion, according to a person familiar with the situation.