Few people have shaped Internet culture quite like Jonah Peretti. Before founding BuzzFeed, he co-founded The Huffington Post, helping to define how journalism lives online. With BuzzFeed, Peretti took that vision even further, building a company that showed how the Internet could both reflect and shape human behavior at scale.

His early fascination with virality proved prescient. The idea behind the “Bored at Work Network” captured how millions of people connected through humor, curiosity, and creativity, laying the groundwork for the social web as we know it.

BuzzFeed’s influence has earned it multiple Webby Awards and a place on The Webby 30: Most Iconic Companies list. We spoke with Peretti about his experience building BuzzFeed, his views on how the Internet evolved into what it is today, and what he’s building next.

Dig into Peretti’s reflections on the early, permissionless web, the rise of algorithmic feeds, and why he believes the next wave of the Internet will be more playful. He also explains SNARF, his acronym describing the core mechanics of viral content that have now become over-optimized for engagement, and shares how BuzzFeed’s new project, BF Island, aims to build a more participatory, creative Internet.

Webby: You’ve had a long view of the Internet and have been part of it through many phases. When did you first realize the Internet was going to change how the world works? And how did that realization shift the way you created personally and then with BuzzFeed?

Jonah Peretti: At first, I didn’t realize how big it would be. I went to college, got an email address, and the next day I forgot my password. I remember thinking, “You know what, I’ll probably never do email.” Then within a year or two, I saw the first websites. There was this one about phone hackers linking out to all the big telcos, showing how to hack their systems. I thought, “Oh my God, the Internet is different.” People could create content and put it online without asking permission: hackers, artists, whoever. I remember clicking on the Louvre’s website and thinking, “Wow, this is more free, more global, more permissionless than anything that came before.” Once I saw that, I got excited and knew it was something I’d spend years working on.

Webby: You came up with the “Bored at Work Network” early on. For people who don’t know what that means, can you explain the idea and how it shaped BuzzFeed?

Peretti: In the early days of BuzzFeed, I noticed our peak traffic was during the workday. People were in offices with high-speed Internet, spending time consuming entertainment and sharing content that we made. I called it the “Bored at Work Network.” People worked maybe four or five hours a day, then spent a few hours catching up with coworkers, surfing the Internet, or sharing funny cat videos. I realized this was a network—millions of people sharing content with each other. There was no editor-in-chief, no one controlling it, yet it was bigger than NBC or CBS. You could build a media company that made content for that network instead of a traditional broadcast company.

Webby: And then mobile arrived.

Peretti: Yeah, that was the next big shift—going from the PC era to the mobile era. The Bored at Work Network peaked before the iPhone. Once mobile took off, you could consume video, images, and rich media from a personal device. BuzzFeed went from making content for the Bored at Work Network to becoming a social-mobile company. The Bored at Work Network was inherently social, people sharing with each other, but once mobile and social converged, people were sharing from a much more personal place. It’s an important part of Internet history, but what lasts is the idea of a human-powered, emergent network being more important than broadcast media. That’s how information spreads, in good ways and bad.

Webby: You’re known for studying and shaping virality. Looking back at the mid-2000s, what did you learn from those early experiments at BuzzFeed? And once algorithms started distributing content, what stayed true and what went wrong?

Peretti: In the early days, virality was about people seeing something and deciding it was worth sharing with their friends. Think early email forwards—you’d get something funny or important, maybe political, and share it. If your friends agreed, they’d share it too.

Early peer-to-peer networks were slow—someone had to see it, then share it, then their friends would share it. As more people connected, that time got shorter. Then algorithms came along and started taking any signal that something was interesting and blasting it to everyone—no social connections needed. TikTok is the most extreme version, but even Meta does it now. The Dress is a great example. It was a huge viral moment. We published it, translated it, posted it everywhere, and it went viral that afternoon. By the next morning people were already saying, “Oh yeah, that was yesterday’s thing.” The time frame went from months to hours. Now we’re in a post-viral world, everything’s fragmented. Platforms would rather have pods of people living in separate content worlds than a “dress”-level moment that everyone shares. The social part which was the most fun, has been suppressed. The big platforms want content that’s hyper-targeted to individuals to maximize time and engagement.

Webby: You’ve said early Internet culture felt more participatory—people were creating and sharing together. Now there are fewer creators and a lot more consumers. Why does participation matter, and how do you see that balance evolving?

Peretti: Early Facebook was incredible. About 80% of people contributed content. You’d log in and see posts from most of your friends. That world is gone. Now, posting online means being ready to go to battle. You get attacked, taken out of context, misunderstood. To post now, you have to be ready for that, and most normal people don’t want to.

We’re trying to fix that with BF Island, a new platform we’re building at BuzzFeed. People are also leaving social and going directly to sites like HuffPost or Tasty—places where content isn’t driven by everyone fighting to get into the feed. It reminds me of when AOL tried to be the whole Internet, keeping people inside a walled garden. That didn’t work because people didn’t want to be trapped. Consumers are pushing back. They’re going direct to websites again. They want experiences that feel freer, more joyful, more creative, like the early Internet.

Webby: What’s one decision that felt risky at the time but ended up being transformative for BuzzFeed—and maybe even the wider industry?

Peretti: The Parisian cafe idea. People want news, entertainment, and lifestyle content all in one feed. We got a lot of criticism for that. The New York Times would say, “How can you have serious news next to cat memes?” People thought it violated journalistic purity. But it’s been validated. Everyone consumes a mix of everything now—even the Times. The Paris cafe idea is that you’re sitting there reading the paper, maybe flirting with someone at the next table, petting a dog that walks by, people-watching, gossiping. All of it coexists. Having it all mixed together reflects how people actually experience life.

Webby: Can you explain SNARF and how it fits into how you’re thinking about the Internet now?

Peretti: We figured out early that you could build a media company that really understood how the Internet worked. Instead of broadcasting, where everyone gets the same thing, you have a two-way connection with the audience. You make content people can share because the Internet is inherently social. That’s how we grew—leaning into what the Internet does best. But competition to make the most viral content pushed everything to extremes. Once platforms became algorithmic, you got clickbait and engagement bait. Everyone was trying to win the feed. That led to what I call SNARF.

SNARF stands for Stakes, Novelty, Anger, Retention, and Fear. S is for stakes—everything’s high stakes: the end of the world, the end of democracy. N is novelty: “This has never happened before.” A is anger: outrage content. R is retention: “Watch till the end.” F is fear: content that makes you worry. That’s what dominates feeds now. It’s content designed to maximize engagement so it keeps showing up. That’s SNARF.

Webby: How does that idea shape what you’re building now? What are you excited about next for BuzzFeed?

Peretti: Mature technologies get really optimized and kind of boring—and often toxic. They move into profit-extraction mode. What used to be fun about social has been sucked out. Everything’s algorithmic recommendation to keep people scrolling. But when tech is new, it’s different. People don’t know what it’s good for yet. Consumers explore it with a sense of wonder. You can make things that are playful and fun, and still be good businesses. That’s what we’re doing with BF Island. It’s an AI creation platform built on new technology that still feels full of possibility. The medium is the message again. Playing with the medium is exciting. It feels like when we were first creating for social and mobile: new, playful, full of energy. That’s what’s next.

Webby: Any favorite Webby memories?

Peretti: My favorite was when Prince won. The Webbys crowd is kind of nerdy: business people, Internet nerds. I thought, “There’s no way Prince is coming.” I looked around, didn’t see him, and then he walks in from outside the ballroom, dressed completely like Prince with an acoustic guitar. He comes up, does this wild solo, says his five-word Webby speech—I think it was “Everything you know is true”—then throws his guitar over his head, it smashes on the ground, and he walks off. Everyone’s like, “Oh my God, that guy is such a star.” I had no idea someone could look that cool at the Webbys.

Webby: Jonah, thank you for the conversation and for being part of The Webby 30. We can’t wait to see what’s next with BF Island.

Peretti: Thank you. Really honored. The team is excited

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