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Israeli Company Ranks Second for Most Shared Links on Facebook
by Shiryn Ghermezian
The logo for the Israeli start-up company PlayBuzz. Photo: Screenshot.
The Israeli start-up PlayBuzz racked up the second most shared links on Facebook in the month of September, according to a new report by NewsWhip, a business that tracks content published on social media.
The Tel Aviv-based website accumulated 7.6 million shares on Facebook, coming in second behind The Huffington Post with 9.4 million shares. BuzzFeed finished third with 6.2 million shares followed by Fox News with 4.1 million shares, NBC News with 3.0 million and The Guardian with 2.8 million.
“Seven of the 10 biggest Facebook stories of last month (likes + shares + comments) were PlayBuzz quizzes,” NewsWhip also reported.
PlayBuzz primarily publishes personalized quizzes such as “What Kind of Doctor Could You Be?” “What Yoga Pose are You?” and “Will Channing Tatum Want to Marry You?” Visitors to the site are also able to create their own lists and polls, which they can then share or embed on various websites. The Israeli company launched in 2012 and was co-founded by Shaul Olmert, the son of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and a New York University alumni.
BuzzFeed published an article in March accusing Shaul of running a “BuzzFeed knockoff” and a “BuzzFeed clone” with his company. In July, Shaul told The Wall Street Journal that PlayBuzz is no BuzzFeed imitator. He said PlayBuzz has only two content creators and relies on users and independent publishers, or even other news organizations, to generate the rest. BuzzFeed, on the other hand, employs 170, according to a report published in March by the Pew Research Center.
“BuzzFeed is a great website,” said Olmert. “We, on the other hand, are a network. Our strength is not in in-house editorial, but in empowering users, publishers, and brands to create their content.”
