The interesting thing is that that was all planned from the start.
I think it's a TED talk but I'm not entirely sure. Buzzfeed was an MIT grad product to figure out how far they could go with virality and virality alone. If the project proved succesful, they'd invest in serious journalism.
It's all there in the video I don't have a link to!
If you told me ten years ago that BuzzFeed's news site would end up winning many prestigious awards including a Pulitzer Prize I would have thought you were joking.