On Monday, the site announced the formal launch of BuzzFeed Entertainment which promises to “take the fun side of Hollywood very seriously” with in-depth coverage of studios, celebrities, money and more.

The west coast move will test whether BuzzFeed can muscle into the entertainment world in the same way it did with its political coverage. Last year, the site became a serious player in Washington after hiring Politico’s Ben Smith and partnering with the New York Times  at political conventions.

In Hollywood, BuzzFeed is betting on original reporting to help stand out from saturated celebrity coverage. In a phone interview, Smith said that serious entertainment reporting has been in decline since the heyday of the Los Angeles Times and that there is a “huge space” for stories that lie in between celebrity fluff and hyper-insider fare. He added that, while the volume of Hollywood coverage has shot up in recent years, most of it is repetitive.

BuzzFeed has almost finished staffing the LA office where it will initially assign 15-20 people to video, entertainment and culture beats with plans to expand more in the future. The site is also relying on veteran west coast media types like Richard Rushfield and Kate Arthur to get a foothold against the likes of Deadline, Variety and the Hollywood Reporter.

So how is BuzzFeed going to pay for all this? For now, the site has the confidence of investors who are smitten with its “native advertising” business model which eschews traditional display ads in favor of ad content that more closely mimics existing stories. Last week, investors poured nearly $20 million of new funding into BuzzFeed. The site’s $200 million valuation was enough to tie it for first place (along with Sugar Media) among the Atlantic Quartz’s list of leading new media upstarts; they were followed by Bleacher Report, Vox Media, Cheezburger Network and Business Insider.

(note: this story contains a clarification from BuzzFeed re how many reporters will staff its LA office). 

To get a sense of BuzzFeed’s unique approach to news, take a look at some of the the stories it selected as “most successful” for 2012. They include a Wall Street hooker’s wish she could tell clients they were “bad in bed” but also serious business and political features — and, of course, mega-viral listicles like “21 pictures that will restore your faith in humanity” and “50 people you wish you knew in real life.”

In the coming year, BuzzFeed is poised to shape the rest of the media industry even as it tries to keep up its own momentum. Here are five things to watch for:

Is the mix of highbrow and tabloid sleaze here to stay?

BuzzFeed made its name with fluffy fare designed to be shared by what founder Jonah Peretti calls the “bored at work crowd.” More recently, the site has sought to climb the quality ladder by hiring respected journalists and producing New Yorker-style articles. This raises the question of whether two very different forms of content quality can co-exist under the same title.

In the traditional media world, highbrow and lowbrow fare live in very different silos. The New York Times, for instance, doesn’t publish sensational headlines or sacharine cat spreads. Meanwhile, the tabloid press doesn’t bother much with long political profiles or ponderous articles about art galleries.

BuzzFeed, however, has chosen to straddle both worlds. Other media outlets may be tempted to follow in the hopes of obtaining a mass audience and serious intellectual influence. It’s too soon, though, to know if traditional divisions between highbrow and tabloid news are largely a function of the print age — or if they are instead tied to fundamental principles of trust, authority and branding.

Will BuzzFeed acquire a political identity?

When its content was based on cats, it was easy for BuzzFeed to hide any political leanings. That will be harder as the site reports more about Congress and the economy. The coming year will determine if BuzzFeed stays non-partisan or if it will take on liberal leanings like the New York Times or the Huffington Post, where Peretti was a founder.

While a middle-of-the-road approach may seem safe, other outlets like Daily Kos and Michelle Malkin show that partisanship is popular. It’s also worth noting that BuzzFeed’s mastery of emotive images and viral distribution means it could put a powerful thumb on the scale for controversial issues. Image the treatment BuzzFeed could give topics like immigration (“10 Mexicans who are a lot like you”), gun control (“4 ways a Bushmaster kills kids faster”) or the economy (“5 home remedies you can use after baby boomers drain Medicare”).

Will all those pageviews turn into money?

BuzzFeed, like the U.K.’s Daily Mail, has galloped up the reader ranks with the help of sophisticated analytics tools. In September, BuzzFeed had doubled its traffic from a year ago with 11.5 million unique visitors according to comScore numbers cited in a BusinessInsider account.

The rapid growth will help BuzzFeed stay ahead of a choppy ad market for non-specialty news sites but, in the long run, the site’s success depends on its vaunted native ad strategy. This year, BuzzFeed will be the leading test case for whether native advertising is in fact the future business model for journalism or if, as detractors say, it’s just another buzzword.

What about the mobile morass?

Like every other publisher, BuzzFeed will soon face a situation where half its traffic comes by way of a mobile device where, for most, advertising revenue is still a pittance. The mobile migration will put BuzzFeed’s native advertising strategy even further to the test.

Will a BuzzFeed competitor emerge this year?

As BuzzFeed gains influence, others may be tempted to copy its approach by employing the same package of viral content and analytics. Low barriers to entry mean that we could see the emergence of BuzzFeed clones by the end of the year — either new sites that target BuzzFeed’s verticals or old meda brands that reboot their existing offerings on a BuzzFeed model.

(Image by TijanaM via Shutterstock)

All of us at GigaOM and our sister site paidContent are into the final planning stages for our big media show on May 23 — paidContent 2012: At The Crossroads. As paidContent editor and conference chair Staci Kramer has described in her posts leading up to the conference, we’re going to be looking at a wide range of topics related to the disruption in the media industry, from newspapers to e-books, with a great lineup of speakers including Media News Group CEO Jim Paton, Vox Media founder Jim Bankoff and Pottermore CEO Charlie Redmayne. I’m looking forward to all of those sessions, but I’m also really looking forward to the two I’m moderating: an interview with Union Square Ventures partner and Twitter investor Fred Wilson and a panel with Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall and Vivian Schiller of NBC News.

More than perhaps anyone else, Fred Wilson has been ahead of the curve when it comes to the potential of social media such as Twitter as a disruptive force both for the web and for traditional media as a whole — a track record that arguably began many years ago with his investment in GeoCities, an early web community that was acquired by Yahoo in 1999 for $3.57 billion. Since then, Wilson and Union Square have invested in a number of other prominent social networking players, including Zynga, design community Etsy.com, Foursquare, MeetUp and of course Twitter.

While Wilson hasn’t invested in anything that is specifically focused on media, you could argue (and I have) that Twitter is getting awfully close to being a media entity, if it isn’t already. Although virtually all of its content is produced by users, Twitter still has media-like aspects, including the ability to censor tweets if necessary. More recently, the company has been adding “curation”-type features thanks in part to its acquisition of Summify, and also hiring editors to create editorial products with partners, such as the one Twitter just announced with Nascar.

The Union Square partner has also said that the world of technology and the world of media need to figure out how to help each other, and I’m looking forward to asking him more about what he means by that. In a blog post, he confessed to being a reluctant pirate when it comes to trying to watch certain sporting events that he couldn’t find legal access to — so I’d like to know how he would advise media companies to handle traditional functions like time-based “windowing” and geo-blocking in a digital era.

What’s the impact of real-time media on politics?

On the political front, we’ve seen over the past year or so how the real-time nature of the social web can play havoc with political campaigns and spin doctors. Not only can the candidates themselves post their thoughts on Twitter or Facebook — an example of what web veteran and blogging pioneer Dave Winer has called “the sources going direct” — but those comments can snowball to the point where they take over the entire political agenda, as Hilary Rosen’s remarks about Mitt Romney’s wife being a stay-at-home mother did just a few weeks ago.

Whether this is a positive thing or a negative thing for the broader political and social sphere is something I’m planning to ask Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo and Vivian Schiller, the head of digital for NBC News and the former CEO of National Public Radio. Are we just seeing a more high-speed version of the same spin cycle we’ve seen for years, or has social media changed the balance of power for the better? What is the impact of meme-trackers such as BuzzFeed, which has added a lot of political firepower with former Politico writer Ben Smith and others, or The Huffington Post (whose co-founder Jonah Peretti is also at paidContent 2012)?

One thing we know for sure is that the world has changed in some fundamental ways thanks to the power of the web and of social media like Twitter: since anyone can be a publisher or a journalist — even for a short time — with the push of a button, we now have an unprecedented ability to see and hear what is happening in places like Tahrir Square in Egypt or Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. Politicians like former deputy British prime minister Lord Prescott say Twitter gives them “a connection to millions” without having to go through the “distorted prism” of the traditional media.

What the future holds for media companies and for society as a whole remains to be seen, but there’s no question we are going through a time of almost unprecedented disruption. I’m looking forward to hearing what Fred Wilson, Josh Marshall and Vivian Schiller — and all of the other great speakers at paidContent 2012 — have to say about that future. Please join me at the Times Center in New York on Wednesday, May 23.

Thumbnail photo courtesy of Flickr user Nony Mata