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Thursday, Apr 4, 2013 4:32 PM UTC

GOP’s new digital strategy is BuzzFeed

The National Republican Congressional Committee will now publish lists with cute animals

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Topics: BuzzFeed, Internet, GOP, Republican Party, National Republican Congressional Committee, GIFs, ,

GOP's new digital strategy is BuzzFeed (Credit: BuzzFeed)

The National Republican Congressional Committee is going for Internet lols. The organization is relaunching its website, and aims to model it after Internet media giant BuzzFeed — complete with animated gifs, cute animals, lists and all.

The site has already added “13 Animals That Are Really Bummed on Obamacare’s Third Birthday” and meme-like images on its Facebook page, such as this one:

“BuzzFeed’s eating everyone’s lunch,” NRCC spokesman Gerrit Lansing told the National Journal. “They’re making people want to read and be cognizant of politics in a different way.”

The National Journal’s Brian Fung reports:

The committee spent hours poring over BuzzFeed’s site map and layout, studying how readers arrived at its landing pages and bounced from one article to the next. Unsurprisingly, a ton of traffic came from social media — but a lot of it also seemed to come from the site’s sidebar, said Lansing. So the NRCC’s redesign includes a list of recent and popular posts.

Other changes include shorter posts, fewer menu items and a heavy helping of what now passes for social currency on the Web: snark.

As the GOP, the arguably less-Internet savvy party, attempts to copy BuzzFeed’s formula for success, let’s just hope that none of its writers come from conservative-leaning Fox News Magazine; people will start sharing the GOP’s listicles for the lulz, not the lols.

Prachi Gupta is an Assistant News Editor for Salon, focusing on pop culture. Follow her on Twitter at @prachigu or email her at pgupta@salon.com. More Prachi Gupta.

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