Bored Panda lives - or dies - at Facebook’s whim

Fascinating profile of viral content site Bored Panda from the New York Times:

Last summer, Mr. Banisauskas traveled to New York to meet with a group of other Facebook-focused publishers. All these companies produce entertaining material that reaches millions of people every day. In another era, that alone might have been enough to guarantee them a stable future. Today, they exist at Facebook’s mercy and might be wiped away at any moment.

A business that can be destroyed overnight by a quirk of another company’s core algorithm isn’t a business at all: it’s an extended exercise in gambling.