AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mar 13, 2026--
BuzzFeed, Inc. (Nasdaq: BZFD) today unveiled Branch Office, a new spinoff company that has been secretly developing a slate of apps designed to reinvent how people connect on the internet. The first two are launching now. More are coming this year.
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QUIZ PARTY: A NEW SOCIAL QUIZ APP COMING SOON
BF ISLAND: A PLACE FOR THE LATEST TRENDS
CONJURE: COMING SOON (iOS APP STORE, US & JAPAN)
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Branch Office operates independently, with its own founders, its own mandate, and a product philosophy built for a world where AI has blurred the lines between software and content. BuzzFeed saw a gap no one else was filling, and built a dedicated company, quietly, to move fast enough to actually fill it.
"We're accelerating into an era of infinite fake news, slop, personalization bubbles, and cuts at the organizations that actually care about content," said Jonah Peretti. "We need a solution. Branch Office is that solution."
IN THE LAB
BuzzFeed has been running AI experiments for years – a game where you raised a nepo baby, a chatbot that lets you attempt to talk a Karen down in a Starbucks line. Through hundreds of projects the team learned what AI could do when it wasn’t trying to replicate existing models of static content production, but building totally new experiences that would not have been possible before the advent of GenAI.
While most social media companies are using AI to keep people isolated in their own algorithmic feeds, BuzzFeed’s projects were built on the premise that creativity and engagement can bring people closer together, help them connect with their friends.
THE PHILOSOPHY: NINTENDO, NOT BIG TECH
Led by founder Bill Shouldis, Branch Office operates with a clear vision: treat software as a creative medium. Build fast. Iterate constantly. Let real communities, real culture, and genuine taste shape what gets made.
The guiding philosophy comes from an unlikely place: Nintendo. The gaming giant's principle of "lateral thinking with withered technology," taking maximum creativity out of what already exists, is Branch Office's north star. We don’t need to build our own foundational models or compete with Big Tech. We just ask one question: what's already here, and how do we make it genuinely fun?
When Branch Office looked at the market, they saw two camps: companies building AI to replace humans, and companies building AI to simulate them. Branch Office is doing neither.
"Most companies are using AI to replace human creativity," said Bill Shouldis, Founder, Branch Office. "We're leveraging it to connect people."
THE APPS
1. CONJURE — COMING SOON (iOS APP STORE, US & JAPAN)
Every day, Conjure sends you a summons: a subject to go photograph. You submit your photo as an offering. Something on the other end accepts it. Or it doesn't. No explanation. The lore builds over time, and entirely unlike anything else in the App Store – a daily ritual designed to pull people out of their feeds and into the world.
As Shouldis said on stage, "It solves the eternal problem for people who wanted BeReal to be in the X-Files universe."
2. BF ISLAND — IN PRIVATE BETA NOW (iOS APP STORE, US)
Your group chat has its own language, the callbacks, the bits, the references that only land with the seven people in the thread. BF Island lets you visualize all of it, drop in a photo, riff on it, spin it into something that makes your friends lose it. No algorithm. No followers. Just your people.
3. QUIZ PARTY — COMING SOON
A social quiz app. You find a quiz, you take it, you get your result, and then you share it with your friends. Everyone in the ‘quiz party’ sees each other's results and you roast each other in the chat. People have been doing this with BuzzFeed quizzes for years – screenshotting, texting, posting – but now we're building that behavior directly into the product, so it's easier, it's tighter, and it brings more people in.
THE BET AGAINST THE ALGORITHM
"The Internet disrupted distribution. Now AI is disrupting production," said Peretti. "When you don't have a vision for the content, you get a feed of slop. The value has moved – it's about community, culture, and taste. That's what Big Tech can't automate. Software is the new content."
Branch Office: branchoffice.studio/email
Conjure: whatwillyouconjure.com
BF Island: bfisland.com
About BuzzFeed, Inc.
BuzzFeed, Inc. is home to the best of the Internet. Across pop culture, entertainment, shopping, food and news, our brands drive conversation and inspire what audiences watch, read, and buy now – and into the future. Born on the Internet in 2006, BuzzFeed is committed to making it better: providing trusted, quality, brand-safe news and entertainment to hundreds of millions of people; making content on the Internet more inclusive, empathetic, and creative; and inspiring our audience to live better lives.
QUIZ PARTY: A NEW SOCIAL QUIZ APP COMING SOON
BF ISLAND: A PLACE FOR THE LATEST TRENDS
CONJURE: COMING SOON (iOS APP STORE, US & JAPAN)
BRANCH OFFICE
BEIRUT (AP) — The health of imprisoned Iranian rights lawyer Narges Mohammadi was at “very high risk," her foundation and family said Saturday, adding that Iran 's Intelligence Ministry was opposing her transfer to Tehran for treatment by her own doctors.
Mohammadi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate in her early 50s, was urgently transferred to a hospital in Zanjan in Iran's northwest on Friday after a cardiac crisis and fainting. Her family has said her health had been worsening in part from a beating she received during her December arrest.
Medical teams in Zanjan have requested her records before performing any treatment, while recommending that she be transferred to Tehran, her foundation said.
But her Paris-based husband, Taghi Rahmani, said the Intelligence Ministry opposed the transfer for angiography, or imaging of the blood vessels. He spoke in a voice message shared with The Associated Press by the foundation.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee in a statement urged Iranian authorities to immediately transfer Mohammadi to her medical team, saying her life is in their hands.
“She has the mental resilience for imprisonment, but her body does not have the readiness. The Ministry of Intelligence wouldn’t even mind if (she) died,” her husband told Sky News.
He added that their children hadn't seen Mohammadi for over a decade, since 2015.
Before her arrest on Dec. 12, Mohammadi already had been serving a sentence of 13 years and nine months on charges of collusion against state security and propaganda against Iran’s government, but had been released on furlough since late 2024 over medical concerns.
Her legal team is pursuing the matter with the General Prosecutor’s office, the foundation said.
Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, spoke by phone with counterparts in Qatar, Japan, Italy and South Korea a day after U.S. President Donald Trump rejected an Iranian proposal to end the war. Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency said Tehran handed it over Thursday night.
Late on Saturday, two semiofficial Iranian outlets, Tasnim and Fars, believed to be close to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, said Iran has sent a 14-point proposal via Pakistan in response to a nine-point U.S. proposal.
The three-week ceasefire appears to be holding. Negotiations continued by phone after Trump called off his envoys’ trip to Pakistan last weekend, the president said.
Trump also has floated a new plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, where about a fifth of the world’s trade in oil and natural gas typically passes.
The United States has warned shipping companies they could face sanctions for paying Iran to pass safely through the Strait of Hormuz, adding pressure in the standoff over control of it.
Iran effectively closed the strait by attacking and threatening ships after the U.S. and Israel launched a war on Feb. 28. Tehran later offered some ships safe passage via routes closer to its shore, charging fees at times.
The U.S. on Friday warned against transfers not only in cash but also in “digital assets, offsets, informal swaps, or other in-kind payments,” including charitable donations and payments at Iranian embassies.
The U.S. has responded with a naval blockade of Iranian ports since April 13, depriving Tehran of oil revenue it needs to shore up its ailing economy. The U.S. Central Command on Saturday said 48 commercial ships have been told to turn back.
Iran on Saturday said it hanged two men convicted of spying for Israel.
The judiciary's news outlet, Mizanonline, said Yaghoub Karimpour was accused of sending “sensitive information” to an officer in Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, while Nasser Bekrzadeh allegedly sent details about government and religious leaders as well as information about Natanz. The city is home to a nuclear enrichment facility bombed by Israel and the U.S. last year.
Iran has hanged more than a dozen people over alleged espionage and terrorist activities in recent weeks. Rights groups say Iran routinely holds closed-door trials in which defendants are unable to challenge the accusations they face.
Associated Press writers Collin Binkley in Washington and Nasser Karimi in Tehran contributed to this report.
Vehicles drive past a billboard with graphic showing Strait of Hormuz and sewn lips of U.S. President Donald Trump in a square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Saturday, May 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Vehicles drive past a billboard with graphic showing Strait of Hormuz and sewn lips of U.S. President Donald Trump in a square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Saturday, May 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A tanker, left, and a car carrier are anchored at sea in the Gulf of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from the coast near Khor Fakkan, United Arab Emirates, Friday, May 1, 2026.(AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)
Cargo ships are seen at sea near the Strait of Hormuz, as viewed from a rocky shoreline near Khor Fakkan, United Arab Emirates, Friday, May 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)
Men gather along the shore, some crouching and watching a game, as a mix of bulk carriers, cargo ships, and service vessels line the horizon in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas, Iran, Monday, April 27, 2026.(Razieh Poudat/ISNA via AP)
A man stands in the water, appearing to fish, as bulk carriers, cargo ships, and service vessels line the horizon in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas, Iran, Monday, April 27, 2026.(Razieh Poudat/ISNA via AP)
An Emirati patrol boat, left, is near a tanker anchored in the Gulf of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from a coastal road near Khor Fakkan, United Arab Emirates, Friday, May 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)
