1. 12m hits -- 45 Most Powerful Images of 2011.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-most-powerful-photos-of-2011

2. 10m hits -- 21 Images That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/pictures-that-will-restore-your-faith-in-humanity

3. 7.2m hits -- 12 Extremely Disappointing Facts About Music.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/12-extremely-disappointing-facts-about-popular-mus

4. 7m hits -- 50 People You Wish You Knew In Real Life.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/people-you-wish-you-knew-in-real-life

5. 6.8m hits -- 25 Funniest AutoCorrects of 2011.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/burnred/the-25-funniest-autocorrects-of-2011-281t

6. 6.8m hits -- 13 Simple Steps To Get You Through The Day.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/13-simple-steps-to-get-you-through-a-rough-day

7. 6.2m hits -- 21 Absolute Worst Things In The World.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/the-absolute-worst-things-in-the-world

8. 4.4m hits -- 40 Things That Will Make You Feel Old.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/40-things-that-will-make-you-feel-old

9. 4m hits -- 50 Unexplainable Black and White Photos.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/50-unexplainable-black-white-photos

10. 4m hits -- 32 Pictures You Need To See Before The World Ends.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/pictures-you-need-to-see-before-the-world-ends

11. 3.9m hits -- 25 Foods You'll Never Be Able To Eat Again.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/25-foods-youll-never-eat-again

12. 3.5m hits -- 25 Most Awkward Cat Sleeping Positions

https://www.buzzfeed.com/paws/awkward-cat-sleeping-positions

13. 3.5m hits -- 40 Most Powerful Photographs Ever Taken.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/most-powerful-photographs-ever-taken

Observations:

1. Only one of the top 13 pages are pictures of cute things. Lolcats, of course.

2. Every list is a montage of interesting images found elsewhere.

3. All of them appeal to an emotion: powerful, restore your faith, wish, funny, get through the day, worst feeling, feeling old, unexplainable, must see, nostalgia, cute, powerful.

Also:

4. Nothing political.

5. Every post can appeal to someone with a high school education.

6. Despite many curators at BuzzFeed, these were all posted by just a few people. mjs538 has five, daves4 has four, and expresident has two.

Upworthy uses similar techniques to make its posts go viral.

You just created a buzzfeed of buzzfeeds.

BuzzFeed Inception!! :)

Um, this may be "too" meta :-)

Whar conclusions can we draw from looking at the most popular BuzzFeed posts ever?

Your six observations are good already. I think they keep it simple stupid. I have only seen a few and I generally dislike most of them. I also would like to see a metric of how those top stories compare to the rest of their posts. What % of success are they achieving?

Very, very few of BuzzFeed's posts go viral. Fewer than 1 in 1000.

Most of BuzzFeed's articles are news-y. No coincidence that the founder was also a founder of Huffington Post.

The point is that there's a power law. The articles are long tail and the most popular ones do go viral.

I'm trying to understand their essence, but at the end of the day it's not a science or they'd have a much higher hit rate.

I think ultimately they have three things in common:

1. REMIX:,They assemble a montage of images not put together before.

2. EMOTION: They makes sure they tap into universal themes that have emotion.

3. SIMPLE: As you said, there's nothing profound to these. As shareable as an email chain.