I went through “How Y’all, Youse, and You Guys Talk” when it came out, but I probably wouldn't have taken the time if it had been with a less credible site, like BuzzFeed. So maybe their success with this owes a lot to their other journalism.
Great point -- in fact, I actually recall seeing a similar visualization on a different site a couple weeks before the NYTs one came out. It was interesting, but I dismissed it as less scientific because it wasn't on a credible domain. No doubt, part of the success of this visualization was that it was tied to the NYT.