King of Clickbait
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Next in line. Many folks have relied on FB traffic only to be crushed beneath the mighty hand of an algorithm change. We've seen it a million times with Google demolishing a site's traffic overnight with an algo update, and now we're seeing it with Facebook as well. None of these traffic sources like to be gamed and will eventually catch up and "fix" the problem.
I have no problem with someone getting paid by capitalizing on third party traffic sources (in this case social) but it's a fool's errand to assume this is going to be sustainable once the distributor decides they want a piece of the pie.
I was thinking the same thing. What could they possibly pivot to should Facebook kick them out without having to fire all of their staff? The long tail of clickbait clicking sounds like an unattractive proposition.
I'm really curious to see what that does to publishing businesses like this that don't promote "businessey" things like "SALE SALE SALE!" or product-specific stuff.
Ultimately, I'm guessing many of these companies will pay the ransom as long as it is profitable, and make their best effort to get people into a channel they control that has fixed pricing (like email). Guessing they will likely start shifting to other social networks as well.
I have heard from countless other publishers I know who are doing many similar things as to not get trapped in the FB ecosystem.
We've had it easy for a decade. User growth from people who just weren't online before. Ad revenue growth from dollars that fled traditional media. When those growth engines end, and easy/free traffic engines slow down, the content business is going to be fucking painful. To some extent, it already is.
Newspapers have an incredibly important social function as muckrackers, exposing corruption, explaining politics, and breaking news. Even the New York Times, which is as good of a newspaper as you'll find these days has 'native advertising' which is virtually indistinguishable from regular articles.
I'd argue that the distinguishing feature would be the 'Paid Post' banner that remains at the top of the article, even as the reader scrolls.
I know the writing style and content still resembles actual articles and it might be easy to miss this disclaimer if you're paying attention only to the content but it's only fair to mention that they do, in fact, label paid content as such.
They USED to do that. Now they're owned by conglomerates and billionaires to parrot their ideals.
[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish–Ame...
I think it's interesting because a good title itself is intrinsically "clickbait" or begging you to stop and look for more. From the Paul Graham essay to the header on a high school science fair board, titles are design to get your attention. The problem lies now with content which content created with greater attention to the bait than to the actual body itself. A good designed title is just that, until it lures you into content which does not live up to its billing.
If we can't trust titles what now do we use to decide what content is worth our time?
This guy's sites feed different titles to different readers, see who clicks through, and adjust accordingly. That could be detected by suitable anti-spam algorithms.
In the content world, would you rather sites have good content or good traffic? The trend seems to be that these two are not always correlated.
There are a lot of mobile companies pumping a lot of dollars into FB mobile app install ads for a reason. FB definitely still has value to add.
Viable?
Extra: you could get in touch with the original authors, take a 50/50 on any money you extract. One court case to set precedent and check viability of the business model and the checks write themselves.
If you are going to make money from cheap exploitative lists, at least try to create your own.
"...Twirl, a gay version of the dating app Tinder. "
I hope that this parasitic method of generating ad revenue with meaningless content languishes rather than flourishes.
It was anything but glorification.
I'd be interested in seeing his list of recommended books. (It's difficult to find good biographies that are also concise.)
I am very curious, I use that same journalistic technique in my writing. You don't editorialize, you report the subjects statements and report the facts and readers can see for themselves when the subject has said something foolish or dishonest.
I'm a bit concerned that this isn't a good tactic to use. A major theme of that article was the juxtaposition of the "Change the world", "He's a great guy" statements of the subject and the actual actions being only concerned with attention and money.
I mean, don't get me wrong, it's hilariously criminal and emblematic of everything that's wrong with the internet's systematic dismantling of the ability of content producers' ability to earn a living by doing the tedious, expensive work of actually making anything more complicated that cat memes.
LOL Nu york timez! I sold millions of dollars worth of ads on your original reporting and, unsurprisingly, am earning a tidy profit because your copyright means nothing online!
Smart guy.
http://mixergy.com/interviews/spartz-spartz-media-interview/
When you press play on the video of the interview, you get prompted for your email address. If you're fool enough to do that (I was), next it tries to sell you an expensive subscription.
If you buy the identity theft protection, you get an offer to get cash for your tax return NOW instead of in a few months.
60 days later, I'm getting calls from bill collectors. Thank goodness I bought the identity theft protection! I wish they'd turn their phones back on...
But I'm sure he has bills to pay, like everyone else.
Did you get to see the interview, after listening to his commercial?
(Why does he need my email to show me a video? He isn't even offering to email me anything at that point, so what could it be besades spam?)
At least in my browser, that page contains both an audio version and a transcription of the interview. Have you tried scrolling?
Could you try it now? Should be fixed: http://mixergy.com/interviews/spartz-spartz-media-interview/