How clickbait grew up and got sort of serious

washingtonpost.com

20 points·prostoalex··6 comments

Yup, clickbait is _everywhere_ : https://i.imgur.com/JX8EGpR.png

"Tuesday morning, the company announced a new native advertising initiative that will let brands and advertising agencies sponsor content on the site, much as sites like the New York Times and the Washington Post do already."

They do? Many papers do; the "fluff" sections (Travel, Food, Wine, etc.) are often outsourced to Demand Media. But I didn't think the NYT did.

Some sites which you may not think are clickbait, are. Business Insider is owned by a founder of DoubleClick.

I'd be quite surprised if someone told me they didn't think Business Insider was clickbait. I think part of the issue is people thinking of clickbait as only lists of N things, or The Shocking Truth!!!. It can be more subtle than that but often it's just different.

Well, it was a good reading until "Facebook Censored A Nude Painting, And It Could Change The Site Forever".

So, I'll leave that here: "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

The article's name seems sort of 'click bait-ish,' honestly...

Headline writers have been doing that for hundreds of years. It's the content-farming model thats the important thing about 'clickbait', the headlines are a distraction.

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