From The Atlantic—
Today, Upworthy is a million-hit machine for heartfelt, progressive content, and it is trying to use this alchemy—spinning hearty fiber into viral gold—on behalf of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. On Tuesday, the company announced it is launching a global health and poverty section backed with Gates money, suggesting a future for not only the site's editorial strategy but also for its business.
Upworthy has mastered the dark viral arts with a unique blend of A/B technology and lily-white earnestness. The staff scours the Web for "stuff that matters," writes multiple headlines for a test audience, selects the top-performer, and blasts it out on social media. It's a deceptively simple plan that's devouring the Internet, one Facebook Newsfeed at a time. The site nearly surpassed 50 million unique visitors in October, which suggests traffic comparable to giants like Time.com, and Fox News.
And even more from The Atlantic.
I haven’t seen anything like it in a long time. On Facebook, on Twitter, and even sometimes in my email inbox, there are these headlines.
“We Don’t Hear Enough From Native American Voices. Here’s An Inspiring Message From One.”
They make an emotional promise. They usually have two phrases. They paint their political proposition as obvious, as beyond debate.
They’re headlines in the Upworthy style, and they seem to have colonized every news source. Upworthy the company has done well by them, too: On Thursday, it announced it had 87 million unique visitors in November. (For context: That’s more than the New York Times. A lot more.)
Upworthy’s new, but it’s not startlingly new. Founded in March of last year, its headline style was so obvious that the New York Times could parody it by July.
So, why did it explode now?
There’s a short answer and there’s a long answer—and the long answer has very little to do with the upstart publisher, and very much to do with the long history of Silicon Valley’s most famous companies.
The short answer is: People click on them.
This poor schmuck (pictured left) didn't think he could change the world, but he did think it might be worthwhile trying to explain to people how the world worked.
What a douchebag!
If only somebody had told him nearly 4 years ago that humans are fucking idiots, he needn't have bothered writing those 1564 1565 posts. How dumb is that?
Now, finally, after all that futile effort, at least this poor schmuck knows how to write a fucking headline. Now he knows what "clickbait" is for chrissakes!
Upworthy taught him that.
Now that this hapless fool knows what he's doing, what's next? How about a Really Big Grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation?
The non consumer society life is not worth living. So sayeth the response to Upworthy. Of course, we're only humans, so no surprise.
Posted by: Ken Barrows | 12/09/2013 at 02:16 PM