WaMo: Neetzan Zimmerman and Gawker's viral traffic
Seriously, check out this chart. Last month Zimmerman pulled down 33.8 million pageviews by himself.
The bulk of this traffic is coming from Facebook. Putting it cynically, these specialists have figured out how to manipulate both FacebookÂs user base and its timeline algorithm. But via an nice Ezra Klein post, word is that Facebook might slow down on this practice:
WeÂve noticed that people enjoy seeing articles on Facebook, and so weÂre now paying closer attention to what makes for high quality content, and how often articles are clicked on from News Feed on mobile. What this means is that you may start to notice links to articles a little more often (particularly on mobile).
Why are we doing this? Our surveys show that on average people prefer links to high quality articles about current events, their favorite sports team or shared interests, to the latest meme. Starting soon, weÂll be doing a better job of distinguishing between a high quality article on a website versus a meme photo hosted somewhere other than Facebook when people click on those stories on mobile. This means that high quality articles you or others read may show up a bit more prominently in your News Feed, and meme photos may show up a bit less prominently.
In a way this isnÂt so surprising. IÂve never liked Facebook much, but these days I find it all but intolerable. Half the content anymore is mawkishly sentimental and/or transparently manipulative stuff that feels like an army of door-to-door homeopathic remedy salesmen elbowing each other out of the way on my doorstep. Re-tuning its algorithm to choke off the viral arms race might make Facebook better for everyone.
You mean Buzzfeed manipulates things to get huge hit counts? Shocking!!11
Cheers,
Scott.