11 ms·

King of Clickbait

120 points by lambtron 12y ago

nbardy 12y ago
The title of this article is too ironic not to comment on. 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?
- Animats 12y ago
  The title of this article is too ironic not to comment on. -- 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.
  - rdrey 12y ago
    Many/most sites do A/B testing and there is nothing inherently wrong with it, so why would it be classified as spam?
    - bduerst 12y ago
      I think what they're trying to say is that sites that specifically test just to garner clicks, as opposed to conversions & sales, could be deemed as being "spammy". 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.
AndrewWarner 12y ago
I did an interview with him on Mixergy about how he built his company. Smart guy. http://mixergy.com/interviews/spartz-spartz-media-interview/ http://mixergy.com/interviews/spartz-spartz-media-interview/
- paulsutter 12y ago
  A clickbait comment in an article on clickbait! 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.
  - pistle 12y ago
    If you buy the subscription, you get an offer to buy identity theft protection. 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...
  - swamp40 12y ago
    Andrew has done a ton of very interesting interviews with entrepreneurs. But I'm sure he has bills to pay, like everyone else. Did you get to see the interview, after listening to his commercial?
    - gohrt 12y ago
      The gauntlet of extremely sketchy looking solications, and providing interviews in video format only, suggests that this product is aimed at the ... less savvy of consumers; not someone going to build an actual business. (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?)
      - swamp40 12y ago
        Maybe he's following the New York Times model for acquiring subscribers?
sharkweek 12y ago
“Our volume of traffic right now is possible only because Facebook has been very generous about linking to our content,” he said. “I’m aware that they might not be so generous forever.” 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.
- proveanegative 12y ago
  >Many folks have relied on FB traffic only to be crushed beneath the mighty hand of an algorithm change. 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.
- shostack 12y ago
  This is particularly relevant given that Facebook announced recently that starting in January they were going to force businesses relying on earned social traffic to pay to reach those same people. They had already been tightening the screws on organic traffic for a while now, and will finally be shutting it off for any sort of promotional or low-quality content post. 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.
  - sharkweek 12y ago
    I run a movie blog and have seen MASSIVE dropoffs in referrals/engagement on FB - As it's just me running the site, and my time is zero sum, I have shifted far more of my focus on email newsletter marketing as it drives far better traffic. I tried paying to promote a few posts but the ROI was definitely not there relative to ad revenue. I have heard from countless other publishers I know who are doing many similar things as to not get trapped in the FB ecosystem.
vgeek 12y ago
So creating a BuzzFeed clone, a Grindr clone and a card game clone makes you a king? The article fails to mention that Facebook is starting to crack down on organic clickbaity content, which is were all of the viral sites likely get 90% of their traffic.
- shostack 12y ago
  I am not surprised that they are copying existing successes--it happens all throughout the internet. And expanding to apps makes sense when FB's news feed no longer becomes profitable. 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.
- j_lev 12y ago
  I came expecting to read the story of Upworthy.
  - killwhitey 12y ago
    There was a Vice podcast episode with the founders of Upworthy. It's not exactly an in-depth investigation, but interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMbn4awPF1o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMbn4awPF1o
numlocked 12y ago
We appear to be through the looking glass: "...Twirl, a gay version of the dating app Tinder. "
- zcdziura 12y ago
  Which itself is the straight version of the dating app Grindr. Oh this circle which we've come about...
brador 12y ago
What is the viability of leaching their business model? I mean taking photos and writing viral content with the intention they steal it and you can invoice them for $$$ and sue if they don't pay. 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.
webwanderings 12y ago
Not going to upvote the media glorification of clickbait enterprises. They are a waste of people's time and energy. They exist only for their own selves.
- jaredmck 12y ago
  The media certainly is not glorifying this enterprise. I read the New Yorker article as a massive, massive indictment of Spartz's business model.
  - relaytheurgency 12y ago
    Part of me thinks it was my own disgust in the model that made the New Yorker article feel it was a negative take on the clickbait industry. That was an ironic feeling, given the context. The portions of the story where it discusses his family life, and the glorification of this person's intelligence... they felt borderline satirical but probably only because I want it to be pointed satire. The 22 year-old former Syracuse student, for instance, quoting Uncle Ben rather than a more auspicious figure (Jesus, Roosevelt) with the same basic quote... It just felt like the Twilight Zone. I hope that this parasitic method of generating ad revenue with meaningless content languishes rather than flourishes.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
- freshhawk 12y ago
  I think this is the best piece of journalism on clickbait enterprises I've seen yet. It was anything but glorification.
- josu 12y ago
  I see it as the TVfication of the internet. The average Joe doesn't consume political debates on the situation of Western Sahara when he watches TV, why would he want to visit hacker news or TED.com when he comes online?
applecore 12y ago
> When he was growing up, Spartz said, his parents made him read “four short biographies of successful people every single day. Imagine for a second what happens to your brain when you’re twelve and this is how you’re spending your time.” I'd be interested in seeing his list of recommended books. (It's difficult to find good biographies that are also concise.)
- bendoernberg 12y ago
  "On a weight-lifting bench, [Emerson's father] had arranged a two-foot stack of the “short biographies of successful people” that I had heard about from Emerson. They turned out to be extremely short: a single-sided page each, photocopied from a newspaper called Investor’s Business Daily."
  - applecore 12y ago
    Oh. I sincerely thought that was a joke.
    - freshhawk 12y ago
      Who was making the joke? The reporter lying to make the subject look bad? The subjects staging something to make themselves look bad? 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.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    It all fell into place once the article mentioned IBD, which IMHO is the financial equivalent of a religious tract.
- nathan_f77 12y ago
  > Asked to name the most beautiful prose he had read, he said, “A beautiful book? I don’t even know what that means. Impactful, sure.”
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Fede_V 12y ago
I'm not sure how people make it to the end of that article without being scared shitless about the future of newspapers. 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.
- mattdotc 12y ago
  > 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.
- jbob2000 12y ago
  >Newspapers have an incredibly important social function as muckrackers, exposing corruption, explaining politics, and breaking news They USED to do that. Now they're owned by conglomerates and billionaires to parrot their ideals.
  - nl 12y ago
    Yeah. I hate how these days they have descended to starting wears to sell papers[1]. Civilisation will collapse any day now. (To make it clear, the Spanish/American war was in 1898, and a major contributor to the cause was the battle for circulation between US newspapers.) [1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish–American_War#Hearst_and_Pulitzer http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish–Ame...
    - nl 12y ago
      That's "starting wars" of course.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
alexbecker 12y ago
I talked with a Spartz Media representative at a job fair a couple years ago. I remember thinking that their business model was deplorable--essentially spamming the internet with low-value content--but assumed they would fail. I'm a little scared to learn I was wrong.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
hristov 12y ago
Can't wait to see this a-hole hit with a 10 billion dollar copyright infringement suit. I am all for fair use, but what he is doing is not fair use, it seems like outright copying. If you are going to make money from cheap exploitative lists, at least try to create your own.
jbuzbee 12y ago
Yeah the spammers call themselves geniuses and justify themselves as well. I for one, avoid ever clicking on those links that say something like "You won't believe what this guy's girlfriend did" or similar. Fool me once.. etc. Eventually people will catch on.
warcher 12y ago
Man, I love the audacity of creating a content business that creates no content, just repackages other people's research and tacks a new headline on it. 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!
imgabe 12y ago
This has really started bothering me lately. I'm actively blocking any site that promises I won't believe what happens next, or any similarly clickbaity headline. I've also unfollowed almost everything that isn't an actual human being that I know. I have to say my facebook experience has improved tremendously.
lzimm 12y ago
http://uproxx.com/filmdrunk/2014/12/the-13-most-infuriating-quotes-from-the-new-yorkers-king-of-click-bait-profile/ http://uproxx.com/filmdrunk/2014/12/the-13-most-infuriating-...
lazyeye 12y ago
Emerson Spartz - one of the internets largest distributors of gunk http://leunig.com.au/images/cartoons/gunk.jpg http://leunig.com.au/images/cartoons/gunk.jpg
thewarrior 12y ago
Just checked out Dose.com . It has no original content whatsoever.
kbart 12y ago
Those are example of people I wish die slowly and painfully, they are no better than spammers.

120 points by lambtron 12y ago

The title of this article is too ironic not to comment on. 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?

Animats 12y ago
The title of this article is too ironic not to comment on. -- 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.
- rdrey 12y ago
  Many/most sites do A/B testing and there is nothing inherently wrong with it, so why would it be classified as spam?
  - bduerst 12y ago
    I think what they're trying to say is that sites that specifically test just to garner clicks, as opposed to conversions & sales, could be deemed as being "spammy". 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.

AndrewWarner 12y ago

I did an interview with him on Mixergy about how he built his company. Smart guy. http://mixergy.com/interviews/spartz-spartz-media-interview/ http://mixergy.com/interviews/spartz-spartz-media-interview/

paulsutter 12y ago
A clickbait comment in an article on clickbait! 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.
- pistle 12y ago
  If you buy the subscription, you get an offer to buy identity theft protection. 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...
- swamp40 12y ago
  Andrew has done a ton of very interesting interviews with entrepreneurs. But I'm sure he has bills to pay, like everyone else. Did you get to see the interview, after listening to his commercial?
  - gohrt 12y ago
    The gauntlet of extremely sketchy looking solications, and providing interviews in video format only, suggests that this product is aimed at the ... less savvy of consumers; not someone going to build an actual business. (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?)
    - swamp40 12y ago
      Maybe he's following the New York Times model for acquiring subscribers?

sharkweek 12y ago

“Our volume of traffic right now is possible only because Facebook has been very generous about linking to our content,” he said. “I’m aware that they might not be so generous forever.” 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.

proveanegative 12y ago
>Many folks have relied on FB traffic only to be crushed beneath the mighty hand of an algorithm change. 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.
shostack 12y ago
This is particularly relevant given that Facebook announced recently that starting in January they were going to force businesses relying on earned social traffic to pay to reach those same people. They had already been tightening the screws on organic traffic for a while now, and will finally be shutting it off for any sort of promotional or low-quality content post. 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.
- sharkweek 12y ago
  I run a movie blog and have seen MASSIVE dropoffs in referrals/engagement on FB - As it's just me running the site, and my time is zero sum, I have shifted far more of my focus on email newsletter marketing as it drives far better traffic. I tried paying to promote a few posts but the ROI was definitely not there relative to ad revenue. I have heard from countless other publishers I know who are doing many similar things as to not get trapped in the FB ecosystem.

vgeek 12y ago

So creating a BuzzFeed clone, a Grindr clone and a card game clone makes you a king? The article fails to mention that Facebook is starting to crack down on organic clickbaity content, which is were all of the viral sites likely get 90% of their traffic.

shostack 12y ago
I am not surprised that they are copying existing successes--it happens all throughout the internet. And expanding to apps makes sense when FB's news feed no longer becomes profitable. 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.
j_lev 12y ago
I came expecting to read the story of Upworthy.
- killwhitey 12y ago
  There was a Vice podcast episode with the founders of Upworthy. It's not exactly an in-depth investigation, but interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMbn4awPF1o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMbn4awPF1o

numlocked 12y ago

We appear to be through the looking glass: "...Twirl, a gay version of the dating app Tinder. "

zcdziura 12y ago
Which itself is the straight version of the dating app Grindr. Oh this circle which we've come about...

brador 12y ago

What is the viability of leaching their business model? I mean taking photos and writing viral content with the intention they steal it and you can invoice them for $$$ and sue if they don't pay. 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.

webwanderings 12y ago

Not going to upvote the media glorification of clickbait enterprises. They are a waste of people's time and energy. They exist only for their own selves.

jaredmck 12y ago
The media certainly is not glorifying this enterprise. I read the New Yorker article as a massive, massive indictment of Spartz's business model.
- relaytheurgency 12y ago
  Part of me thinks it was my own disgust in the model that made the New Yorker article feel it was a negative take on the clickbait industry. That was an ironic feeling, given the context. The portions of the story where it discusses his family life, and the glorification of this person's intelligence... they felt borderline satirical but probably only because I want it to be pointed satire. The 22 year-old former Syracuse student, for instance, quoting Uncle Ben rather than a more auspicious figure (Jesus, Roosevelt) with the same basic quote... It just felt like the Twilight Zone. I hope that this parasitic method of generating ad revenue with meaningless content languishes rather than flourishes.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
freshhawk 12y ago
I think this is the best piece of journalism on clickbait enterprises I've seen yet. It was anything but glorification.
josu 12y ago
I see it as the TVfication of the internet. The average Joe doesn't consume political debates on the situation of Western Sahara when he watches TV, why would he want to visit hacker news or TED.com when he comes online?

applecore 12y ago

> When he was growing up, Spartz said, his parents made him read “four short biographies of successful people every single day. Imagine for a second what happens to your brain when you’re twelve and this is how you’re spending your time.” I'd be interested in seeing his list of recommended books. (It's difficult to find good biographies that are also concise.)

bendoernberg 12y ago
"On a weight-lifting bench, [Emerson's father] had arranged a two-foot stack of the “short biographies of successful people” that I had heard about from Emerson. They turned out to be extremely short: a single-sided page each, photocopied from a newspaper called Investor’s Business Daily."
- applecore 12y ago
  Oh. I sincerely thought that was a joke.
  - freshhawk 12y ago
    Who was making the joke? The reporter lying to make the subject look bad? The subjects staging something to make themselves look bad? 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.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  It all fell into place once the article mentioned IBD, which IMHO is the financial equivalent of a religious tract.
nathan_f77 12y ago
> Asked to name the most beautiful prose he had read, he said, “A beautiful book? I don’t even know what that means. Impactful, sure.”

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

Fede_V 12y ago

I'm not sure how people make it to the end of that article without being scared shitless about the future of newspapers. 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.

mattdotc 12y ago
> 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.
jbob2000 12y ago
>Newspapers have an incredibly important social function as muckrackers, exposing corruption, explaining politics, and breaking news They USED to do that. Now they're owned by conglomerates and billionaires to parrot their ideals.
- nl 12y ago
  Yeah. I hate how these days they have descended to starting wears to sell papers[1]. Civilisation will collapse any day now. (To make it clear, the Spanish/American war was in 1898, and a major contributor to the cause was the battle for circulation between US newspapers.) [1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish–American_War#Hearst_and_Pulitzer http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish–Ame...
  - nl 12y ago
    That's "starting wars" of course.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

alexbecker 12y ago

I talked with a Spartz Media representative at a job fair a couple years ago. I remember thinking that their business model was deplorable--essentially spamming the internet with low-value content--but assumed they would fail. I'm a little scared to learn I was wrong.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

hristov 12y ago

Can't wait to see this a-hole hit with a 10 billion dollar copyright infringement suit. I am all for fair use, but what he is doing is not fair use, it seems like outright copying. If you are going to make money from cheap exploitative lists, at least try to create your own.

jbuzbee 12y ago

Yeah the spammers call themselves geniuses and justify themselves as well. I for one, avoid ever clicking on those links that say something like "You won't believe what this guy's girlfriend did" or similar. Fool me once.. etc. Eventually people will catch on.

warcher 12y ago

Man, I love the audacity of creating a content business that creates no content, just repackages other people's research and tacks a new headline on it. 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!

imgabe 12y ago

This has really started bothering me lately. I'm actively blocking any site that promises I won't believe what happens next, or any similarly clickbaity headline. I've also unfollowed almost everything that isn't an actual human being that I know. I have to say my facebook experience has improved tremendously.

lzimm 12y ago

http://uproxx.com/filmdrunk/2014/12/the-13-most-infuriating-quotes-from-the-new-yorkers-king-of-click-bait-profile/ http://uproxx.com/filmdrunk/2014/12/the-13-most-infuriating-...

lazyeye 12y ago

Emerson Spartz - one of the internets largest distributors of gunk http://leunig.com.au/images/cartoons/gunk.jpg http://leunig.com.au/images/cartoons/gunk.jpg

thewarrior 12y ago

Just checked out Dose.com . It has no original content whatsoever.

kbart 12y ago

Those are example of people I wish die slowly and painfully, they are no better than spammers.