{"id":82009,"date":"2023-05-09T05:00:03","date_gmt":"2023-05-09T09:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=82009"},"modified":"2023-05-08T22:10:35","modified_gmt":"2023-05-09T02:10:35","slug":"how-to-destroy-an-industry-with-one-simple-trick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/05\/09\/how-to-destroy-an-industry-with-one-simple-trick\/","title":{"rendered":"How to destroy an industry with one simple trick"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/tedgioia.substack.com\/p\/judgment-day-has-arrived-for-the\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ted Gioia<\/a> on the precipitous rise and calamitous decline of the clickbait journalism model:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I was going to call this story the &#8220;tragedy of American journalism&#8221;. But when you dig into the details, it&#8217;s more a farce.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s start with act one of this comedy. I could almost begin anywhere, but I picked an especially ridiculous case study \u2014 just wait until you learn the reason why. <\/p>\n<p>Did that catch your attention?<\/p>\n<p>It was supposed to. And I learned that from a now (mostly) forgotten website called <em>Upworthy<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Almost exactly 10 years ago, <em>Upworthy<\/em> was &#8220;the fastest growing media site of all time&#8221;, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\/3012649\/how-upworthy-used-emotional-data-to-become-the-fastest-growing-media-site-of-all-time\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">according to <em>Fast Company<\/em><\/a>. They had turned news into a science. <em>Upworthy<\/em> was the <em>future of journalism<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<em>Upworthy<\/em> is known for its use of data to drive growth, testing up to 16 different headlines for a single story,&#8221; enthused that bright-eyed reporter for <em>Fast Company<\/em>. The end result was headlines so irresistible, millions of people clicked on them.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some examples:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/amp\/a-gorgeous-waitress-gets-harrassed-by-some-jerk-watch-what-happens-next-2637241976\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">A Gorgeous Waitress Gets Harassed By Some Jerk. Watch What Happens Next<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/students-fake-fight-to-help-teacher-proposal\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">A Teacher Ran to a Classroom to Break Up a Fight, but What She Found Was the Complete Opposite<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/its-twice-the-size-of-alaska-and-might-hold-the-cure-for-cancer-so-why-are-we-destroying-it\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">It&#8217;s Twice The Size Of Alaska And Might Hold The Cure For Cancer. So Why Are We Destroying It?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/if-you-could-press-a-button-and-murder-every-mosquito-would-you-because-thats-kinda-possible\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">If You Could Press A Button And Murder Every Mosquito, Would You? Because That&#8217;s Kinda Possible<\/a>. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You get the idea. The headline is in two parts \u2014 and it&#8217;s just a come-on. You have no idea what the article is about until you click on the link.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-2023-05-09-at-22-03-10-Judgment-Day-Has-Arrived-for-the-Journalism-Business.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-2023-05-09-at-22-03-10-Judgment-Day-Has-Arrived-for-the-Journalism-Business-853x512.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"853\" height=\"512\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-82010\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-2023-05-09-at-22-03-10-Judgment-Day-Has-Arrived-for-the-Journalism-Business-853x512.png 853w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-2023-05-09-at-22-03-10-Judgment-Day-Has-Arrived-for-the-Journalism-Business-480x288.png 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-2023-05-09-at-22-03-10-Judgment-Day-Has-Arrived-for-the-Journalism-Business-150x90.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-2023-05-09-at-22-03-10-Judgment-Day-Has-Arrived-for-the-Journalism-Business-768x461.png 768w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-2023-05-09-at-22-03-10-Judgment-Day-Has-Arrived-for-the-Journalism-Business.png 1420w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 853px) 100vw, 853px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>That was the whole point. But just wait until you learn the problem with this.<\/p>\n<p>Facebook and other social media sites eventually discovered that people clicked on these links, but didn&#8217;t spent much time with the <em>Upworthy<\/em> articles \u2014 and rarely gave them likes and shares.<\/p>\n<p>The stories just weren&#8217;t very good \u2014 and certainly not as interesting as the headlines. So the algorithms started to punish clickbait articles of this sort.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Upworthy<\/em> empire collapsed as quickly as it had risen.<\/p>\n<p>In retrospect, the problem with this gimmicky strategy is obvious. If you trick people into clicking on garbage, your metrics are impressive for a few months. But eventually people can smell the garbage without even clicking on it.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s also a deeper reason for this collapse \u2014 which I&#8217;ll get to in a moment. And it helps us understand the current problems with journalism. But first we need to look at a couple more case studies. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ted Gioia on the precipitous rise and calamitous decline of the clickbait journalism model: I was going to call this story the &#8220;tragedy of American journalism&#8221;. But when you dig into the details, it&#8217;s more a farce. Let&#8217;s start with act one of this comedy. I could almost begin anywhere, but I picked an especially [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,28,15],"tags":[167,156,58,428,213],"class_list":["post-82009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-media","category-technology","tag-baitandswitch","tag-fail","tag-internet","tag-marketing","tag-newspapers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-lkJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82009"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82011,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82009\/revisions\/82011"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}