The thought of the title of the party king to the media people

Note: The New Yorker article refers to the 27-year-old Emerson Spartz as the title of the party king (King of Clickbait). Many people, especially the traditional media, are disgusted with his work. However, Mathew Ingram that you can not like his work, but can't ignore his efforts to understand how online content works, the more he knows, the more likely he will win.

Many media watchers are now accustomed to reading "headline party" experts, such as Upworthy and BuzzFeed (founder Jonah Peretti, who had a 7-point successful summary of BuzzFeed). It is also well known that such media are used to drive huge flows of "attention-gap" titles. But the great thing about Emerson Spartz and his click-to-plant network is that they can make these sites look like the New York Times.

　　The study began at the age of 12

Who's Emerson Spartz? I believe that few people have ever heard of it, even in the online media. And the names of the sites he has created often change. But that doesn't matter, because:

The company (Spartz INC) handles 30 Web sites that do not have a uniform aesthetic standard. And some of the homepage is cluttered, full of old links, it may not appear on the Spartz logo; traffic is almost entirely generated by Facebook, so brand awareness is relatively less important. Most of the company's innovations are not about the content itself, but how to market and package content.

SPARTZ12 began to study the working mechanism of online content. At that time he made one of the biggest and hottest Harry Potter fan sites-mugglenet. Then rely on the site to earn the first bucket of gold and set up a series of web sites, some of the network fans, some big talk about the soul of chicken soup, and some of the amazing fact. And Spartz is currently relatively stable operation of the main station is called Dose.com (formerly called Brainwreck).

Spartz is really concerned about the flow, as long as it can bring traffic, the form is not important. His 35-person team in Chicago has more than 60 million monthly visits to the 30 sites, with Dose.com contributing half of it. Last year Spartz Inc. got $8 million in financing and created $7 million in advertising revenue, and the biggest source of revenue was from Facebook. Some even gave his company a $200 million valuation.

　　Does the source matter?

It's not surprising that Spartz organizes viral content in a way similar to BuzzFeed, but what shocked the traditional media is that Spartz is arrogant about not giving sources (BuzzFeed is also criticized). This may be due to his belief that the actual source of the content is worthless:

If you want to develop a successful virus, you can start from scratch with tissue DNA-or, more efficiently, use a known virus, mutate it a little, and then show it to a new audience ... The more original things are more time-consuming to integrate, we find that we no longer want to click.

It is, of course, immoral not to give a source of information. But the truth is that many readers don't care where the content comes from, or even whether the content is genuine or not. We're not going to judge whether it's right, but it's true, and Emerson Spartz is taking advantage of the fact that it's understood.

Another scary thing about Spartz is that he doesn't care about the objective indicators of content quality, and the only thing he cares about is the content that nobody shares:

The way we look at the world, the ultimate barometer of quality is: If someone shares it, it's quality.

　　What the reader wants

Media practitioners are, of course, more likely to judge content quality with industry awards or specific audiences ' attention. But in reality, Spartz is right-you can make the best content you want, but if the content doesn't reach the reader, in a way it's a failure. How will the content reach the reader? Emerson Spartz and Jonah Peretti are clearly doing better than many traditional media.

But does that mean we are addicted to the title party? Not also. But we have to pay attention to how content is streamed online and shared, which means that resources need to be invested in those places. BuzzFeed is so concerned about the data that he recently recruited the head of the data team, Dao Nguyen, as the issuer. Mashable does not have a front page editor, its front page is based on who the reader is and what is being shared, and then generated by the algorithm.

Media companies are still accustomed to thinking that they are in control of the content, deciding how and when the content will reach the reader, but this is an illusion. The kind of control they used to have over the distribution channels is out of the way-the channels are now dominated by Facebook, Twitter and SnapChat. Content is no longer restricted, just like a virus that escapes a test tube. Is this when you're were sitting ducks, or like Spartz and others, studying the virus mechanism to understand what it wants? The answer goes without saying.

[This article was compiled from: gigaom.com]

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The thought of the title of the party king to the media people