How do news sites increase traffic? Try the interaction.

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Introduction: News is not the traditional news media and the world of the portal, Internet users to understand and disseminate news channels become more and more diverse, diverse, multi-angle, and recently popular from the media. So now the news media site is not so comfortable days, in this era of information diversification, news sites want to create success is not an easy thing, how to better attract traffic on the Internet? Not only the quality of content and attitude of the news so simple can be done, I am afraid that the user has the final say, where users? What flavor of news do users need?

As John Travota at the Oscars ceremony to say the wrong name Idina Menzel, Slate Web site since 18 the hottest article was born.

Which of the following news sites brings record traffic to the corresponding news sites:

A small survey of Time magazine: How much time you wasted on Facebook;

(b) The New York Times dialect test game;

c) Name builder for Adell Dazim (Adele Dazeem) on the Slate Web site: John Travota (John Travolta) What will you call your name, or

D) All of the above?

If you choose "D" above all, congratulations, you are correct!

In the digital age, news organizations are changing content choreography to attract more readers, and quizzes and games have become a popular choice for the media, making it hard for readers to suppress the urge to participate.

This January, a small survey of Facebook allowed Time's Web site to record the highest number of independent visitors in 3.8 million days. The dialect test, launched last December, was the most viewed and mail-sharing content of the New York Times last year. The "Adell Dazim name Generator", launched in Monday on the Slate website, is the most viewed site since 18. Before that, at the Oscars ceremony, John Travota her name as Adell Dazim (Adele Dazeem) when he introduced singer Idina Menzel (Idina Menzel).

Readers can put their name into the name builder and then see what John Travota will call it (the author's name becomes Lawrence Kitz [Laurence Keezy]), and by the afternoon of Wednesday, 9.5 million independent users have used this feature, The number is still increasing at an hourly rate of 100,000 people.

At first, Slate's editor David Plotz (David Plotz) was not sure it was a good thing at all. He said on Twitter, "What's a paradox: John Travota name Builder is the most popular content slate so far." He later said in a telephone interview that the word "confused" might describe his feelings more.

"The taste of our readers depends on our guidance," he said. This game has nothing to do with the news, it is interesting and can be shared. All publications want to establish this direct link with the reader. ”

Whether they like it or not, they will not hesitate to use a new strategy that will allow them to charge more advertising and potentially attract new readers--advertising fees are based on monthly visits. and new readers may become their own loyal audience.

"It's a game of content," said Choshua Benton, the head of Harvard University's Niemann News Lab (Nieman Journalism Lab). "The sharing of games and social networks is based on a number of reasons that can be addictive," he said. Now incorporate these factors into the content in some way. ”

Games have long been part of the newspaper business, and the New York Times has launched a crossword puzzle since 1942, while other newspapers have published comics, crossword puzzles and clutch poems. But the digital age makes interaction possible, and interaction brings a very attractive gaming experience. If a user enters his or her own name and information into a template and gets a playful result, this usually prompts the user to share it with others through social media, helping to spread the game widely.

Although the quiz is not new-for example, Slate has launched the "dangerous Carlos Danger" name generator, which refers to aliases used by Weiner (Anthony Weiner), but the trend of interaction is only accelerating. Time Magazine last August hired the first digital interactive graphic editor. The BuzzFeed Digital news website installed a quiz template in its system in 2012. The wire, the Atlantic Media company's website, has launched a customized schedule to meet the "crazy March" (procures Madness), the NCAA men's Basketball League. The user votes in the best universities, the best city, the best seats in cinemas and other projects, let the contestants a showdown.

The problem with the media is that if there is a line between the interesting content and the news reporting mission, then the boundaries can be determined. Many digital publications rely too much on shared content, and the news value of the content is very deliberate. For example, determine who the user is most like the TV series "Downton Manor" (Downton Abbey) of the characters in the quiz.

But Ian Bogost, co-author of News games: journalism in the game (Newsgames:journalism at play), says there are a lot of complex ways to use interactive games.

"What's really interesting about games is that they can show how things work, and the systemic problems that run through the story and that we can look at in another way," he said. ”

Stephen Engelberg, chief editor of the nonprofit survey website ProPublica, said he led the site toward an interactive public service Web site and found these interactions a powerful factor in increasing traffic. Stephen Engelberg Users can use ProPublica's "dollars in the Doctor's Pocket" (Dollars for Docs) to see if their doctors have collected money from pharmaceutical companies. Since the first launch in 2010, this application has reached 7 million visits.

"The purpose of such interaction is not really to improve traffic," said Steve Duenes, deputy editor-in-chief of The New York Times's visualization department, who Steve Dieuns the dialect test from his department. "We used the same journalistic evaluation criteria as judging articles and videos: Is it newsworthy or interesting? It's not always very serious, but it's always ingenious. ”

"Our approach is so important because it is based on real research," said Nancy Gibbs, editor-in-chief of Time magazine Nancy Gibbs. These graphs "are very closely related to the actual data, not the tests and gadgets that people randomly fabricate." ”

They are also very popular. The January test of Facebook drew 1.1 million visitors, creating the highest traffic day in the history of the Times. Last October, the interactive test "The American Mood Map: An interactive guide to American Attitudes" (America's Mood map:an Interactive Guide to the United States of attitude) brought the second highest single in the history of the Time magazine Daily Flow.

Slate's Plotz said that although his magazine had serious news and other interactive tools such as name generators, he was not worried. He points out that a 18,000-word article about a woman has had the highest degree of concern before "Tara will call your name", a woman who is known for being known as the Welfare queen by Ronald Reagan (Ronald Reagan).

"We have to do anything that is interesting and newsworthy," Plotz said. "Tara is very influential, but we also published another 50 articles on the same day, one of which is about the Crimean Tatars. If we have a good idea, we will design another interactive tool today or tomorrow. ”