Tuesday, February 11, 2014

You'll Never Believe What's Happened to Upworthy's Traffic

Upworthy, a viral news aggregation, saw record setting traffic numbers last November as it reached over 90 million people. Because of a change Facebook made to the algorithm it shows on peoples' newsfeeds, which is to put lower emphasis on memes and viral content and more emphasis on more newsy content, the website has seen its total unique visitors plummet according to Business Insider.

According to the story, traffic during the month of December decreased by 25 percent reaching 69 million, and continued to decrease in January as it reached only 48 million. However Upworthy isn't the only site to see a dip in traffic. In fact, other website driven by viral content, including Elite Daily and Distractify also saw decreases in December traffic.

There is one notable exception to this rule—Buzzfeed. The site, known for its "listicles" and meme driven content is experiencing higher than ever traffic numbers—upwards of 150 million visitors. So, what makes Buzzfeed different from the likes of Upworthy or Elite Daily? Unlike their competitors, Buzzfeed purchases its traffic from Facebook. So this begs the question, is Facebook really trying to promote higher quality content, or is it trying to give investors what they paid for? 

2 comments:

  1. "So this begs the question, is Facebook really trying to promote higher quality content, or is it trying to give investors what they paid for?" Good point. It would seem that on its face, reducing the role of memes and the lightweight viral stuff in favor of more original content is commendable. But if Upworthy and the rest find that they must start to pay Facebook t get their traffic back, then your skepticism about the motivation behind the change may be warranted. Stay tuned.

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  2. I have been meaning to post this for a while now. In this video this guy talks about how Facebook promotions and the whole "like" system on Facebook is completely broken. Not exactly relevant to the class, but definitely relevant to this post. And it's quite interesting.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag

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