3 Wondertacular Rules for Going Viral From The Most Viral Site on the Web

This morning Upworthy.com, which crested at 30 million unique visitors in May thanks to a runaway viral hit, announced that they've started piloting sponsored posts to generate revenue, and shared with Fast Company a bit of their secret sauce. Founded 14 months ago by Moveon.org's Eli Pariser and Peter Koechley of The Onion, with Chris Hughes of Facebook (who's since left to take over The New Republic), Upworthy set out with the quixotic goal of making green-vegetable topics like gay rights, climate change, and cancer awareness as addictive as Doritos Tacos Locos and as shareable as LOLcats. And they've been really good at it, they revealed today. A social analytics company called SimpleReach reported that Upworthy's posts, helped along by 2 million Facebook Likers and 1 million email signups, were driving a startling 20% of all the social sharing they were tracking of published content on the web. And a separate company called Scanvine rated them #1 of the top 25 most shared sites. Take these mystery metrics with a heavy grain of salt, or say they just got lucky, but take note that a site made up of 80-90% reshared videos, most made by amateurs and activists and posted to YouTube, is pulling in some serious traffic. Here, according to Pariser and Koechley, are the top three rules they've arrived at through their testing that are different from what traditional media does. Spend half your time on the headline "People put way too much emphasis on the specifics of the... Continue reading at 'Fast Company'

[ Fast Company | 2013-07-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
News tagged with: #gay rights #climate change #revealed today #social sharing #traditional media

3 Wondertacular Rules for Going Viral From The Most Viral Site on the Web

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