
Facebook Puts a Downer on Upworthy - lmg643
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-11/facebook-puts-a-downer-on-upworthy.html
======
Steuard
Even without action by Facebook like this, it's been clear to me for ages that
Upworthy's lifespan will be very, very limited. People will only keep clicking
on those links until they build up enough "mental antibodies" to linkbait
headlines, and I'm betting most people will hit that point within a year or
so. (How many people do you know who still pass along email chain letters
about some mysterious kid with cancer?) I'm sure there's a core group that
will keep sharing Upworthy links forever, but if they haven't already hit a
peak in popularity I expect that they will soon.

~~~
Aloha
+1 just for 'mental antibodies'

~~~
samstave
Thetans!

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xux
"Facebook Inc. changed its newsfeed algorithm. You’ll never believe what
happened to Upworthy’s traffic next."

The start of the article is gold.

~~~
corobo
Upworthy and the likes have already had a huge effect on my reaction to that
sentence, I almost instantly closed the tab. Glad to see they're being knocked
down a peg.

~~~
mayneack
People are getting more clever about it:
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2014/01/22/a_democrat_and_...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2014/01/22/a_democrat_and_a_republican_joined_a_commission_to_reform_elections_what.html)

> A Democrat and a Republican Joined a Commission to Reform Elections. What
> They Did Next Will Amaze You.

>> Not really, but I figured an Upworthy headline was the best way of drawing
attention to the report of the Presidential Commission on Election
Administration, a blue/red-ribbon project that's wrapped up work one year and
one day after the second Obama inaugural.

~~~
rhizome
_...I figured an Upworthy headline was the best way of drawing attention to
the report of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration_

I don't know if this qualifies as clever. If people are starting to react
against the style, then it may not be the best way of drawing attention. Heck,
the "Presidential Commission on Election Administration" probably deserves a
fresh angle rather than a hackneyed one, since the topic sounds deathly boring
(like Upworthy stories tend to be).

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sharkweek
One thing I think a lot of people forget is that Facebook is incredibly
customizable after you give it a few signals.

After college I made a list of "who would I avoid (or maybe not even
recognize) if I saw them out in public" and removed them from my friend list.

After that came the "baby photo" stage - if someone posted too many images
that didn't interest me, I told Facebook that I wasn't interested in seeing
updates from those people anymore.

Similar to the Facebook gaming spam a few years back, I simply just removed
updates from any site or app that contained content I wasn't interested in
seeing anything from (BuzzFeed, Upworthy, Zynga games, etc).

My newsfeed is now a finely tuned machine, where I get updates from my close
circles and occasionally from news sites I enjoy.

Point being, you can virtually customize Facebook as much as you want so I'm
not sure what the disconnect is here. I wouldn't expect Gmail to be perfectly
tailored to my preferences the first time I created an account. I figure the
same thing applies with Facebook.

~~~
j_s
This has been called _The Problem with Facebook_ ('Facebook uses its filtering
power to make money [...] we are all advertisers') by the guy currently on the
frontpage for his 'Facebook Fraud' video (
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7211514](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7211514)
).

 _The Problem With Facebook_

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ZqXlHl65g](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ZqXlHl65g)

~~~
veange
Not just a problem with Facebook: [http://www.thefilterbubble.com/ted-
talk](http://www.thefilterbubble.com/ted-talk)

~~~
mcintyre1994
Great video, Ted host a better quality version:
[https://new.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_b...](https://new.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles)

~~~
benwikler
... and the speaker in that video: the CEO of Upworthy!

~~~
mcintyre1994
...Wow, seriously? I find it interesting how compatible that is with his views
against filtering things out, although I doubt boring linkbaity articles was
ever part of the things he imagined were problematic to lose.

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crm416
The divisive effect that Upworth (and BuzzFeed) have had on Facebook users has
been interesting to observe.

Personally, the influx of links from these relatively content-less sites has
really decreased the usefulness of my news feed--in fact, I get a little
bothered whenever I see this stuff appear. That said, it’s evident that
_someone_ wants these links to be on Facebook, given that _someone_ had to
post them in the first place.

Perhaps it’s just evidence of the split between newsfeed presence and wall
presence (i.e., it could be consistent to argue that those who post Upworth
yadn BuzzFeed links don’t necessarily want them to gain attention beyond the
Wall on which they’re posted), but I prefer to see it as a microcosm of two
contrasting groups of Facebook users: one that sees Facebook as a way to share
“fun”, “light” content, and another that wants it to be a meaningful exchange
of personal information and ideas.

~~~
sliverstorm
To my eyes, it's a simpler difference. There is group A, which is drawn in and
compelled by Upworthy and BuzzFeed articles. Then there is group B, which has
quickly tired of the constant stream of ultra-evocative titles from Upworthy
and BuzzFeed.

(Guess which I belong to)

~~~
edgarallenbro
Yeah I liked a link that Upworthy posted once and so I fell for the
"SUBSCRIBE!!!1" trap.

Eventually I realized that it was turning my e-mail inbox into the internet
version of cable news. Full of meaningless stories with bait-y titles.

------
rdl
I fixed the upworthy problem on my facebook feed by doing "hide all stories
from upworthy" and then unfriending 2 people I was loosely attached to who
kept discussing upworthy posts or somehow getting around that block. Haven't
seen any upworthy stories in the past few months, other than articles about
how horrible Upworthy is.

Also happy there are virtually zero baby photos in my feed, and plenty of cat
pictures, news stories, political debates (NSA, immigration, tax policy, guns,
war), etc. It's pretty much perfect.

Basically no games or game invites; you can block individual games, but a
couple people kept inviting me to new ones -- gone!

Being willing to "unfollow" or "unfriend" people who are polluting your feed
goes a long way.

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lukethomas
I disagree with the premise that the Facebook Algorithm update in December
caused the drop. Here’s why:

1\. As far as Quantcast data goes, ViralNova held steady in December
([https://www.quantcast.com/viralnova.com](https://www.quantcast.com/viralnova.com))

2\. Utrend.tv grew in December
([https://www.quantcast.com/utrend.tv](https://www.quantcast.com/utrend.tv))

3\. Distractify.com grew from ~ 15m in Nov to 45m in December.
([https://www.quantcast.com/distractify.com](https://www.quantcast.com/distractify.com))

In other words, Upworthy clones all grew or remained steady in December while
Upworthy traffic declined. I’m not going to speculate on the months after
December, but to suggest that Facebook cracked down on these “viral” sites
seems to go against the small amount of data that we have available via
Quantcast.

It seems to me like Upworthy just had a subpar December, especially with the
growth of new entrants.

~~~
bcoates
Perhaps Facebook's Algorithm was less an even-handed garbage site detector and
more a direct penalty to upworthy domains.

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judk
Reddit users have been begging reddit to make this change for years --
recognizing that meme/pic upvotes are each less value than other (larger)
content upvotes, since pics are easier to skim without leaving the stream.

Facebook is overtaking reddit in the Quality algorithm department.

~~~
slig
It's build in already. Just unsubscribe from shitty subreddits and subscribe
to quality ones.

The mods from quality subreddits are pretty fierce on enforcing rules against
memes/low quality comments/etc.

~~~
schackbrian
What are the highest quality sub-reddits that don't allow memes?

~~~
slig
/r/askscience/ and /r/AskHistorians/, for instance.

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minimaxir
Ironically, Upworthy won "Fastest Rising Startup" at the Crunchies last night.

Things change quickly in the world of startups.

------
dkrich
Next up, can they please block any article originating from the Huffington
Post since they seem to have morphed from a Drudge Report clone into some kind
of Viralnova/Buzzfeed love child?

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tptacek
Good. Upworthy ads (and those of its many, many clones) are obnoxious.

~~~
alextingle
AdBlock?

~~~
mcintyre1994
They're not adverts in the traditional sense though, they're not paying
anybody to post it. You probably could use Adblock to filter them, but I don't
think Adblock should be taking a stand on which sites should be seen when
shared on Facebook etc.

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EvanL
I own a similar content network, but we have since broke it up into multiple
niche properties to avoid having one massive neck to choke like Upworthy.

In the past fb has issued domain wide bans on properties I've owned if we were
getting a little too savvy in exploiting their edge rank algo.

This "pass thru" traffic is amongst the least valuable on the internet,
believe me, we have tried everything under the sun to monetize visitors,
adsense, every ad network, affiliate, etc.

Believe it or not the best thing we've figured out is to use the authority of
a massively viral website to help us rank terms in google on the backend. All
comes full circle, lol.

~~~
rossjudson
Or you could use your powers for good.

------
Touche
The article comes to the wrong conclusion. Facebook isn't trying to get
Upworthy to buy ads. Facebook is trying to get NBC, Mercedes, Prada to buy ads
by convincing them Facebook is a place where monied people get their news.
Like Twitter did a couple of years ago, Facebook now realizes its best bet is
to become a media dissemination company.

------
mathattack
_Facebook Inc. changed its newsfeed algorithm. You’ll never believe what
happened to Upworthy’s traffic next._

A little subtle humor from our friends at Bloomberg! This is the type of sly
writing I'd expect from the Economist.

------
thattallguy
I've seen Upworthy work from up close and from my experience this post misses
out of a few keys.

1) The process that drives Upworthy' success is the way they write and TEST
headlines. Sure their current title types won't work forever, but they are
incredibly good and testing and improving on processes. I would expect this to
continue.

2) The majority of sharing (and thus traffic from) facebook is done on
individual profiles (and not the organization's facebook page). One video I
worked on was shared by 90,000 individuals. Accessing the profiles of that
many people is the key to making FB work for any organization. This focus on
the page is misguided.

Sure the reduction in reach from their fanpage will impact their ability to
spark initial interest, but that's just one of the channels they use.

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bherms
FINALLY. I am so tired of those ridiculous sensationalist headlines... I
actually installed Facebook Purity and put in filters to block "you won't
believe what happened" and the like... Only issue is that doesn't block them
on my mobile apps :\

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kamakazizuru
this is probably the best thing that facebook has done with its news feed
algorithm. I've also started seeing a lot less of posts from friends who
tended to overpost.. Looks like they're getting things right with that. On the
other hand almost every second post is a promoted post or an ad - overkill.

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aestra
>Then, in December, Facebook announced a change to the algorithm it uses to
determine what kinds of updates ("stories") users see in the News Feeds. In a
blog post, Facebook said it wanted to feature more "high quality" content and
fewer "meme photos."

That's interesting, it assumes that everyone wants "high quality" over memes.
Funny thing is, many people I know go to Facebook just for the memes, the high
quality stuff comes from elsewhere. Facebook doesn't let the user choose?

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AznHisoka
_sighs_ Upworthy is not building on FB's turf. They need people to share their
content in order to get pageviews and FB is just one platform where people
commonly share stuff.

If you claim they are, then EVERY single content publisher is building on FB's
turf because they rely on people sharing their content. You can't have it both
ways.

~~~
acjohnson55
I think that's exactly the point of the article. In some sense, every content
publisher that relies heavily on viral traffic _is_ in fact building on the
viral mediums' turf, at least from the point of view of the mediums.

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cylinder
I've noticed less viral links (Upworthy, BuzzFeed) and more pure garbage memes
(photos and Vine-like videos hosted on FB that go viral based on Likes and
comments).

Either way my News Feed is a river of crap akin to reddit/r/pics. And then in
a Kafkaesque moment I realize that this business is worth 167 billion dollars.

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RankingMember
But now how will I get links to email forward-quality articles in my precious
Facebook feed? :(

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otterley
If Facebook made it easy to control your News Feed so that only your friends'
original content (photos and status updates) could show up in it, I think this
problem would largely be solved.

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mistakoala
Best news all year!

