Engineering Virality

Andrew ForrestAudience, Analytics, & Business Manager

Luigi MontanezFounding Engineer

Wednesday, November 7, 2012DC Week 2012

Founders

Eli Pariser Peter Koechley

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April May June July August September October

Millions of unique visitors

Not this...

This.

Most Popular Content

Common Threads?

The Secret FormulaFor Virality

Clickability = Headlines

Curiosity Gap• Too vague, don’t want to click.• This is an amazing video!

• Too specific, don’t need to click.• Chimpanzee sniffs own butt,

passes out from doing so.

• Just right, compelled to click.• Adorable chimpanzee does

something rather unexpected.

Obama Blasts Obama's Evasive Stance On Gay Marriage

Obama Says Same-Sex Marriage Should Be Legal

Now THIS Is Why I VotedFor Barack Obama

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We write 25 headlines

for every piece of content

25 Headlines• Start strong, then get desperate, get creative• Explore all possible angles• Useful outside of headlines: share text, tweet

text, lede

Click Package

Thumbnails

Shareability

Why People Share

TheSweetSpot

Relaxation

Anger

Happiness

Sadness

Share Buttons Are Effective

Dark Social• URLs shared via email and IM• Over half the traffic to established media sites• Measured by direct traffic to content pages• Provide an easy to copy-and-paste URL

Building An Audience

Broadcasting vs. Virality

• In theory, you only need virality.• In practice, you need both.

Our Broadcast Network

• Facebook page• Email list

• Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest accounts

Footer Signup

Engineering A Hit

Step 1: Content• Impossible to know a piece of content will go

viral.• Find the right qualities to give it the greatest

chance of success.• Strong, positive emotional pull.

Step 2: Framing

Step 3: Initial Push

Post to Facebook page and monitor results

Step 4: Recognize Potential

Real-time traffic + tracking generations of sharing

Step 5: Push To Other Channels

Email, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.

Engineering The Site

Social Networks

Facebook Share Button

• The “Like” button isn’t effective.• Sharing is a much stronger signal than liking.• Do the extra work and implement a custom

share button using the Facebook Share Dialog API.

Facebook Share Dialog

Open Graph API• Learn it. Implement it fully.• Provide title, description, url, & image meta

tags in your HTML.• Double-check your implementation using the

Facebook Debugger.• Full integration increases your viral capability.

Tweet Button: Intent

Twitter Cards

Social Mobile

Mobile Traffic• 29% of all traffic in April• 31% of all traffic in October• Highly viral content sees a higher percentage

of mobile traffic• The most popular mobile browser: the built-in

browser in the Facebook iOS app

Mobile From Day One

Mobile Implementations

• Do nothing• Responsive Design• Mobile website (m.upworthy.com)• Native iOS and Android apps

Scaling For Spikes

Aggressive Caching• Static content should always be cached• Don’t need powerful servers• Bypass complicated web frameworks• Use content-delivery networks

A/B Testing• Use Optimizely to test new features• Approach new features scientifically• Form a hypothesis• Run an experiment with a proper control• Trust only statistically significant results

• Building in-house experiment framework

Questions?