I don’t find your millions of pageviews impressive — Thoughts On Journalism — Medium: Ashton Kutcher owns one of the most important media companies in America, and almost no-one even knows it exists.
Why is it one of the most important media companies in America? Because it has “27.5 million US monthly unique visitors (and 47 million globally)” and “it’s one of the fifty biggest websites in the US.” But with such mind-blowing traffic numbers, how come nobody knows it exists? This obvious paradox is never addressed in these articles. But it’s rather easy to explain. These “viralologists,” as the New Yorker described Spartz, are far from genius innovators and are instead purveyors of cookie-cutter strategies that generate near-worthless traffic and almost no brand loyalty. Visit all these websites and you’ll find they’re all near-identical in not only design and sensibility, but content as well. In fact, many of them have recently discarded any pretense that they assemble content in original ways and now they just rip off each other’s listicles wholesale, at best slightly modifying the headline:
Why is it one of the most important media companies in America? Because it has “27.5 million US monthly unique visitors (and 47 million globally)” and “it’s one of the fifty biggest websites in the US.” But with such mind-blowing traffic numbers, how come nobody knows it exists? This obvious paradox is never addressed in these articles. But it’s rather easy to explain. These “viralologists,” as the New Yorker described Spartz, are far from genius innovators and are instead purveyors of cookie-cutter strategies that generate near-worthless traffic and almost no brand loyalty. Visit all these websites and you’ll find they’re all near-identical in not only design and sensibility, but content as well. In fact, many of them have recently discarded any pretense that they assemble content in original ways and now they just rip off each other’s listicles wholesale, at best slightly modifying the headline: