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Jake Bialer's Take On The Future Of Journalism

How Upworthy Became 'Upworthy'

Founded in March 2012, Upworthy has quickly grown to become one of the largest viral websites on the Internet. Although their traffic has dropped off since its peak at the end of 2013, they still receive millions of visits and are one of top innovators in web content.

In this email, I analyze the state of Upworthy

Upworthy Data Points
Upworthy's Web Content Tactics
What Upworthy Is Testing

Upworthy Data Points

Based on scraping Upworthy's website and calculating social shares from public APIs, we can determine where Upworthy is trending and various characteristics of their published content.

Here are some recent Upworthy data points. (Analysis Based on Scraped Data from 3/14/2012 to 3/12/15.)

1) Videos Have Been Upworthy's Main Focus And Source Of Facebook Traffic

During its entire history, approximately 76.5% of Upworthy's posts contained a video embed. These posts account for 89% of Upworthy's total Facebook activity.
85.6% of Upworthy's posts with a video (65.6% of Upworthy's overall posts) contain a Youtube video. These posts have accounted for 77.5% of Upworthy's total Facebook activity. (See second section below for how Upworthy squeezes as much value as possible from their videos.)
For their video posts without a Youtube video, 8.4% contain a Vimeo video, 1.9% contain a Daily Show or Colbert video and .7% contain a Kickstarter Video.

2) Upworthy Has Recently Shifted How Their Videos Are Posted

Upworthy has 20 different formats of posts. During their entire history, the vast majority, 68%, of their posts have been posted under the type "video".
However, in late 2014, they started to transition from primarily video posts to what they call "multi-item" posts.
In 2015, multi-item posts represent 63% of their posts as compared to video posts which represent 29% of their posts.
Although 90% of Upworthy's multi-item posts contain a video, they also contain long write ups and/or images/gifs.
Video posts primarily contain a video and maybe a short writeup, though recently, as they have increased their multi-item posts, some of their video posts have begun to closely resemble their multi-item posts.
Here's an example "multi-item" post: http://www.upworthy.com/when-an-overconfident-dude-tells-a-woman-to-shush-up-heres-what-that-really-means This post contains a video along with related images and text.
Here's an example "video" post: http://www.upworthy.com/a-man-screamed-at-her-once-because-he-thought-she-was-white-thats-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg The post contains a video and small writeup. That being said, some video posts closely resemble multi-item posts like this post: http://www.upworthy.com/he-left-prison-and-came-home-to-his-family-but-after-what-happened-hell-never-see-his-kids-again
In 2015, on average, multi-item and video posts have received about the same amount of Facebook activity. Multi-item posts average 13,872 Facebook actions vs video posts which average 13,500 total Facebook actions.
Although they aren't seeing greater performance in terms of Facebook actions from their multi-item posts, their strategic decision to produce video posts with more content around them indicates they see value in it.

3) Overall Posts Are Down

Upworthy has always been about small number of heavily optimized posts. Recently, they have decreased the amount they're publishing. This perhaps goes with their increased focus on the more complex multi-item post type.
The first two months of 2015 had significantly less posts than the first two months of 2014. In Jan 2015, their post count was down 23% year over year. In Feb 2015, their posts was down 15% year over year.

Upworthy's Web Content Tactics

Although they have recently started focusing more on original content, Upworthy has historically focused on the packaging and distribution of content. This makes them analogous to a bottled water company: they take a commodity product and then package and distribute it for maximum performance.
Below I review a number of their packaging tactics.

1) Custom Video Embed Box

Rather than displaying videos in the default Youtube view, Upworthy chooses a custom view. Based on my scraped data, they consistently customize their Youtube embed code to look like this http://www.youtube.com/embed/VIDEOID?rel=0&wmode=transparent&showinfo=0&controls=1&enablejsapi=1&rel=0&version=3&color=white

Here are their changes vs the default code:

They choose a white progress as opposed to the default red.
They choose to display no related videos as opposed to the default related videos.
They hide the show info box at the top of the video.
By disabling two locations where users can click off the page (related videos and show info) and using the less eye catching white progress bar, Upworthy probably increases people who watch the video on Upworthy and share the Upworthy page as opposed to on Youtube. Given they test extensively, this has probably been tested at some point.
Their Youtube videos also have a fluid wrapper, so they adjust to users window size
Like button underneath Youtube videos.

A) What Upworthy Videos Look Like When Finished

B) What Buzzfeed Videos (Using Default Embed Settings) Look Like When Finished

2) Email Subscribe Pop Up After Facebook Share

If you ask a random person if they like you, they'll most likely give you a strange look and walk away at a brisk pace. If you offer a random person freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and ask if they like you, assuming they're not in some gluten-free paleo cult, then they'll probably say yes.

Upworthy is an expert at prompting their users to subscribe to their newsletter or like their page on Facebook right after they've finished consuming a piece of emotionally lifting uplifting content. Their "I've restored your faith in humanity. Do you like me now?" strategy seems effective.

A) Desktop

B) Sponsored Content Version

C) Individual Author Version

D) Mobile

3) Like Pop-up After Youtube Videos End

At the moment their uplifting Facebook video ends, Upworthy takes over your screen, "DO YOU LIKE ME NOW?????"

4) Retention Pop-up

At the moment Upworthy detects a user is about to bounce, they launch a pop-up inviting her to read one more story. Heroin dealers use a similar tactic to keep their addicts using their services.

5) After Users Subscribe To An Email, Upworthy's Interface Changes To Prompt Users To Subscribe To Youtube

A) Before A User Enters An Email.

B) If A User Enters An Email, New View With Subscribe To Youtube

What Upworthy Is Testing

Upworthy uses Optimizely for their A/B tests. By looking at their Optimizely code, I can see their current tests (though not the results). Since these tests have been reverse-engineered and I don't have access to their Optimizely profile, there may be a few inaccuracies.

1) DESKTOP: layout swap-a-roo

Upworthy is testing moving to a content first layout with the content first followed by their share buttons at the bottom, changing the color and layout of their share header,removing content on the side and top of the page. This design is a lot cleaner and more content focused. Less links to other places on the site may reduce recirculation, but the more focused design could increase people actually paying attention to the content.

A) Original

B) One Column Layout

2) REINVENT: Suppress Exit Holler

Upworthy is testing how removing the exit holler (The prompt that appears when users are about to bounce highlighted above) impacts retention.

3) REINVENT: Consistent Nugget-Like Placement

Upworthy has a prompt to like a post. Currently, the prompt appears directly below a video. They’re testing placing the prompt on different positions of the page to see if it improves performance.

A) Above Share Buttons; Bottom of Nugget

B) Centered Below Topics/Metadata

C) Below Share Buttons; Bottom of Nugget Variation

D) Below Topics/Metadata

4) REINVENT: Video Transcript Moved Directly Below Underbar

Upworthy is testing placing the video transcript at a different place on their page. Instead of at the bottom of the page, Upworthy is testing placing the transcript right below the video.

A) Original

B) Below Video Black Bar

C) Below Video Button

5) RC - TCS AMs 1.5,3,4

Upworthy is testing different recommended content algorithms. I’m not sure about the significance of each algorithm, but the difference is the time used for each