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Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral
“Engrossing and suspenseful." —The New York Times
“Expertly pulls readers in.” —The Guardian
“Smith sharply chronicles the revolutionary moment.” — Financial Times
The origin story of the post-truth the candid inside tale of two online media rivals, Nick Denton of Gawker Media and Jonah Peretti of HuffPost and BuzzFeed, whose delirious pursuit of attention at scale helped release the dark forces that would overtake the internet and American society
If attention is the new oil, Traffic is the story of the time between the first gusher and the perceptible impact of climate change. The curtain opens in Soho in the early 2000s, after the first dot-com crash but before Google, Apple, and Facebook exploded, when it seemed that New York City, rather than Silicon Valley, might become tech’s center of gravity. There, Nick Denton’s merry band of nihilists at his growing Gawker empire and Jonah Peretti’s sunnier team at HuffPost and BuzzFeed were building the foundations of viral internet media. Ben Smith, who would go on to earn a controversial reputation as BuzzFeed News’s editor in chief, was there to see it, and he chronicles it all with marvelous lucidity underscored by dark wit.
Traffic explores one of the great ironies of our The internet, which was going to help the left remake the world in its image, has become the motive force of right populism. People like Steve Bannon and Andrew Breitbart initially seemed like minor characters in the narrative in which Nick and Jonah were the stars. But today, anyone might wonder if the opposite wasn’t the case. To understand how we got here, Traffic is essential and enthralling reading.
“Expertly pulls readers in.” —The Guardian
“Smith sharply chronicles the revolutionary moment.” — Financial Times
The origin story of the post-truth the candid inside tale of two online media rivals, Nick Denton of Gawker Media and Jonah Peretti of HuffPost and BuzzFeed, whose delirious pursuit of attention at scale helped release the dark forces that would overtake the internet and American society
If attention is the new oil, Traffic is the story of the time between the first gusher and the perceptible impact of climate change. The curtain opens in Soho in the early 2000s, after the first dot-com crash but before Google, Apple, and Facebook exploded, when it seemed that New York City, rather than Silicon Valley, might become tech’s center of gravity. There, Nick Denton’s merry band of nihilists at his growing Gawker empire and Jonah Peretti’s sunnier team at HuffPost and BuzzFeed were building the foundations of viral internet media. Ben Smith, who would go on to earn a controversial reputation as BuzzFeed News’s editor in chief, was there to see it, and he chronicles it all with marvelous lucidity underscored by dark wit.
Traffic explores one of the great ironies of our The internet, which was going to help the left remake the world in its image, has become the motive force of right populism. People like Steve Bannon and Andrew Breitbart initially seemed like minor characters in the narrative in which Nick and Jonah were the stars. But today, anyone might wonder if the opposite wasn’t the case. To understand how we got here, Traffic is essential and enthralling reading.
352 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 2, 2023
244 people are currently reading
2780 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 144 reviews
May 9, 2023
Surprisingly scant on self-reflection: skims over the unionizing of Buzzfeed, only a few words on the IPO, and nothing on how the employees got run-over when trying to sell their stock. A small self-inflicted slap on the wrist for tolerating (and perhaps even abetting) plagiarism in the newsroom from someone who turned out to be a neo-fascist.
Not-surprisingly self-aggrandizing: Gawker and Buzzfeed are mentioned in the same pages as the invention of the printing press. It’s true that media and social media are different now than they were a few decades ago, and Buzzfeed + Gawker were definitely smack-dab in the middle, but that doesn’t mean they were the flagships they’re made out to be here. As it tends to happen in the US, navel-gazing leads to believe that said navel is in fact the center of the universe.
Perhaps my biggest criticism is that there is no real analysis, just a recount of the decade in media. It’s easy to understand why, as the author has made a living on tidbits and scoops, on publishing news rather than ruminating on what’s behind. It’d be great if someone like Nick Denton, one of the main characters in the book and now a world-class recluse, would give some insight. There’s much more to be said and discussed, rather than rehashed.
Reads breezily, though. Like a long feature.
Not-surprisingly self-aggrandizing: Gawker and Buzzfeed are mentioned in the same pages as the invention of the printing press. It’s true that media and social media are different now than they were a few decades ago, and Buzzfeed + Gawker were definitely smack-dab in the middle, but that doesn’t mean they were the flagships they’re made out to be here. As it tends to happen in the US, navel-gazing leads to believe that said navel is in fact the center of the universe.
Perhaps my biggest criticism is that there is no real analysis, just a recount of the decade in media. It’s easy to understand why, as the author has made a living on tidbits and scoops, on publishing news rather than ruminating on what’s behind. It’d be great if someone like Nick Denton, one of the main characters in the book and now a world-class recluse, would give some insight. There’s much more to be said and discussed, rather than rehashed.
Reads breezily, though. Like a long feature.
November 18, 2023
This felt pretty mid to me. I think it’s a really narrow view of online space. It also felt a little self important or self serving. The first have was good but once the author enters the story it gets really hard to decipher objectivity from doing PR for one’s own story.
June 22, 2023
I'm chatting with Ben about this book on 7/27 — register for the Q&A here!
For the urban commuter, traffic seems as natural a phenomenon as the ocean tides. Economies function based on the constant flow of people and products—fast, slow, stalled, blocked.
Likewise, internet traffic represents the flow of users from site to site, often measured in terms of clicks, visits, shares, and time. Early representations of Web 2.0 conjured images of swarms, crowds, and viruses—undirected masses of people creating emergent trends through their individual behaviors.
Some traffic flowed altruistically, toward protesting Egyptian dictators or contributing to Wikipedia articles. But as the internet gained steam, a new generation of companies rushed to begin capturing the new waves of traffic and converting them into advertising dollars at a far greater scale than print had ever seen.
Ben Smith’s Traffic is a story about these companies: in particular, about BuzzFeed, where Smith served as editor-in-chief of the News division for over eight years.
BuzzFeed was helmed by founder and CEO Jonah Peretti: troll, tinkerer, Silicon Valley nerd. Like many of his peers in the burgeoning tech industry—and unlike most in the news business—Peretti’s love of the internet was rooted largely in its promise of democratization, in the triumph of the public over gatekeeping elites.
Rather than relying on pedigreed experts to decide what topics were weighty enough to warrant front-page coverage, Peretti’s BuzzFeed—alongside peers like Gawker and Breitbart—chased clicks, a far more objective value. From laughter to anger and pride to pity, they just sought out anything that provoked a reaction. F good taste, he seemed to say—just give the people what they want. As Smith puts it, “Jonah’s approach was a radically new and abstract way of thinking about media—to focus on its psychological effect rather than on what it was actually about.”
For a while, it worked. BuzzFeed tapped into the psychology of shareability, realizing that users liked to share identity-based content to signal things about themselves to their friends. BuzzFeed also capitalized on boredom, receiving 800 million views on a livestream of two employees exploding a watermelon with rubber bands, and 4 million votes on the color of the notorious “Dress.” And unlike more traditional publishers, BuzzFeed knew that social media was the real arbiter of what mattered—not the curated front page of buzzfeed.com. Smith joined in: “I told my own reporters, a group of hungry kids excited at the opportunity to compete with their pompous elders, that I didn’t want a story that didn’t live on Twitter.”
Peretti was also ambitious. He turned down a lucrative Disney acquisition, instead betting that BuzzFeed could become to Facebook what NBC Universal was to cable TV, or even Wikipedia to Google Search. He bet that every revolutionary new medium needed its message-makers, and he was ready for the BuzzFeed content empire to power the Facebook throne. Together, they could join forces to capture the maximum amount of human attention to sell to advertisers (and perhaps foster a bit of human connection along the way).
Peretti met frequently with Facebook product executives to discuss News Feed curation—this coziness was one of the tidbits that most surprised me in the book. In one chapter, he lays the death knell to strategic click-baiter Upworthy by showing how spammy “curiosity gap” headlines (“She Has A Horrifying Story To Tell. Except It Isn’t Actually True.”) were dominating the feed. In another, Peretti points out how Facebook’s new “meaningful social interactions” metric favored the worst of BuzzFeed’s content, prioritizing whatever links would prompt the biggest flame wars in the replies.
From a values standpoint, the partnership made sense. Peretti’s radical principles may have rattled the media industry, but they feel all too familiar as startup canon. Don’t be precious. That question is empirical. Do whatever makes the number go up. What was important was what people liked, and what people liked was what was important. Virality was content-agnostic, it could be reduced to a “science,” and BuzzFeed was the research lab developing its most viral strains.
But there was always one big problem with Peretti’s hypothesis. There is no such thing as “organic”; traffic is always being controlled. While his friendly conversations with Facebook helped BuzzFeed, they also highlighted the extent to which the social media giant had their hands on the levers of viral success. In one pivotal conversation, Adam Mosseri asks: “‘How often do you think things should go viral like the Dress?’… Jonah was surprised by the question—and by the idea that the frequency of things going viral was up to Mosseri’s team.” Only Facebook, the platform play, produced and routed traffic. BuzzFeed merely chased and received it.
After all, Facebook needed great content to show users, but only insofar as it kept them scrolling through ads. When it learned that videos retained attention for longer, they urged publishers to “pivot to video”—burning cash for inflated views. When Facebook noticed that news articles sent users off-platform, they downranked links. When Facebook got spooked by superspreaders like The Dress and fake election news, they narrowed global reach to favor family and friends. And ultimately, when Facebook simply became, well, uncool and its user growth slowed… so did new traffic to BuzzFeed. The partnership eventually looked more like dependence, and dependence ultimately spelled death.
By the late 2010s, web traffic was flowing so quickly and among so many different destinations that its value inevitably dropped. Advertisers were paying less for the same amount of views, and BuzzFeed’s sky-high video and news production costs were getting difficult to justify to investors. In a virality-constrained world, publishers had to pay more just to get their own promoted articles to find new readers on the feed. The first round of layoffs hit in 2017. More came in 2019, then each of the three years after that. Finally, in April 2023, just mere weeks before Smith’s book was released, BuzzFeed officially shuttered its award-winning News division, which Smith himself had founded and led from 2011 to 2020.
I came away with three big lessons from Smith’s book. One, traffic is not money. Two, traffic is not quality. And three, traffic is not natural. The numbers might be going up and to the right, but what matters far more is the substance behind them.
These are hard things to internalize after a decade of glittering promises about the internet powering a new era of free and democratic media. But we know now that traffic was fickle and accident-prone. The question is what stronger infrastructure we’ll now build in its place.
This review was first published in Reboot — sign up to get more essays and events on the future of tech, humanity, and power.
For the urban commuter, traffic seems as natural a phenomenon as the ocean tides. Economies function based on the constant flow of people and products—fast, slow, stalled, blocked.
Likewise, internet traffic represents the flow of users from site to site, often measured in terms of clicks, visits, shares, and time. Early representations of Web 2.0 conjured images of swarms, crowds, and viruses—undirected masses of people creating emergent trends through their individual behaviors.
Some traffic flowed altruistically, toward protesting Egyptian dictators or contributing to Wikipedia articles. But as the internet gained steam, a new generation of companies rushed to begin capturing the new waves of traffic and converting them into advertising dollars at a far greater scale than print had ever seen.
Ben Smith’s Traffic is a story about these companies: in particular, about BuzzFeed, where Smith served as editor-in-chief of the News division for over eight years.
BuzzFeed was helmed by founder and CEO Jonah Peretti: troll, tinkerer, Silicon Valley nerd. Like many of his peers in the burgeoning tech industry—and unlike most in the news business—Peretti’s love of the internet was rooted largely in its promise of democratization, in the triumph of the public over gatekeeping elites.
Rather than relying on pedigreed experts to decide what topics were weighty enough to warrant front-page coverage, Peretti’s BuzzFeed—alongside peers like Gawker and Breitbart—chased clicks, a far more objective value. From laughter to anger and pride to pity, they just sought out anything that provoked a reaction. F good taste, he seemed to say—just give the people what they want. As Smith puts it, “Jonah’s approach was a radically new and abstract way of thinking about media—to focus on its psychological effect rather than on what it was actually about.”
For a while, it worked. BuzzFeed tapped into the psychology of shareability, realizing that users liked to share identity-based content to signal things about themselves to their friends. BuzzFeed also capitalized on boredom, receiving 800 million views on a livestream of two employees exploding a watermelon with rubber bands, and 4 million votes on the color of the notorious “Dress.” And unlike more traditional publishers, BuzzFeed knew that social media was the real arbiter of what mattered—not the curated front page of buzzfeed.com. Smith joined in: “I told my own reporters, a group of hungry kids excited at the opportunity to compete with their pompous elders, that I didn’t want a story that didn’t live on Twitter.”
Peretti was also ambitious. He turned down a lucrative Disney acquisition, instead betting that BuzzFeed could become to Facebook what NBC Universal was to cable TV, or even Wikipedia to Google Search. He bet that every revolutionary new medium needed its message-makers, and he was ready for the BuzzFeed content empire to power the Facebook throne. Together, they could join forces to capture the maximum amount of human attention to sell to advertisers (and perhaps foster a bit of human connection along the way).
Peretti met frequently with Facebook product executives to discuss News Feed curation—this coziness was one of the tidbits that most surprised me in the book. In one chapter, he lays the death knell to strategic click-baiter Upworthy by showing how spammy “curiosity gap” headlines (“She Has A Horrifying Story To Tell. Except It Isn’t Actually True.”) were dominating the feed. In another, Peretti points out how Facebook’s new “meaningful social interactions” metric favored the worst of BuzzFeed’s content, prioritizing whatever links would prompt the biggest flame wars in the replies.
From a values standpoint, the partnership made sense. Peretti’s radical principles may have rattled the media industry, but they feel all too familiar as startup canon. Don’t be precious. That question is empirical. Do whatever makes the number go up. What was important was what people liked, and what people liked was what was important. Virality was content-agnostic, it could be reduced to a “science,” and BuzzFeed was the research lab developing its most viral strains.
But there was always one big problem with Peretti’s hypothesis. There is no such thing as “organic”; traffic is always being controlled. While his friendly conversations with Facebook helped BuzzFeed, they also highlighted the extent to which the social media giant had their hands on the levers of viral success. In one pivotal conversation, Adam Mosseri asks: “‘How often do you think things should go viral like the Dress?’… Jonah was surprised by the question—and by the idea that the frequency of things going viral was up to Mosseri’s team.” Only Facebook, the platform play, produced and routed traffic. BuzzFeed merely chased and received it.
After all, Facebook needed great content to show users, but only insofar as it kept them scrolling through ads. When it learned that videos retained attention for longer, they urged publishers to “pivot to video”—burning cash for inflated views. When Facebook noticed that news articles sent users off-platform, they downranked links. When Facebook got spooked by superspreaders like The Dress and fake election news, they narrowed global reach to favor family and friends. And ultimately, when Facebook simply became, well, uncool and its user growth slowed… so did new traffic to BuzzFeed. The partnership eventually looked more like dependence, and dependence ultimately spelled death.
By the late 2010s, web traffic was flowing so quickly and among so many different destinations that its value inevitably dropped. Advertisers were paying less for the same amount of views, and BuzzFeed’s sky-high video and news production costs were getting difficult to justify to investors. In a virality-constrained world, publishers had to pay more just to get their own promoted articles to find new readers on the feed. The first round of layoffs hit in 2017. More came in 2019, then each of the three years after that. Finally, in April 2023, just mere weeks before Smith’s book was released, BuzzFeed officially shuttered its award-winning News division, which Smith himself had founded and led from 2011 to 2020.
I came away with three big lessons from Smith’s book. One, traffic is not money. Two, traffic is not quality. And three, traffic is not natural. The numbers might be going up and to the right, but what matters far more is the substance behind them.
These are hard things to internalize after a decade of glittering promises about the internet powering a new era of free and democratic media. But we know now that traffic was fickle and accident-prone. The question is what stronger infrastructure we’ll now build in its place.
This review was first published in Reboot — sign up to get more essays and events on the future of tech, humanity, and power.
February 20, 2025
This is part memoir, part narrative history of 2010s online journalism focusing on the players animating BuzzFeed and Gawker. The analysis is somewhat demure on issues with partisan valence, and there is an unsatisfactory mélange of praise and criticism of all parties involved. Smith is self-critical and critical of other but no one is really held accountable for the disaster. Smith periodically editorializes about whether some of the important choices he and others made were defensible or in error. Generally, the narrative is told as a part comedy of errors, part tragedy. I see only upside in where the narrative eventually lands though Smith sees things as having quite a sad ending.
The only substantive takeaway offered is that it was a mistake to use internet traffic as the lodestar of the news and commentary business. This seems obvious given that the journalists and their publications had no control over the parameters that governed organic traffic. They opted to operate at the whims of social media algorithms and thought that they would forever favor them. They should have responded to the technology changes more proactively and creatively if they wished to keep their general modus operandi in tact. The individuals who did actually cultivate an authentic audience have weathered this storm just fine, moving to Substack or the NYT to do podcasting and newsletters. True investigative journalism has largely died, but it died long ago and this had as much to do with the culture of journalism and Cable TV as it does with the internet.
Smith thinks there were a lot of brilliant people who mistakenly accepted tradeoffs that eventually authored their downfall. Alternatively, I see many ideological, petty, and/or incompetent figures trying to engineer or game attention for clout and an ulterior agenda. Fundamental business decision always appear secondary to these figures except to the extent it creates opportunities for them to cash out. I'm glad Mark and Elon got fed up and pulled the rug out from under this industry. The near total destruction of these entities has been a great gift to discourse.
The only substantive takeaway offered is that it was a mistake to use internet traffic as the lodestar of the news and commentary business. This seems obvious given that the journalists and their publications had no control over the parameters that governed organic traffic. They opted to operate at the whims of social media algorithms and thought that they would forever favor them. They should have responded to the technology changes more proactively and creatively if they wished to keep their general modus operandi in tact. The individuals who did actually cultivate an authentic audience have weathered this storm just fine, moving to Substack or the NYT to do podcasting and newsletters. True investigative journalism has largely died, but it died long ago and this had as much to do with the culture of journalism and Cable TV as it does with the internet.
Smith thinks there were a lot of brilliant people who mistakenly accepted tradeoffs that eventually authored their downfall. Alternatively, I see many ideological, petty, and/or incompetent figures trying to engineer or game attention for clout and an ulterior agenda. Fundamental business decision always appear secondary to these figures except to the extent it creates opportunities for them to cash out. I'm glad Mark and Elon got fed up and pulled the rug out from under this industry. The near total destruction of these entities has been a great gift to discourse.
June 6, 2023
Definitive and page turning chronicle of a miserable era. But miserable in so many different ways!
December 5, 2023
I have been a reluctant social media user. I don't have accounts on most of them, and the ones I do have I try to limit my usage because I know they are huge time sucks and not necessarily healthy for my mental health.
So listening to this book really peeled back layers of the beginnings of viral web activity and the origins of some of these sites. It's fascinating how the different perspectives of the innovators of these media companies drove how the sites operate.
I really enjoyed listening to Ian Putnam narrate the audiobook edition.
So listening to this book really peeled back layers of the beginnings of viral web activity and the origins of some of these sites. It's fascinating how the different perspectives of the innovators of these media companies drove how the sites operate.
I really enjoyed listening to Ian Putnam narrate the audiobook edition.
Read
August 3, 2023Not really for me.
January 16, 2024
I’m not sure if it is the author’s fault, or if the people involved in the evolution of the internet into The way it is today are just that horrible, short sighted, and fairly simple, but it wasn’t very interesting reading.
I’m surprised, I expected more from this, but then again I guess the nature of Traffic is all about quantity of interaction and not quality, so it kind of fits
I’m surprised, I expected more from this, but then again I guess the nature of Traffic is all about quantity of interaction and not quality, so it kind of fits
December 26, 2023
I’ve been on a nonfiction kick lately, especially if it centers on culture/media that makes me feel nostalgia, so this was great. The perfect “type” of book to listen to. As a Small Bow reader (where my fellow fans at?) I also enjoyed the small tidbits about AJ Daulerio.
September 2, 2023
A very enjoyable and sobering tale of the media landscape in New York in the 2010s.
Having spent much of my career in New York City during this exact same time, I really enjoyed the backstory of the various media institutions that I both admired and reviled.
We all know the ultimate outcome, which is probably what should have happened. Although they had garnered significant credibility through Ben Smith's BuzzFeed news (including a Pulitzer Prize), for the most part, these institutions have - Gawker, BuzzFeed, and the rest - were lame and harmful. They played on many of our worst instincts and monetized them. I admire Ben Smith and Jonah, but I'm glad that they're ilk finally got their comeuppance.
Having spent much of my career in New York City during this exact same time, I really enjoyed the backstory of the various media institutions that I both admired and reviled.
We all know the ultimate outcome, which is probably what should have happened. Although they had garnered significant credibility through Ben Smith's BuzzFeed news (including a Pulitzer Prize), for the most part, these institutions have - Gawker, BuzzFeed, and the rest - were lame and harmful. They played on many of our worst instincts and monetized them. I admire Ben Smith and Jonah, but I'm glad that they're ilk finally got their comeuppance.
June 11, 2023
Limited appeal but some interesting insights
I’ve been hooked on books about the rise and fall of Internet companies but this one is poorly written, so while there are some interesting things to note, the story swirls with a little too much insider view and fails to step back to bring the rest of us in. I hoped to get deep into this story but have come away feeling only slightly better informed than before I started.
I’ve been hooked on books about the rise and fall of Internet companies but this one is poorly written, so while there are some interesting things to note, the story swirls with a little too much insider view and fails to step back to bring the rest of us in. I hoped to get deep into this story but have come away feeling only slightly better informed than before I started.
May 30, 2023
This book. 🤯 How, HOW, is this not a Netflix docuseries?! As a clueless Gawker fan girl slash writer slash marketer, I had no clue how significantly and irrevocably Gawker and Buzzfeed changed the internet and journalism itself. I love them and I hate them for it. God damn this was a good read. Can’t stop thinking—or talking—about it.
April 6, 2023
I can see this turning into one of those HBO mini series
July 2, 2023
So good, a little slow at the beginning and I sometimes got confused with all the names, but really interesting history of Buzzfeed and the internet in the early 2010s.
May 25, 2023
It seems like a good time to read a retrospective of the heady online media world of the 2010s. I enjoyed the behind the scenes look at what was going in upstarts like Buzzfeed and Gawker - how they were figuring out how to get more clicks, more traffic, and the inevitable moral quandaries they faced - whether they should or shouldn't post the Steele dossier or a Hulk Hogan sex tape. There was satisfaction in a way, reading about how people who thought they had it all figured out really hadn't - Google or Facebook would change their algorithm, and bring the profitability of these websites crashing down. I remember watching the shift to spammy clickbait headlines, then the move away, the pivot to video, the pivot to email newsletters, or whatever the next new things is. The book doesn't track the rise of TikTok or SubStack, or Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, but neatly tries to put a cap on things with Buzzfeed going public in a damp thud. I guess it had to end somewhere.
It was interesting too to read about a background cast of characters on the right like Drudge, Breitbart and Bannon, having success with their sites, driving them to post increasingly inflammatory content that would get the clicks. Ben Smith seems to have the feeling that he and his companions are perhaps the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the story, bit-part players to the story of the rise of the conservative takeover of the Internet.
It was interesting too to read about a background cast of characters on the right like Drudge, Breitbart and Bannon, having success with their sites, driving them to post increasingly inflammatory content that would get the clicks. Ben Smith seems to have the feeling that he and his companions are perhaps the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the story, bit-part players to the story of the rise of the conservative takeover of the Internet.
September 9, 2023
Patiko. Istorija apie tai, kaip kūrėsi, plėtėsi ir keitėsi laukiniai clickbaitiniai portalai, kaip juos pūtė, o vėliau skandino social media, kaip atrodė charakteriai žmonių, sėdinčių kitose ekrano pusėse. Daug detalių ir visokių pikantiškų pasakojimų leidžia geriau suprasti informacinės erdvės evoliuciją ir jos priežastis. Mane labai užkabino mintis (nors ji tik įžvalga, neparemta kažkokiais empyriniais duomenimis), kad kraštutinės dešinės trimituotojai ne tiek yra tų pažiūrų, kiek bet kokia kaina siekia dėmesio. Galima būtų pritaikyti ir Lietuvoje.
Autorius - ilgametis Buzzfeed naujienų vadovas, beje, fun fact, iki 2001 m. dirbęs Latvijoje “The Baltic States”, vedęs latvę.
Turiu tik mažą priekaištėlį dėl rašymo stiliaus. Knygoje gausybė vardų, tarp kurių sudėtinga gaudytis, o jis juos rašydamas dar kaitalioja - tai vardai, tai pavardės, tai iš viso ceremoningai skambantis oficialus vardas. Tas trukdė.
Autorius - ilgametis Buzzfeed naujienų vadovas, beje, fun fact, iki 2001 m. dirbęs Latvijoje “The Baltic States”, vedęs latvę.
Turiu tik mažą priekaištėlį dėl rašymo stiliaus. Knygoje gausybė vardų, tarp kurių sudėtinga gaudytis, o jis juos rašydamas dar kaitalioja - tai vardai, tai pavardės, tai iš viso ceremoningai skambantis oficialus vardas. Tas trukdė.
June 17, 2023
I really enjoyed this, inside look at Buzzfeed/HuffPo/a lot of the earliest true digital media companies. There's nothing in here that's particularly revelatory or shocking, but it is interesting to (re)live through a lot of this era—lots of looks at how new media companies saw stuff like The Dress or the 2008 presidential election internally. The most interesting story here, I think, is where power is, and the answer is basically 'with Facebook'— Buzzfeed's general thesis seemed to have been "see Facebook as distribution, the way Viacom/other entertainment companies see cable companies, and are mutually dependent" which worked until FB focused more on engagement/tuned the way it did recommendations. Skews really heavily in favor of Buzzfeed / makes a lot of the other outlets look worse, which makes sense given that the author (Ben Smith) literally ran Buzzfeed News. anyways, if you like this era of internet content, fun read
May 10, 2023
Ben Smith had a front row seat to the birth of “traffic” which grew to be the lifeblood of our engagement on the Internet. Ben uses his firsthand knowledge to lay out a compelling murder board for the death of civility and rapid rise of political polarization. He draws direct links to the forces, influences, and people who accelerated the process.
This book may be hard to connect with for many, but if you’ve followed some of the key political influencers over the past 10+ years, it will be eye-opening to hear their origin stories. unfortunately, it t feels like there are a lot more villains than heroes in this tumultuous tale. As an example, the Peter Thiel story sent a particular chill down mine spine. The hardest part is not knowing what comes next, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough!
This book may be hard to connect with for many, but if you’ve followed some of the key political influencers over the past 10+ years, it will be eye-opening to hear their origin stories. unfortunately, it t feels like there are a lot more villains than heroes in this tumultuous tale. As an example, the Peter Thiel story sent a particular chill down mine spine. The hardest part is not knowing what comes next, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough!
May 17, 2023
a great ride through the last 15 or so years of digital media, with fun scenes and scooplets. wild to remember how hot buzzfeed was as a company not so long ago - and how doomed NYT/wapo seemed.
as it is a book not a column it gives Ben a chance to really reflect on the media world he had a part in creating, including some things he now sees as mistakes. he also pulls off a great late-book turn where the protagonists of the history start to look a bit more like bystanders. recommend!
as it is a book not a column it gives Ben a chance to really reflect on the media world he had a part in creating, including some things he now sees as mistakes. he also pulls off a great late-book turn where the protagonists of the history start to look a bit more like bystanders. recommend!
September 7, 2023
Not what I thought it would be, basically a biography of Jonah Peretti and Nick Denton, but pretty interesting. Not much insight into the mechanisms of attracting traffic. I was never on that part of the internet so I felt above it all until the author revealed he used to work at Politico which my dumb ass reads all of every day.
February 6, 2024
Slow start but very cool insider’s look at social media and internet news in its infancy, by somebody who was in the center of it (Ben Smith started the news section at BuzzFeed after working at Politico)
May 6, 2024
I really enjoyed reading this book even tho it took me forever! A really comprehensive overview of the rise of online and digital media, how companies set out to define the conversation on the internet and how they ended up beholden to the channels created by social media. Highlighted the echo chambers that exist in social media and how their existent caused media companies to post for emotional reactions that drive engagement versus content people want to see
May 26, 2023
Enjoyable and insightful, offering a unique angle on the internet media business that only an insider could provide.
July 2, 2023
Very few things I could enjoy more than an account of the rise and fall of BuzzFeed and Gawker. Ben Smith does a great job
December 15, 2024
Ben smith is a chad and something about this genre of book and style really scratches my gossip loving rodent hind brain. Fun read for ppl who grew up in the rise and fall of the buzzfeed (news) era
June 13, 2023
One of the ultimate "your mileage may vary" books. If this is a world you are familiar with or follow with some degree of interest, a lot of what's covered in this book will likely come off as old news.
I started my career at The Huffington Post from 2012-2015 and was a media nerd long before that, so I was looking forward to some new bits of palace intrigue or at least a semblance of candid reflection or biting analysis. What follows from Ben Smith is a sprinkling of scoops, some from the front row and others from a seat in the back of the theater, but nothing more than generalized commentary and retrospective on the people and publications that defined this era. It's a quick and painless read—almost like an extra, extra longform piece akin to the ones Smith presided over at BuzzFeed News—but there's not a ton to chew on for the past or even the future beyond the facts of what happened where and who was involved.
I started my career at The Huffington Post from 2012-2015 and was a media nerd long before that, so I was looking forward to some new bits of palace intrigue or at least a semblance of candid reflection or biting analysis. What follows from Ben Smith is a sprinkling of scoops, some from the front row and others from a seat in the back of the theater, but nothing more than generalized commentary and retrospective on the people and publications that defined this era. It's a quick and painless read—almost like an extra, extra longform piece akin to the ones Smith presided over at BuzzFeed News—but there's not a ton to chew on for the past or even the future beyond the facts of what happened where and who was involved.
March 24, 2024
made me so mad i had to keep reading it until it ended :) the same tiny group of people did everything in digital media in the early days and not-so-shocking to realize that modern-day journalism execs have taken away all the wrong messages
September 14, 2023
Former NYT tech columnist and news executive Ben Smith spotlights the rise of clickbait news and gossip sites in this readable, personal memoir. Upstarts like The Huffington Post, Gawker and Buzzfeed built a huge audience in the early 2000s by focusing on getting people to click once-and- often via targeting and sensational headlines. Along with the traffic, their valuations soared, leading to a super competitive environment largely populated by creeps. Smith himself -- apparently, not a creep -- plays a large role in it, bringing an insider vibe, but perhaps at the expense of broad perspective. As an Internet history “completist”, I found the book to be of value in placing this group of companies within the history of the news business. I quickly tired of the personalities, however, and did not finish the book (i.e. where Peter Thiel, who had taken offense for being outed, smashes Nick Denton with expensive lawyers etc.)
May 9, 2023
As Stevo’s Novel Ideas, I am a long-time book reviewer, member of the media, an Influencer, and a content provider. I received this book as a free review copy from either the publisher, a publicist, or the author, and have not been otherwise compensated for reviewing or recommending it. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
This book is Stevo's Business Book of the Week for the week of 5/7. If attention is the new oil, Ben Smith’s "Traffic" is the story of the time between the first gusher and the impact of climate change.
In 1999, I was hired away from Microsoft by a San Francisco tech startup. A year later, through several M&As, the company became a bicoastal success story, occupying half a floor in Sausalito and a large building in a Boston tech complex. My division was heavy with media and entertainment companies looking for managers and moderators of their online communities. Then came the dotcom meltdown that left two people at the West division working from home. I was one of those people.
As I struggled to keep my clients and manage 75 remote contractors, I watched in fascination at the tactics used by online companies such as Gawker Media and Buzzfeed to get consumers back online. And the word that defined the number of daily website hits (also known as "pageviews") those entities received? Traffic.
In his new book, aptly titled "Traffic," Ben Smith begins his story with the rivalry between these two online media companies and the geniuses that ran them: Jonah Peretti of BuzzFeed and Nick Denton of Gawker (and Jezebel, Wonkette, and my personal nemesis Deadspin).
But the narrative doesn't end there, as Smith, former editor in chief of BuzzFeed News, plots the rise and fall of the pioneering viral media companies, initially leaning toward liberal politics ("we got Barak Obama elected") but eventually being overtaken by clickbait companies, personified by Matt Drudge, Steve Bannon, Andrew Breitbart, and Benny Johnson, leaning toward the right side of the political spectrum, that helped Trump get elected.
Written in an engaging and eminently readable style, "Traffic" documents the transition of ethical (though of dubious news value) media outlets that appealed to our emotions into ones obsessed with tracking them and selling them to advertisers.
Find more Business Books of the Week on my Goodreads Listopia page at https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/9..., and find many more reviewed and recommended books and products by searching for me on Google.
This book is Stevo's Business Book of the Week for the week of 5/7. If attention is the new oil, Ben Smith’s "Traffic" is the story of the time between the first gusher and the impact of climate change.
In 1999, I was hired away from Microsoft by a San Francisco tech startup. A year later, through several M&As, the company became a bicoastal success story, occupying half a floor in Sausalito and a large building in a Boston tech complex. My division was heavy with media and entertainment companies looking for managers and moderators of their online communities. Then came the dotcom meltdown that left two people at the West division working from home. I was one of those people.
As I struggled to keep my clients and manage 75 remote contractors, I watched in fascination at the tactics used by online companies such as Gawker Media and Buzzfeed to get consumers back online. And the word that defined the number of daily website hits (also known as "pageviews") those entities received? Traffic.
In his new book, aptly titled "Traffic," Ben Smith begins his story with the rivalry between these two online media companies and the geniuses that ran them: Jonah Peretti of BuzzFeed and Nick Denton of Gawker (and Jezebel, Wonkette, and my personal nemesis Deadspin).
But the narrative doesn't end there, as Smith, former editor in chief of BuzzFeed News, plots the rise and fall of the pioneering viral media companies, initially leaning toward liberal politics ("we got Barak Obama elected") but eventually being overtaken by clickbait companies, personified by Matt Drudge, Steve Bannon, Andrew Breitbart, and Benny Johnson, leaning toward the right side of the political spectrum, that helped Trump get elected.
Written in an engaging and eminently readable style, "Traffic" documents the transition of ethical (though of dubious news value) media outlets that appealed to our emotions into ones obsessed with tracking them and selling them to advertisers.
Find more Business Books of the Week on my Goodreads Listopia page at https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/9..., and find many more reviewed and recommended books and products by searching for me on Google.
August 14, 2023
I’m a digital journalist, so I really enjoyed reading a comprehensive account of an incredibly important moment in media history. From afar, I’ve witnessed many bits and pieces of this history in real time, but never saw it spun together like this. I hope this is the first of many historical books about this important cultural chapter. I also hope future books are able to pull it off in a less clumsy and awkward manner.
The book starts out like a standard historical nonfiction. But about halfway through, the author suddenly becomes a main character, and the style takes a sudden shift toward a memoir. I found this shift to be jarring and awkward. I would’ve preferred if it’d been more of a non-linear memoir from the beginning, introducing different characters and backstories throughout, but still having the central storyline be from the author’s point of view. Alternatively, I would’ve also enjoyed a more detached, historical point of view. Instead, it felt like he tried to smash the two styles together, and in the end wasn’t able to stick the landing.
I also felt like this genre-fusion hurt his credibility. For example, he describes a lot of important decisions he made as Buzfeed News editor. If this had been a more transparent memoir, it’d be easier to put these accounts into context, as his subjective point of view. Instead, the murky genre often made it hard to judge the author’s authenticity.
Smith also expresses a fair amount of remorse toward the ugly ripple effects of this media traffic arms race. Most of these regrets seem to be about the way new media enabled political causes he doesn’t like. I completely agree that horrible events like January 6th or the rise of online hate are some of the clearest and ugliest examples of the dark side of new media. However, it felt like he was far more apathetic about the subtler issues: how even the “good” news sites affected people’s attention spans and media diets, and encouraged readers and journalists to indulge our worst impulses. Again, if this had been a history, this lack of reflection would’ve been fine; but it was close enough to a memoir that it left me wanting more honesty.
I was torn between giving this 3 or 4 stars, but landed on a 3 in the end. Lots of great information, but in the end the execution didn’t feel right to me.
The book starts out like a standard historical nonfiction. But about halfway through, the author suddenly becomes a main character, and the style takes a sudden shift toward a memoir. I found this shift to be jarring and awkward. I would’ve preferred if it’d been more of a non-linear memoir from the beginning, introducing different characters and backstories throughout, but still having the central storyline be from the author’s point of view. Alternatively, I would’ve also enjoyed a more detached, historical point of view. Instead, it felt like he tried to smash the two styles together, and in the end wasn’t able to stick the landing.
I also felt like this genre-fusion hurt his credibility. For example, he describes a lot of important decisions he made as Buzfeed News editor. If this had been a more transparent memoir, it’d be easier to put these accounts into context, as his subjective point of view. Instead, the murky genre often made it hard to judge the author’s authenticity.
Smith also expresses a fair amount of remorse toward the ugly ripple effects of this media traffic arms race. Most of these regrets seem to be about the way new media enabled political causes he doesn’t like. I completely agree that horrible events like January 6th or the rise of online hate are some of the clearest and ugliest examples of the dark side of new media. However, it felt like he was far more apathetic about the subtler issues: how even the “good” news sites affected people’s attention spans and media diets, and encouraged readers and journalists to indulge our worst impulses. Again, if this had been a history, this lack of reflection would’ve been fine; but it was close enough to a memoir that it left me wanting more honesty.
I was torn between giving this 3 or 4 stars, but landed on a 3 in the end. Lots of great information, but in the end the execution didn’t feel right to me.
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