Oct. 29--People don't share porn online.
They don't share celeb gossip either.
That's because porn and celeb gossip don't make you look cool.
So says Emerson Spartz, 27, as he began to unpack his theory of virality during an interview at his company's River North offices.
His business, Spartz Media, does nothing but make "articles" go viral on the Internet. One such article I spotted on an employee's computer screen during a recent visit: "18 Photos That Look Fake But Actually Happened in Real Life."
Spartz began studying Internet virality by accident at age 12 when he dropped out of middle school to educate himself and grow mugglenet.com into the world's most popular Harry Potter fan site.
Spartz now says with confidence that, if he were an academic, his theory would be good enough to get published in an academic journal. Given he's not an academic, he's making money off it, and I'm writing the Cliff Notes version for your benefit.
Chapter 1: The more incentive you give people to share, the more they'll share.
There are two ways to make things go viral. The easiest way, Spartz said, is to bribe people into doing it using coupons, discounts, giveaways, contests, et cetera.
Chapter 2: If you don't have anything to bribe people with, focus on creating emotion.
"You have to create for a user a tremendous amount of emotion," he said. "To get someone to actually talk about your product with their friends requires them to experience a level of emotion so much higher than anything else competing for the same thing."
Spartz asked how many articles I read in a day. And how many do I share? A very small fraction.
"Because most articles just don't create enough emotion," he said. "You have to be really awesome. Your article has to be so awesome to get someone to share it."
Chapter 3: Just any emotion won't do.
"Certain types of emotions work better than others," Spartz said. "Positive, uplifting emotions tend to work the best. Humor, animals, nostalgia, et cetera, et cetera. On the flip side, things that piss people off can work very well. Anger is a powerful motivator."
Anger and joy are among what psychologists call "high-valence emotions." Or, as Spartz explains, high-valence emotions make people feel "up" versus "sitting back in a chair, chilling."
"People don't share depressing articles," Spartz said. "They share things that make them angry and things that make them happy."
Chapter 4: The user's identity matters.
"Before we share something, on a subconscious level, we ask ourselves, 'If I share this, will this make me look cool?'" Spartz said. "All of us want to look good and put out the right image to friends, families and business partners, which is why some of us share certain news sources at a much higher rate than others. Like The New Yorker. People are much more prone to share New Yorker articles because it makes you look smart."
Porn does not make you look smart, he added.
"You have to be so good at understanding your user and what they like, what they don't like, what they care about and who they are, that most of us fail spectacularly at this," Spartz said.
These four points cover the basic theory. But mechanics matter as much if not more than the content.
Chapter 5: Algorithm required.
Spartz began by experimenting with Facebook.
"I developed a series of algorithms to make Facebook pages to go viral," he said. "I created dozens of pages that went from zero to millions of fans over a period of a few hours to a few days. And then I took the same ideas from Facebook to Twitter, got millions of followers on Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, websites, apps. It worked on every major platform."
His algorithms tested hundreds of variables, cataloging which ones correlated positively with virality. (That's how he figured out that happy stories work better than depressing stories.) Spartz then refined that process enough to tell within one minute of an article's debut whether or not it would go viral.
Chapter 6: Don't create the content yourself. Just repackage it.
"Our algorithms identify content going viral in the early phases," he said. "Once we've identified what's going viral, we will use that as inspiration to create a new piece of content similar to but different from the one we identified."
For instance, in July Spartz's dose.com posted "18 Photos That Look Fake But Actually Happened in Real Life." But back in 2008 cracked.com posted "15 Images You Won't Believe Aren't Photoshopped." Or in November of last year, viralnova.com posted "Who Needs Photoshop When These 23 Unbelievable Pictures Are Completely REAL?"
Yes, it's the same stuff, circulated over and over again. We humans are THAT predictable.
Chapter 7: Optimize for mobile.
People on mobile phones often skip over videos.
"They want to get a flavor of what the video is, by seeing some screen shots and a write-up about it," Spartz said of mobile readers. "Then they'll decide if they want to watch the video."
Chapter 8: The headline is most important.
Spartz said he spent three months writing all of the headlines for his company's content. That's worth repeating. The CEO and founder of the company wrote every headline. For three months.
"Because that's how important it is to create a headline that maximizes the chance the user clicks on the article," he said. "It's your whole sales pitch for the article, which is your product. And your product has to deliver, or you fail."
Chapter 9: Give 'em what they want.
"Our model is based on hitting as many home runs as possible," Spartz said. "And you earn more home runs by either getting more at-bats or by increasing your batting average. An at-bat for us is an article we test or produce. So the idea is you test thousands to identify a few home runs. And those home runs get millions and millions of views."
mmharris@tribune.com
Twitter @chiconfidential
