How Forbes Stole A New York Times Article And Got All The Traffic

nostrich:

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but how much is a title worth? If the story that proceeds is any indicator, a title is worth over 6700 words and months of research. It all began Friday when the New York Times published an article “How Companies Learn Your Secrets“. It was an extremely long article which discussed how large companies like WalMart and Target collect data about your individual consumption patters to figure out how to most efficiently make you happy. It was a great piece but there was one problem: it didn’t have the title it deserved.

The original title was “How Companies Learn Your Secrets”. Kashmir Hill, a writer at Forbes, realized this and quickly developed a condensed version of the article with a far more powerful title: “How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did“. It cut out the crap and got to the real shocker of the story. As of the writing of this story, the New York Times article has 60 likes and shares on Facebook versus 12,902 which the Forbes article has. The Forbes article also has a mind boggling 680,000 page views, a number that can literally make a writer’s career.

Forbes did some journalism this weekend.

Local Digital Ad Revenue to Hit $37.9 Billion by 2015 

From Mashable: 

Spending on local digital ads will grow from $23.3 billion in 2011 to $37.9 billion in 2015, according to BIA/Kelsey. However, the local media research firm lowered its expectations for combined digital and traditional local advertising revenues in 2011 from $136.2 billion to $135.9 billion.

The share of digital media spend will increase from 14.6 percent of all local ad revenues in 2010 to 18.9 percent in 2012 and 25.4 percent in 2015, according to Kelsey’s “Annual U.S. Local Media Forecast, 2010-2015 – Fall Update.”

The company also measured expenditures on social media by local and national advertisers, noting that $4.6 billion will be spent on social network ad formats in 2012, up from $2.1 billion in 2010. By 2015, that will go up to $8.3 billion. National advertisers dominate in social ad spending, though; in 2012, $3.5 billion of the $4.6 billion total will be spent by national ad buyers.

Source: Mashable

From Mashable: 

Acknowledging that having a mobile presence is trickier than it appears, Google launched an initiative called “GoMo” Tuesday that aims to help businesses work out the kinks involved in going mobile.

Source: Mashable

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