Traffic
Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral
(Sprache: Englisch)
"The candid inside tale of two online media rivals, Jonah Peretti of HuffPost and Buzzfeed and Nick Denton of Gawker Media, whose delirious pursuit of attention at scale in the first two decades of the 21st century helped release the dark forces that would...
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"The candid inside tale of two online media rivals, Jonah Peretti of HuffPost and Buzzfeed and Nick Denton of Gawker Media, whose delirious pursuit of attention at scale in the first two decades of the 21st century helped release the dark forces that would overtake the Internet and American society... The curtain opens in Soho in the early 2000's, in that brief moment after the first dotcom crash and 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, within a few square blocks, Nick Denton's merry band of nihilists at his growing Gawker empire and Jonah Peretti's sunnier crew at HuffPost and Buzzfeed were building the foundations of click-bait media. It was tech's age of innocence: the old establishment might have been discredited by the Iraq War, but digital news would facilitate the spread of truth. Progressive activists were first to the scene, and for a while it seemed they were the scene... Ben Smith, who would go on to earn a controversial reputation as Buzzfeed's editor-in-chief, was either there or talked to everyone who was, and in his trademark fashion, he chronicles it all with marvelous lucidity scored with dark wit, sparing no one--and certainly not himself... At the heart of Traffic is one of the great ironies of our time: the Internet, which was going to help the left remake the world in its image, has become the motive force of right populism. As Smith and his colleagues and rivals thought they were inventing digital media, other figures, flickering around the margins of their story, had different designs. People like Steve Bannon and Andrew Breitbart and Gavin McInnes and Chris Poole, the creator of 4chan, all seemed like minor characters in the narrative in which Nick and Jonah and crew were the stars. By 2020, any reasonable observer might wonder if the opposite wasn't the case"--
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1The Bet
Jonah Peretti and his best friend at grad school, Cameron Marlow, bet on everything. The sum was always two dollars. They'd bet on the winner of a basketball game, or whether Jonah could jump up on top of a chest-high wall in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their patter was objectively kind of annoying, these two skinny graduate students with their floppy brown hair, marching around the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where they'd met in the fall of 1999, trying to one-up each other. Cameron, fresh out of college at twenty-two, was one of the youngest in the new class at the MIT Media Lab, and he wore that chip on his shoulder. Jonah was twenty-five. His left-wing politics and laughing California calm failed to conceal his intense competitiveness.
So it made sense that when Jonah went viral, truly viral, for the first time, on January 5, 2001, his friend and rival wouldn't let him bask in his glory. Cameron said it was a fluke. The internet was too random, culture too unpredictable, to pull something like that off again. "Two-dollar bet," Jonah suggested automatically. He'd spend the next twenty years trying to win that bet.
January 5, 2001, was a Friday, a freezing day in Cambridge. It was the last year of the American Century, when public intellectuals were spending their time worrying about the ennui at the end of history. The question was what young Americans, having conquered the Soviet Union and dominated the world, were supposed to do next. Jonah, whose lean height and bouncy gait gave you the sense that he was about to take flight, had turned twenty-seven on New Year's Day. He and Cameron were charting the digital future from their offices looking into the Cube, the glass box at the center of the Media Lab. Cameron was working on turning old issues of Time magazine into digital visualizations. In the next office, Jonah was supposed to be completing the research project on education that had gotten him admitted to MIT from
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his position running a high school computer lab in New Orleans. But, in fact, Jonah was on nike.com, looking at sneakers.
The company was letting shoppers customize shoes. Jonah chose a pair of size 10 Zoom XC USA running shoes and typed "fuck" into the white box where you could put a word of your choice. The site blocked it. To test how sophisticated the system was, he tried a different word: "sweatshop." It went through, so he charged the fifty dollars to his credit card and waited for his sneakers.
Instead, he got an email from Nike. His submission violated their policies-in particular, one against "inappropriate slang."
Jonah wrote back, noting that "sweatshop" "is in fact part of standard English," defined by Webster's dictionary as a "factory in which workers are employed for long hours at low wages and under unhealthy conditions."
He received another polite rejection. He didn't mind being a little annoying, obviously, and kept writing back. And after seven emails from Nike, Jonah made one final request: "Could you please send me a color snapshot of the ten-year-old Vietnamese girl who makes my shoes?"
That was the end of his correspondence with polite Nike customer service representatives. Jonah was pleased with his prank and, in particular, the line about the Vietnamese girl, so he put all the emails in order and submitted the exchange to Harper's Magazine, hoping he could reach what was then the pinnacle of success and attention for something like that: the Harper's Readings section, a monthly-print!-compilation of odd and timely documents. The magazine declined, so on January 15, he forwarded the email to ten friends. Some forwarded it from there-it was the kind of slacker anti-corporate joke that hit at the complacent end of the Clinton era. On January 17, Jonah's old roommate from New Orleans, Tim Shey, put the text of the exchange on his personal website, something people were star
The company was letting shoppers customize shoes. Jonah chose a pair of size 10 Zoom XC USA running shoes and typed "fuck" into the white box where you could put a word of your choice. The site blocked it. To test how sophisticated the system was, he tried a different word: "sweatshop." It went through, so he charged the fifty dollars to his credit card and waited for his sneakers.
Instead, he got an email from Nike. His submission violated their policies-in particular, one against "inappropriate slang."
Jonah wrote back, noting that "sweatshop" "is in fact part of standard English," defined by Webster's dictionary as a "factory in which workers are employed for long hours at low wages and under unhealthy conditions."
He received another polite rejection. He didn't mind being a little annoying, obviously, and kept writing back. And after seven emails from Nike, Jonah made one final request: "Could you please send me a color snapshot of the ten-year-old Vietnamese girl who makes my shoes?"
That was the end of his correspondence with polite Nike customer service representatives. Jonah was pleased with his prank and, in particular, the line about the Vietnamese girl, so he put all the emails in order and submitted the exchange to Harper's Magazine, hoping he could reach what was then the pinnacle of success and attention for something like that: the Harper's Readings section, a monthly-print!-compilation of odd and timely documents. The magazine declined, so on January 15, he forwarded the email to ten friends. Some forwarded it from there-it was the kind of slacker anti-corporate joke that hit at the complacent end of the Clinton era. On January 17, Jonah's old roommate from New Orleans, Tim Shey, put the text of the exchange on his personal website, something people were star
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Autoren-Porträt von Ben Smith
Ben Smith is the editor in chief of Semafor, a new global news company. He is the former media columnist for The New York Times and founding editor in chief of BuzzFeed News. Before that, he was among the first reporters to adapt the tools of the internet to political journalism for the Observer (New York), the New York Daily News, and Politico. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three children.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Ben Smith
- 2023, 352 Seiten, Maße: 16,3 x 24 cm, Gebunden, Englisch
- Verlag: Penguin Random House
- ISBN-10: 0593299752
- ISBN-13: 9780593299753
- Erscheinungsdatum: 08.05.2023
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
Engrossing and suspenseful . . . Can viral political content ever be valuable political content and vice versa? Anxiety about this question haunts Smith, and this moral seriousness is what lifts Traffic above other accounts of adventures in start-up land. Virginia Heffernan, New York TimesBen Smith s new book shows how the race for clicks spawned then strangled the new media . . . Illuminating. The New Yorker
Expertly pulls readers in . . . Graced with a keen eye and sharp wit, [Smith] . . . captures the drama with light prose and a breezy tone. He observes that internet news morphed from being a vehicle for the left into the tool of the right. It s a lesson worth remembering. The Guardian
Ben Smith s account of the rise and fall of BuzzFeed and Gawker Media, the pioneering group of blogs run by Nick Denton, is an amusing story of New York ambition and hubris. But it has a deeper social significance: both the news business and politics were infiltrated by the clickbait techniques they developed. . . Smith sharply chronicles the revolutionary moment. . . [he] tells the story energetically, with plenty of insider gossip about the digital journalists who briefly became media stars (at least to a small circle of like-minded Manhattanites). But Traffic would be less worthwhile were it just a traditional narrative of the rise and fall of a business. Its insight lies in Smith s reflections on how many of the techniques pioneered by Peretti and Denton have been absorbed into the mainstream. Everyone craves traffic now. Financial Times
A well-constructed narrative full of in-depth, on-the-scene reporting . . . Traffic is a fascinating book because it lays out the important ways that traffic was a god that failed. Sonny Bunch, The Bulwark
A detailed, smart account of the foibles of those early days, when no one knew how to conduct decent journalism and make money at the same time. [Smith s]
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discussion of the Huffington Post is especially telling as a study in haplessness. Along the way, he tells entertaining out-of-school tales of the early Facebook, the Drudge Report, Breitbart, and Twitter. Self-aware and self-critical, Smith allows that while all these entities helped create today s digital culture, it was often not for the better, even if Denton today voices hope for a Talmudic internet still to be made. There s no better history of the Wild West days of early social media than this one. Kirkus (starred review)
A riveting insider s look at the history of online news media . . . Smith s rigorous journalism and proximity to his subject imbue this with abounding insight, and the author s sharp eye for character gives it the feel of a novel. Sobering and captivating, this is an essential take on the 21st-century media landscape. Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Ben Smith's book Traffic, a story of rising and falling fortunes in digital media, is more than just an engagingly written page-turner. It's a hunt for the signal within the noise, the meaning within the online nonsense. It's both a great read and a search for something more substantial within the American political conversation. Ian Bremmer
Ben Smith is the Tom Wolfe of our digital age: the writer capturing what we lived through, what to make of it and best of all the drama of billion-dollar rivalries between nerds and delinquents. Traffic profiles the grifters, dreamers, geniuses and asshats who constructed the golden age of digital media. You should absolutely read this book. Charles Duhigg, bestselling author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better
This is a rollicking and fun, but also unnerving, chronicle of how the colorful characters at Gawker, BuzzFeed and other outlets invented the era of viral media and what the consequences, both bright and very ominous, have been. It s a joy to read, but it will also open your eyes to how hot medias have melted our democracy. Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of The Code Breaker
Traffic is the definitive account of the rise of digital media and the attention economy. The book is smart, entertaining and insightful. It reveals how technology and our shifting media landscape have forever transformed culture, politics, and the world we live in. It s a fascinating read and peek behind the curtain of how culture gets made. Having played a key role in the industry itself, Smith is an expert chronicler of the promise and the failures of digital media and tech giants. The book captures the highs and lows of the dawn of social media and the influencer world. You won t be able to put it down. It s authoritative, captivating, and a must read for anyone who cares about our information ecosystem. Taylor Lorenz, technology columnist, Washington Post
Ben Smith tells a true story of the internet, how for so many dreamers it ends in heartbreak. Here, in an edge-of-your seat narrative, we watch the gold-rush value of clicks, eyeballs, and unique visitors go to practically nothing for everyone else as Facebook takes it all. An honest, insightful, unsparing literature about the internet occupies a very sparse shelf, but Smith, both actor and acute observer in this tale, adds a likely classic to it. Michael Wolff, bestselling author of Fire and Fury and Burn Rate
A riveting insider s look at the history of online news media . . . Smith s rigorous journalism and proximity to his subject imbue this with abounding insight, and the author s sharp eye for character gives it the feel of a novel. Sobering and captivating, this is an essential take on the 21st-century media landscape. Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Ben Smith's book Traffic, a story of rising and falling fortunes in digital media, is more than just an engagingly written page-turner. It's a hunt for the signal within the noise, the meaning within the online nonsense. It's both a great read and a search for something more substantial within the American political conversation. Ian Bremmer
Ben Smith is the Tom Wolfe of our digital age: the writer capturing what we lived through, what to make of it and best of all the drama of billion-dollar rivalries between nerds and delinquents. Traffic profiles the grifters, dreamers, geniuses and asshats who constructed the golden age of digital media. You should absolutely read this book. Charles Duhigg, bestselling author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better
This is a rollicking and fun, but also unnerving, chronicle of how the colorful characters at Gawker, BuzzFeed and other outlets invented the era of viral media and what the consequences, both bright and very ominous, have been. It s a joy to read, but it will also open your eyes to how hot medias have melted our democracy. Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of The Code Breaker
Traffic is the definitive account of the rise of digital media and the attention economy. The book is smart, entertaining and insightful. It reveals how technology and our shifting media landscape have forever transformed culture, politics, and the world we live in. It s a fascinating read and peek behind the curtain of how culture gets made. Having played a key role in the industry itself, Smith is an expert chronicler of the promise and the failures of digital media and tech giants. The book captures the highs and lows of the dawn of social media and the influencer world. You won t be able to put it down. It s authoritative, captivating, and a must read for anyone who cares about our information ecosystem. Taylor Lorenz, technology columnist, Washington Post
Ben Smith tells a true story of the internet, how for so many dreamers it ends in heartbreak. Here, in an edge-of-your seat narrative, we watch the gold-rush value of clicks, eyeballs, and unique visitors go to practically nothing for everyone else as Facebook takes it all. An honest, insightful, unsparing literature about the internet occupies a very sparse shelf, but Smith, both actor and acute observer in this tale, adds a likely classic to it. Michael Wolff, bestselling author of Fire and Fury and Burn Rate
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