"Publishers believed that maximizing 'reach', particularly as measured by the number of monthly unique visitors, was the key to success. It didn't matter how long someone stayed as long as they visited your site, for any length of time, at least once during the month."
"The whole period was like the Underwear Gnomes meme come to life. Phase 1: Collect lots of low-quality traffic from Facebook. Phase 2: ???. Phase 3: Pivot to video."
"It didn't help that Facebook was constantly tinkering with News Feed, and grossly exaggerating metrics like average time spent watching videos."
A Substack Live session will be held to discuss the political and foreign policy crisis facing the White House. The session will feature Galen Druke and will be available for subscribers later. The article reflects on the challenges faced by FiveThirtyEight since its relaunch under Disney/ESPN, emphasizing the struggle for quality content amidst a focus on maximizing reach. The impact of Facebook's algorithm changes and the resulting adversarial relationship with publishers are highlighted as significant factors in this crisis.
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