Taint week
We’ve entered what I’ve come to think of as “editorial taint week,” the publishing industry perineum between Christmas and New Year’s Day. As mentioned before, we’re doing lighter posting both this week and next week, and our blogging sausage factory has slowed to a sputtering hum instead of it’s usual slamming thunderous hammering and splorting. We’re working on some perhaps ill-advised dev projects behind the scenes (who’s idea was it to upgrade the Tribe over New Year’s Eve? Oh right: mine), but for the most part things are pretty quiet.
Wedding photographers: this is what can happen when you get featured on Offbeat Bride
Last week we featured Junshien Lau’s photos of a Stephanie & Jonathan’s Calvin and Hobbes wedding. Then what happened? Well, we’ll let Junshien tell you…
A different kind of viral post
Today, Offbeat Mama is having its highest traffic day since launching in 2009 because a post called I’ve started telling my daughters I’m beautiful has gone viral. But it’s going viral in ways I’ve never seen before. If you like nerding out about this kind of thing, huddle up. Let’s take a look at how this post is different…
Contagious content: the challenges of memes you don’t want
Content is highly contagious. In my online communities, I’ve learned this over and over and over again — both for good and bad. We all know that content’s contagiousness is what drives funny things going viral on the web. It drives the memes that I eat for breakfast each morning. Contagious content makes corners of the internet feel like one big hilarious inside joke. We’re all infected with the awesome!
The challenges with contagious content is when the infection doesn’t line up with the brand or editorial goals of a given website. LOLcats being contagious is AWESOME for the Cheezeburger folks — less awesome for someone trying to run a community dedicated to, say, ailurophobics.
Here are a few examples of contagious content challenges we deal with on the Empire, and how we deal with ’em: