Scott DeLong's Success Formula for Viral Nova

pocketrockets

pocketrockets

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Businessweek.com sat down with Scott DeLong at his house recently and released a new interview about his success.

Scott DeLong's Viral Nova Success Formula - Businessweek


success18_nova_202.jpg
 


A few major publications have been following the evolution and changes at Viral Nova.

How clickbait grew up and got (sort of) serious - The Washington Post


the tl;dr


-ViralNova did north of $10 million in revenue for 2014. Expects to more than double that for 2015.

-unlike viral competitors BuzzFeed and Upworthy, ViralNova hasn't raised venture capital. BuzzFeed has raised $96 million at a valuation of $850 million.

-relocated to Manhattan, New York with a 3,000 sq ft office in part to tap into the talent pool of writers.

-Also signed on a PR firm, an executive team, for the office space in Manhattan

-now up to 15 writers and a total staff of 25

-100 million monthly visitors

-The company announced a new native advertising initiative that will let brands and advertising agencies sponsor content on the site, much as sites like the New York Times and the Washington Post do already. That replicates the business model of its viral predecessor, BuzzFeed.

-plan is to build out more content verticals like DIY, science, animals

-Viral Nova grew almost entirely from Facebook but now only 50% to 60% of its traffic comes from Facebook.

-For the past year, the company has maintained a formal relationship with Facebook, even testing some features in partnership with it.
 
i had a prominent wf member work hard to dissuade me from this path after i suggested it in good faith. you know who you are.
 
drave said:
i had a prominent wf member work hard to dissuade me from this path after i suggested it in good faith. you know who you are.
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Lemme guess...because you're building the foundation of your business on Facebook which is like building a house on quicksand?
 
For every viral nova there's a million AmazingViralStarburst.in's out there...

(And they're all banking harder than drave...)
 
You'd think that he would've been sued by now by the copyright owners since they now know the site is bringing in a shitload of cash each month.
 
chatmasta said:
this is why marketers learn to program. viralnova can be almost entirely automated.
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you've written a program that automates summaries on clickworthy headlines & content for uber-current news? do tell, bro. the floor is yours.

i'm sure scott would love to fire his 15 writers, he hasn't thought about this for 2 seconds, help a brotha out.
 
AngryFiver said:
You'd think that he would've been sued by now by the copyright owners since they now know the site is bringing in a shitload of cash each month.
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A shit ton of this content comes from Reddit (and the like) who's policy is that the user retains copyright of submitted content. So it would be up to the individual person to track their content and lay claim. I doubt many people give that much of a damn.
 
Lol he is making serious bank. Still though he shells out soooo much on fb ads but whatever works, works i guess.
 
drave said:
you've written a program that automates summaries on clickworthy headlines & content for uber-current news? do tell, bro. the floor is yours.

i'm sure scott would love to fire his 15 writers, he hasn't thought about this for 2 seconds, help a brotha out.
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You'd be surprised what can be done. This company actually generates A LOT of the top ranking financial and sports news out there:

Natural Language Generation | Artificial Intelligence Platform | Narrative Science

I used their API on a project (just for reporting analytics in English), but I also worked for a big publishing site that basically has a whole team dedicated to extracting text from the web, parsing it into semantic data, then generating viral content. If you seed it with spidered content and factor in the social metrics of what you're extracting your data from, you'll get proven "original" viral content.

Ex: Computer extracts(machine learning, the free libraries are out there) that APPLE went up X amount, and parses that APPLE had a PRESS CONFERENCE, the PRESS CONFERENCE was about APPLE WATCH, which is a new ELECTRONICS PRODUCT. The PRICE was $X.XX, which is the HIGHEST since MAY 20XX. Computer spits out "Apple Watch Press Conference Sets Stock Soaring to $X.XX, Highest Since May"

Also, if anyone has the right traffic source to give things a push, I'm down to try generating content with real machine learning. I have no problem ripping off my previous employers ideas.
 
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