baratunde at digital directions conference in sydney
TRANSCRIPT
@baratunde at #DD11
crowd work
about me
comedian
political writer/activist@jjpolitics
tech geek
f/k/a@the_swine_flu
#MayorThurston@DeliNYC
director of digital@theonion
oEstablished 1756
OHistory
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o the ONIONVOLUME 37 ISSUE 34 AMERICA’S FINEST NEWS SOURCE™ 27 SEPTEMBER–3 OCTOBER 2001
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Jerry Falwell: Is That GuyA Dick Or What?
see PEOPLE page 3C
Hugging Up 76,000 Percentsee NATION page 10A
Massive Attack OnPentagon Page 14 News
see NATION page 14A
Rest Of CountryTemporarily Feels DeepAffection For New York
see NATION page 8A
Not Knowing What Else To Do, Woman BakesAmerican-Flag Cake
NEWS
A look at the numbers that shape your world.
STATshot
SPECIAL REPORT
NEW YORK—In the two weeks sinceterrorists crashed hijacked planes into theWorld Trade Center and Pentagon, Ameri-can life has come to resemble a bad JerryBruckheimer-produced action/disastermovie, shellshocked citizens reportedTuesday.“Terrorist hijackings, buildings blowingup, thousands of people dying—these are
WASHINGTON, DC—In a televisedaddress to the American people Tuesday, adetermined President Bushvowed that the U.S. woulddefeat “whoever exactly it iswe’re at war with here.”
“America’s enemy, be itOsama bin Laden, SaddamHussein, the Taliban, a multi-national coalition of terroristorganizations, any of arogue’s gallery of violentIslamic fringe groups, or anentirely different, non-Islamic aggressorwe’ve never even heard of... be warned,”
JAHANNEM, OUTERDARKNESS—The hijackerswho carried out the Sept. 11attacks on the World Trade
being fed honeyed cakes by 67virgins in a tree-lined garden,if only I would fly the airplane
American Life TurnsInto Bad JerryBruckheimer Movie
Bush said during an 11-minute speechfrom the Oval Office.“The United States ispreparing to strike, directlyand decisively, against you,whoever you are, just as soonas we have a rough idea ofyour identity and a reason-ably decent estimate as towhere your base is located.”
Added Bush: “That is,assuming you have a base.”
Bush is acting with the fullsupport of Congress, whichon Sept. 14 authorized him to use any nec-
‘We Expected Eternal ParadiseFor This,’ Say Suicide Bombers
U.S. Vows To Defeat WhoeverIt Is We’re At War With
Above: An actual scene from real life.
Above: Flanked by Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld, President Bush pledges to “exact revenge, just as soonas we know who we’re exacting revenge against and where they are.”
TOPEKA, KS—Feeling helpless inthe wake of the horrible Sept. 11 ter-rorist attacks that killed thousands,Christine Pear-son baked acake and deco-rated it like anAmerican flagMonday.
“I had to dosomething to
see MOVIE page 13
see WAR page 6
Hijackers Surprised To Find Selves In Hell
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oA Sampling Of Divisions
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The Onion Newspaper
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NEWSWIRE:Area Man Urges Calm In Middle East So He
Can Catch Up On News
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The Onion Publishing
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The Onion News Network
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ONION NEWS NETWORK
• Founded in 1896
• Seen in 92.2 Million U.S. Households and 500,000 U.S. Prison Cells
• Broadcasts in 152 Languages in 811 Countries
• 9 Billion Viewers Worldwide
• Peabody Award-Winning
• Ad Based
#Television#SportsDome & @ONN
oOnion Digital
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theonion.com• Online since 1996. Winner of countless Webbys
• ~7M uniques/month (15% mobile site)
- Another ~2M for avclub.com plus 2.5M total comments
• Under the hood:
- Django-based homegrown CMS; custom server-side video encoding solution; dynamic photo cropping; postgres + python; our own video ad server, e-commerce and mobile; GIT to manage source code
- All with four servers, one database; CDN-based; only three developers
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And now, a series of important words...
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Conversation
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Participation
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Always-On
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Real-Time
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SOCIAL MEDIA!!
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social media
• Big numbers: Twitter 2.6M followers; 0 following; 4th influence rank; Facebook: 1.5M fans
• How we use it
- Basic content distribution
- Viral distribution from web, mobile sites, apps
- Breaking news
- Live event coverage
- “Participation”
- Nation-building (especially TV show support)
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apps
• 1 Million app downloads on Android and iPhone
• Generally in top 10 in news
• Some notes
- Apps are like children. Gotta feed and clothe them
- Android growth much faster than iPhone
- Providing something people don’t want fails
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Digital Choreography
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Exhibit A. Onion News Network on TV
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OMFG CUTE!!!
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Numbers
• @ONN Mentions: 922 (vs daily average of 30)
• @ONN New Follows: 711 (vs daily average of 150)
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Exhibit B. #Oscars
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Image from TweetReach.com
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Image from TweetReach.com
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Numbers: The Doubling
@BrookeAlvarez Followers:
4,169 to 8,400Facebook Fans:
1,250 to 2,172
oTu Stultus Es.
oYou Are Dumb.