An editor pointed me to what he said was a story about writing headlines.
In a way it was. It was a story about writing direct mail headlines.
But maybe that’s the point. On the Web every story must advertise for attention. The way it does this is through its headline.
Editors have known this forever, and they make it a practice to create short, snappy headlines which fit for their stories.
The headlines are meant to get you to read the first sentence, and that is meant to get you through the first paragraph, and that is meant to lead you into reading the whole story. Each element sells the one which follows.
But that’s not the case here.
What the author of this piece, Andy Hagans (left), is trying to get you is
clicks. And once you get a click, that’s all you need. Get enough
clicks and Google will notice you. Get enough clicks and you’ll go to
the top of their stack. It’s all about the mouse clicks, baby.
Nothing against Andy going with the incentives in front of him. He’s quite up front about it. He calls the techniques he writes about linkbaiting.
But they’re just skin deep.
Worthwhile stories are worthwhile all the way through. Click love just gets you to the first sentence. It doesn’t even get you that far. It just gets you to the page, and if you’re immediately disgusted you still count.
And this is the problem with Internet incentives as presently
constituted. They are just skin deep. They are no better than
advertising incentives. It’s like choosing TV shows based solely on
their names, with no reference to their characters, the ideas behind
them, or anything else.
When you get more superficial than TV, you’re superficial indeed.
