"This boy will die in a few days. But you can't imagine what happens next..."
German Facebook users might instantly think of heftig but there are more than a hundred other examples across the globe in many different languages and variations. But they all have something in common: their formula for success always remains the same. They try to create suspense, to intrigue the reader, to manipulate emotions. In the end, it's all about the number of views a story generates. But let's take a closer look at how they actually do it.
Normally, there's a sort of classical structure for news stories:
- Headline: The actual core of the news story.
- Subheading: A couple more details on the story.
- Lead: The first sentence of the article. It contains all the necessary bits of information according to the six Ws.
- Source: The following sentences will give more information, especially on whom you rely for information (e.g. "spokesman XY said...").
- More details, offering further insight through a background story and how it might affect future developments.
The latter is not as necessary for good journalism - ideally your story will be constructed in such a way that makes it easy to "cut" your story's last paragraphs. Every article by a good journalist should be constructed like this, making it easier both for his colleagues to shorten the article if necessary and also for his readers - even if they don't read the whole story they will feel well-informed; and if your story is really great, they will feel compelled to read on. (On a side note, this is the reason why many online news sources tend to spread their articles over several pages, tempting the reader to click "Page 2" in order to find out whether the story is of good quality.)
But sites like heftig.co intentionally break this rule that has been tried and tested over decades - and big surprise, they are really successful!
It's not far-fetched to say that some of their stories might get more clicks than those of big newspapers. By intentionally leaving out answers to the most essential w-questions they arouse curiosity. And in addition to this, they heavily rely on emotions: tragedy or strong positive feelings ("He was about to die, but what happened next will make you cry out of joy!"). The perfect combination to go viral.
Interestingly enough, many of their stories go viral, even though it's far from being a secret that websites like this are the complete opposite of being reputable. But they have really optimised their "Social Media Game" - every single story is created to be shared in social networks, mostly Facebook.
But why Facebook? Facebook is the social network to relax, to connect, to be entertained be it stalking your ex or that cute kitten... Most people don't use it for political news (that's Twitter's realm) but for pure entertainment. So yep, Facebook is just perfect for these stories while real news tend to remain noticed but not really clicked on.
(Another side note: Facebook has a much higher percentage of older users while Twitter's users are remarkably younger. And as a matter of fact, younger generations tend to be more experienced with the Internet's tricksters and traps (digital natives) than the older ones (digital immigrants) who have just learned how to use it instead of growing up with it. So, they are more likely to fall for sites like heftig.co.)
Never telling the whole story is the main strategy for any sort of clickbait - but heftig.co has perfected it far more than any tabloid paper.
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