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<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:480px"><div class="image">REUTERS/Eric ThayerCape Canaveral, Florida</div></div>Some <keyword id="6362513" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Startups">startups</keyword> that fail initially look like they'll be giant successes. That's because they're able to drum up a ton of traffic or users very quickly, and early adoption can be a sign of a lasting product. It's also easiest to attract <keyword id="6359051" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="investors">investors</keyword> when a company is in hyper-growth mode.
Sometimes, those high traffic numbers are fleeting; they're uncontrollable gifts from a big source like Facebook that can be taken away. Other times, startups use tricks to inflate growth and attract investors, but they're usually unsustainable. 
Publishers may buy traffic on Outbrain or StumbleUpon, for example. E-commerce companies may offer discounts that improve gross sales but cause them to<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jody-sherman-ecomom-2013-4?op=1"> operate at a loss.</a> Others master Facebook's platform temporarily and get a flood of referrals.
When investors see big growth numbers, in their haste to get into the deal, they may forget to ask an important question:
What is causing the rocket ship growth, one source or many?
If the answer is one source, will there still be a business if it's suddenly taken away?
In 2012, a few startups grew incredibly quickly on the heels of Facebook's platform then raised tons of money. Those startups include <keyword id="1045230" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Viddy">Viddy</keyword>, Socialcam and <keyword id="943962" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Branchout">BranchOut</keyword> (Fab and Path did also, but those businesses are still alive and working themselves out). Socialcam <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/socialcam-and-its-4-employees-get-acquired-for-60-million-a-conversation-with-ceo-mike-seibel-and-autodesk-2012-7">sold for $60 million at its peak</a>. Viddy, a Socialcam competitor, went on to raise at a $350 million valuation. Branchout, a professional networking tool for Facebook, raised $25 million and had so much traffic that journalists were <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hey-linkedin-youd-better-go-buy-branchout-before-facebook-does-2012-4">urging LinkedIn to buy it</a>.
In each case, the rocket ship growth disappeared shortly after the fundraises. 
Viddy's President, who is currently returning millions of dollars to investors because the idea didn't pan out, recently said: "Viddy raised a substantial amount of capital last year, during different market conditions."
<a href="http://allthingsd.com/20130507/social-startup-viddy-recapitalizes-shuffles-board/">AllThingsD's Mike Isaac</a> explains those market conditions well. What Viddy's president really meant to say was it had one source of traffic, Facebook, and it disappeared. 
"The market conditions Aguhob speaks of, I’d estimate, involve Facebook’s proclivity to giveth and taketh away. Viddy, along with other social video startups like Socialcam, rose to prominence last summer on the back of Facebook, when the social giant was delivering massive amounts of traffic to social video apps. Alas, after wide reports of Socialcam spamming users and general distaste for its viral reach, Facebook turned off the traffic funnel to social video apps, leaving companies like Viddy and Socialcam in the lurch.
"So essentially, Viddy raised tons of money when traffic was rich and scaling, hiring and expanding resources rapidly made sense. Now, in its post-Facebook-aided future, Viddy is downsizing — both in bank balance and in team size."
Branchout faced a similar situation. It climbed from 400,000 monthly active users in December 2011 to 8 million four months later, raised a ton of money, then <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/in-april-linkedin-killer-branchout-raised-25-million-since-then-its-traffic-has-plummeted-2012-6">lost two-thirds of those users by June 2012</a>. Marini told Business Insider then that his team stopped making user acquisition on Facebook its priority, which is why the number nosedived. 
In other words, once BranchOut stopped getting Facebook referrals, it found it had no business. Yesterday, TechCrunch wrote that <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/07/branchout-pivots-workplace-chat/">BranchOut had failed and was pivoting.</a>
The smartest investors see past hockey stick charts and examine why companies are growing quickly. They ask for access to Google Analytics, care about engagement, and don't get distracted by big, artificial numbers. Those who don't may think they're buying into something great, only to find themselves out of a lot of cash. And startups who rely on one source may find themselves suddenly out of business.

An Obvious Reason Why Some Startups Fail Shortly After Raising Tons Of Money

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>Pebble, the company behind one of the first smartwatches, has seen sales double after Apple released its Watch, <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/04/apple-watch-having-no-material-impact-on-competitors.html">according to CEO&#xa0;Eric Migicovsky</a>.&#xa0;Migicovsky said in an interview with CNBC at Web Summit in Ireland that Apple's wearable product&#xa0;had had "no material impact" on the company. "In fact we're selling two [times] the amount this year than we were last year," he said.Pebble is focused on being the mass market smartwatch, according to&#xa0;Migicovsky, while Apple is focused on "being the Rolex or the Tag [Heuer]" and so there is no overlap.<div></div>Pebble recently<a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/pebble-time-apple-watch-wearable-tech-2015-6">&#xa0;launched the Time</a>, which brought&#xa0;colour screens to the lineup that&#xa0;had previously been restricted to monochrome. The original Pebble smartwatch - which came from a <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-watch-for-iphone-and-android/description">$10 million (£6.4 million) Kickstarter campaign</a> - was bare bones and the company is clearly looking to branch-out into higher-end markets.&#xa0; <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-stores-are-specifically-designed-2015-10">Every square foot of an Apple store is designed to make you spend more money</a></h3> <div> <div> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="9ocm5ybzoHjbHamXbpG6dWvvK4I6iPsj" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> </div> </div> </div>

The Apple Watch's biggest competitor has seen sales double

<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image">Scott DelongScott DeLong, Viral Nova editor</div></div>It's tempting to build a startup on the backbone of a larger company like Facebook, which can send generous traffic and ease monetary pain temporarily for founders. But when that source of traffic decides to cut you off, it can cause once-promising startups to struggle or fail.
Viddy, Branchout, Zynga and Path all gained a lot of initial users on Facebook. When Facebook cut them off, it wasn't easy to bounce back. Now Facebook is causing a lot of web publishers to feel the same pain.
Last year, Facebook flooded content producers with traffic, possibly to prepare for the news reader it's launching, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-news-feed-and-its-paper-app-2014-1">Paper</a>. But in December, Facebook said it'd be <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20131210/facebook-wants-to-be-a-newspaper-facebook-users-have-their-own-ideas/">changing its algorithm</a>s to bury "fluff" content and highlight substantive content instead.
One startup that got particularly good at earning Facebook traffic was ViralNova. In just eight months, it soared from no traffic to 100 million monthly visitors. Its content closely resembles BuzzFeed's and UpWorthy's.
Now startups like ViralNova are starting to feel the pinch. It's one reason ViralNova's founder and sole employee, Scott DeLong, is <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-viralnova-might-sell-2014-1">considering selling his company.</a>
He likes a startup dependent on Facebook to opening a "McDonald's on an active volcano."
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-partner="tweetdeck">
Reached 1m fans on FB. Post reach was promptly cut in half. Running a business on FB is like opening a McDonald's on an active volcano.
- Scott DeLong (@scottintheworld) <a href="https://twitter.com/scottintheworld/statuses/427196597286346752">January 25, 2014</a></blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<a href="https://twitter.com/jsulus">@jsulus</a> It means you never know when the whole thing can blow up/change on a whim. FB is constantly changing things; no consistency.
- Scott DeLong (@scottintheworld) <a href="https://twitter.com/scottintheworld/statuses/427226119914274816">January 25, 2014</a></blockquote>

DeLong wouldn't be opposed to spending money to increase his content's visibility on Facebook. In fact, he's spent a good amount getting ViralNova's traffic to where it is now.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<a href="https://twitter.com/tommorr156">@tommorr156</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/jsulus">@jsulus</a> I've spent considerably more than $5.
- Scott DeLong (@scottintheworld) <a href="https://twitter.com/scottintheworld/statuses/427326619233968128">January 26, 2014</a></blockquote>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
I wonder if FB could offer a monthly subscription service for Pages: normal reach, higher reach, premium reach. Cut out the guesswork.
- Scott DeLong (@scottintheworld) <a href="https://twitter.com/scottintheworld/statuses/427567640937132032">January 26, 2014</a></blockquote>

Building A Startup On The Back Of Facebook Is Like 'Opening A McDonald's On An Active Volcano'

<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"></div>Apple</div>SAN FRANCISCO, March 11 (<keyword id="76338" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Reuters">Reuters</keyword>) - Last spring, the future for Viddy, a video-sharing <keyword id="6354576" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Facebook">Facebook</keyword> app, seemed as sunny as southern California's skies.
Based a block away from Venice Beach, the 30-person startup impressed prospective investors with skyrocketing user growth figures and won funding from them at a $370 million valuation. The tech press hailed it as the "Instagram for video," potentially ripe for a billion-dollar-plus buyout. Justin Bieber wanted to invest - and the pop star eventually did just that.
But this month, the company fired its chief executive, laid off nearly half of its staff and blamed plummeting user numbers on something it once believed to be its ticket to success: Facebook Inc.
"Everyone has known for years that Facebook can be a huge driver of traffic, but Facebook also frequently changes who gets traffic," said Brian O'Malley, a Viddy director and a partner at venture capital firm Battery Ventures, which is an investor in Viddy. "We certainly didn't anticipate the decline."
Viddy's dramatic reversal of fortune is a common tale among builders of software and services that rode the No. 1 social network to viral stardom, only to plummet when Facebook made one of its frequent changes in the way third-party <keyword id="6354741" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Apps">apps</keyword> can communicate with and solicit customers.
Investors and entrepreneurs say that the unpredictable way that Facebook cuts off apps or suppresses their presence has made them increasingly wary of building companies that rely on Facebook. Some believe Facebook could eventually attract regulatory scrutiny because of its ability to make or break companies that rely on its billion-strong base of users.
Douglas Purdy, Facebook's director of developer products, said the company boosts traffic to apps that prove to be popular and takes it away from those that overwhelm people with notifications or are otherwise abusive or unpopular. In the past year and a half, Facebook has cut down spam complaints by 90 percent, he said.
"We don't want to be in the business of king-making," Purdy said. "In the end, users decide what they care about, and they have control over it. If you're a great developer and you're good at sharing really good content, you're going to get traffic."
He declined to comment on relationships with individual developers.
Developers sympathetic to Facebook say that the company has rightly prioritized its users, who could abandon the network if they feel overwhelmed by solicitations from apps.
"Facebook thinks first and foremost about the user," said Riccardo Zacconi, the chief executive of game maker King.com. "For companies that were relying 100 percent on virality, there's been a negative impact, but it's been a better user experience."
Viral growth occurs when current users recruit other users, by inviting them to join, touting the content or sharing an application.
It is not clear if Viddy and other firms who have partly blamed Facebook for declining fortunes would have run into difficulties eventually anyway as, for example, rivals came out with new products.
HOT STARTUPS
But as consumers spend increasing time on mobile devices, disaffected developers could choose to focus on marketing their apps directly to Apple Inc's App Store and Google Inc's Play market - two platforms that compete with Facebook.
"Facebook is in a platform battle that they're losing right now," said Nabeel Hyatt, a partner at Spark Capital, a venture capital firm that has backed rival social media companies like Twitter and Tumblr. "When we have startup companies coming in and presenting about where they're going to get users, most of those conversations are aboutiOS and then Android, and then maybe Facebook."
For hot startups, the Facebook platform used to be "the cocktail party you had to be at," Hyatt added. "It's becoming just another cocktail party."
For years, startups like Viddy and news apps like The Washington Post Social Reader used automated messages or posts on its users' Facebook pages to lure other users to install its app. But that put them at the mercy of "EdgeRank," the opaque and closely guarded algorithm that Facebook constantly tweaks to control whether an app's posts are broadly exposed to users.
In financial disclosures, Facebook has warned investors that a fundamental challenge in its business model is finding the balance between the "frequency, prominence and size of ads and other commercial content we display" with its user experience. While Facebook is under intense pressure from Wall Street to turn its massive audience into growth in advertising revenue, a lot of the changes that rattle firms like Viddy seem to be more related to Facebook's attempts to retain users.
Viddy's implosion has been spectacular - it fell from 35 million monthly users at its peak last year to half a million recently, according to Appdata.com, a tracking service.
But the collapse is not unique. Branchout, a business networking service built on top of Facebook, raised $25 million last April from A-list backers including Accel Partners. But now it languishes with just 100,000 monthly users on Facebook, down from a high of 39 million, after Facebook limited the automatic notifications that Branchout used to attract users.
The poster child for fallen Facebook stars has been Zynga Inc, the game publisher that shot to popularity, and a lucrative IPO, with viral Facebook games like FarmVille that distributed a deluge of notifications about virtual farm animals before Facebook clamped down.
Zynga, whose shares are trading two-thirds below its IPO price, has since announced that it would loosen its ties with Facebook and develop its own network for gamers. Zynga declined to comment for this article.
PUSH-AND-PULL
The fate of Facebook apps have drawn attention to the perennial push-and-pull between large technology companies and smaller developers. Like tech industry heavyweights before it, Facebook recognizes it can expand its market power and offer new features by fostering a thriving ecosystem. But those relationships have historically been fraught.
In the 1990s, the Windows operating system rose to dominate personal computing, but its maker Microsoft Corp was accused of favoring its own browser and word processor over its competitors' offerings like Netscape and WordPerfect.
Similarly, Apple Inc's iPhone dominated smartphone sales 15 years later with the help of third-party apps - but it, too, has periodically attracted attention from the Federal Trade Commission over whom and what it lets into its App Store and iTunes platforms. Recently, Twitter has also clashed with some third-party developers.
Facebook first opened its programming interfaces to outside developers in 2007. The company later rolled out log-in credentials for third-party sites and then the powerful "Open Graph" protocol, which gives apps developers access to troves of data.
The company said it expects developers to contribute interesting content - rather than game the system for growth.
"Facebook is a story-telling device," said Purdy, the Facebook executive. "Driving millions and millions of installs is not why we built it."
"There are always going to be players who, for whatever reason, aren't seeing what they want or feel disenfranchised," he added. "But when we look at the totality of the ecosystem, it's never been stronger."
And current and former Facebook employees argue that the company has sought to communicate to its developers that they shouldn't be over-reliant on Facebook.
In Zynga's early years, for example, Facebook employees advised Zynga CEO Mark Pincus on renaming Zynga's highly successful "Texas Hold'em" poker game on Facebook to "Zynga Poker," in order to strengthen Zynga as an independent brand and differentiate it from competing gaming companies, people close to the situation said.
COMPETITIVE PRACTICES
But there are signs that Facebook may not be as collaborative as it once was.
In January, Tom Katis, the chief executive of Voxer, a voice-messaging app that has raised $30 million from Institutional Venture Partners and Intel Capital, received an email from Facebook representatives requesting a phone call. Facebook told Katis that it intended to cut off Voxer, which had used Facebook's log-in credentials for over a year, from accessing Facebook's friends data because it did not share its own data with Facebook - and because Voxer replicated communications features that Facebook wanted to build itself.
Katis has brushed off the incident, saying he is confident Voxer will continue to grow swiftly independent of Facebook.
"We were flattered that Facebook called us a competitor," Katis said. "It's their platform. They can do whatever they want. But it's just another cautionary tale."
Later that month, Facebook blocked Yandex, the Russian search engine, from crawling through its network. Facebook said that those companies took advantage of its network without sharing any information back.
Facebook's Purdy denied the company is being less collaborative, saying it is seeking to have "nuanced and mature" discussions with developers when conflicts arise.
Although there are no indications that the Federal Trade Commission, which has wrestled with Facebook over privacy issues, has looked into its competitive practices, experts broadly say that this is all but assured as Facebook continues to grow.
"One of the issues that Facebook faces that is also true for Google is that it supports so many developers," said David S. Evans, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School who has advised Google and Microsoft on antitrust matters. "Just by the law of large numbers, you're going to get complaints. That's a real vulnerability for the big Internet platforms."
For now, developers say they are frustrated mostly because they cannot anticipate the vagaries of Facebook's EdgeRank. Last week, Facebook took the rare step of publicly refuting comments by a New York Times writer who opined that the social network might be artificially suppressing user posts as a way to encourage people to pay to disseminate their posts.
"You have the combination of few tools available to build your business and no clear lines of communication," said the founder of a startup who spoke anonymously because his company still depends on Facebook for its traffic. "Is it worth it for founders today to quit your job, raise a bunch of money, hire a bunch of people, only to get to a point where it's really hard to get viral?"
REAL BUSINESS MODEL
But even if it left some companies in ruins, app makers who take the long view concede that Facebook's crackdown had an unintended benefit: It helped deflate a social media bubble propped up by unsustainable startups.
"You need a real business model now," said Aaron Ginn, an expert in Web traffic development who formerly worked for StumbleUpon, a website discovery app. "You can't rely on viral growth."
Branchout Chief Executive Rick Marini said his company was in the midst of improving its own offering.
"Facebook made several changes to the viral channels and app developers needed to react," Marini said. "For Branchout, the silver lining is that we're focusing more on our product development instead of viral user acquisition."
Meanwhile, a much leaner Viddy consolidated operations under co-founder J.J. Aguhob and released a new version of its iPhone app.
O'Malley, the Viddy investor, said in hindsight, the boom in traffic from Facebook - and the stratospheric investor expectations that followed - set the company on the wrong track.
"With the Facebook traffic and with the larger round, did we lose focus on what was important? Yes," O'Malley said. "If you can get traffic from Facebook, great. But don't bank on it."
<div class="nc_footer">
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</div>

Sometimes, Facebook Destroys Startups Built For Its Platform

On March 26, 2012, a new <keyword id="6354777" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Media">media</keyword> startup called <a href="http://www.upworthy.com/">Upworthy</a> launched. Now it has 50 million monthly unique readers.
Almost all of its readers come from Facebook. The headlines, which <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-upworthy-grew-to-104-million-monthly-readers-in-its-first-year-2013-3">Upworthy's editors toil over</a>, leave much to be desired and tug at heart strings. Although there's little more to the stories than something visual, like an infographic or a video, many of the posts are shared by millions of people on social media platforms.
With a staff of just 40 people, not all of them writers, <keyword id="1753005" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Upworthy">Upworthy</keyword> is earning more than 1 million pageviews per employee. It's sneaking up on BuzzFeed, the first publication to really play into people's emotions. BuzzFeed boasts more than 75 million monthly uniques.
Here's what Upworthy's 2013 monthly traffic looks like:
<div class="image-container"><div class="image">Upworthy</div></div>
Lately, other <keyword id="6362513" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Startups">startups</keyword> have started to catch on to Upworthy's magical, social recipe. They've gained millions of readers in just a few months. Here are a few of them.
<h2>1. <a href="http://www.distractify.com">Distractify</a></h2>
<div class="image-container"><div class="image">Distractify</div></div>
Like Upworthy, Distractify tries to find positive stories to present to readers with vague headlines. It also teases cute animals, like Buzzfeed. Recent headlines include:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://distractify.com/people/amazing/he-found-a-barely-alive-creature-under-a-bag-of-mulch-what-he-did-next-that-will-take-your-breath-away/">He Found A Barely-Alive Creature Under A Bag Of Mulch. What He Did Next Will Take Your Breath Away.</a><a href="http://distractify.com/people/amazing/he-found-a-barely-alive-creature-under-a-bag-of-mulch-what-he-did-next-that-will-take-your-breath-away/"></a></li>
<li><a href="http://distractify.com/people/celebrities/can-you-guess-what-miley-and-this-dog-have-in-common/">This Corgi Might Look Innocent Until You See Him Unleash A Hidden Talent</a></li>
</ul>
Distractify is a 3-person bootstrapped team, founded by 20-year-old Quinn Hu. The one-month-old site says it earned <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/distractify-media-startup-2013-11">21 million uniques in its first 30 days</a>, but 90% of that traffic comes from Facebook. Quantcast shows a more modest - but still amazing - 14 million uniques.
<div class="image-container"><div class="image">Quantcast</div></div>
<h2>2. <a href="http://www.viralnova.com">ViralNova</a></h2>
<div class="image-container"><div class="image">ViralNova.com</div></div>ViralNova launched over the summer and it's unclear who is running the site. The domain was registered anonymously about one year ago and updated in May. Its headlines are even more mysterious than Distractify's. Here are some examples:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.viralnova.com/lion-photographer/" title="The Only Thing More Unbelievable Than These Photos Is How They Were Taken. Wow.">The Only Thing More Unbelievable Than These Photos Is How They Were Taken. Wow.</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.viralnova.com/dad-builds-spaceship/" title="This Dad Had A Crazy Idea To Build Something For His Son. Seemed Ridiculous But Turned Out PERFECT.">This Dad Had A Crazy Idea To Build Something For His Son. Seemed Ridiculous But Turned Out PERFECT.</a></li>
</ul>
The site isn't measured on Quantcast, but it has nearly 450,000 Facebook fans. It definitely has millions of monthly readers by now.
<h2>3. <a href="http://www.twistedsifter.com">TwistedSifter</a>*</h2>
<div class="image-container"><div class="image">Twisted Sifter</div></div>
TwistedSifter has amassed more than 300,000 Facebook likes and 38 million YouTube views. It was founded three years ago by Ben Matthew Wong. Since it's been around for years, instead of months, it more closely resembles BuzzFeed than Upworthy*. But like Upworthy, its stories are visual and light on text. It headlines are more direct though.
Here are some of its recent headlines:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://twistedsifter.com/2013/11/macro-close-ups-of-snowflakes-alexey-kljatov/">10 Amazing Close-Ups Show Now Two Snowflakes Are Alike</a></li>
<li><a href="http://twistedsifter.com/2013/10/the-story-of-glass-gem-corn/">The Most Interesting-Looking Corn In The World</a></li>
</ul>
<h2>4. <a href="http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/">KnowMore</a></h2>
<div class="image-container"><div class="image">KnowMore</div></div>
KnowMore is an Upworthy-inspired blog published by The Washington Post. It launched in early October and in just three weeks, it became the <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/memo-it-took-three-weeks-for-the-washington-posts-viral-site">Washington Post's biggest blog.</a> Dylan Matthews is the writer and producer of it.
"Single KnowMore items can do enormous traffic; one on the pope drew more than a million page views in two days," Washington Post executives told employees in an emailed memo obtained by BuzzFeed.
How long did that article take to produce? "The text is 44 words long, and the post took less than 10 minutes to create," <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/14/this-bow-tied-blogger-got-a-million-page-views-in-2-days-heres-how-he-did-it/">The Washington Post's Timothy Lee revealed.</a>
Here are some sample headlines:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/do-not-use-a-turkey-fryer-this-thanksgiving-you-will-die/">Do Not Use A Turkey Fryer This Thanksgiving. You Will Die</a></li>
<li><a href="http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/this-cartoon-breaks-down-the-most-important-feminist-concept-you-havent-heard-of/">This Cartoon Breaks Down The Most Important Feminist Concept You Haven't Heard Of</a></li>
</ul>
<h2>5. <a href="http://www.ijreview.com">Independent Journal Review</a></h2>
<div class="image-container"><div class="image">ijreview.com</div></div>
In recent months, ijreview.com has exploded past competitors in website rankings. Its founders say the conservative-style Upworthy clone is <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/katherinemiller/the-right-wing-has-its-own-upworthy-and-you-wont-believe-how">"solidly profitable."</a>
The site, led by Bert Atkinson, has fewer than ten people working on it. Its Facebook page, Conservative Daily, has more than 3 million likes. It also has 1 million email subscribers, according to BuzzFeed.
Here are some recent headlines and their respective Facebook likes, pulled out by BuzzFeed's Katherine Miller:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.ijreview.com/2013/11/96462-teen-thought-knockout-innocent-victim-got-shot/">This Teen Thought He Could Knockout an Innocent Victim. Then He Learned About the 2nd Amendment</a> (51,000 Facebook likes)</li>
<li><a href="http://www.ijreview.com/2013/11/97127-judge-jeanine-sounds-obama-finally-transparent-americans-can-now-see-lies/">Judge Jeanine Takes Obama to the Woodshed for Lying in This Scathing Tongue-Lashing</a> (26,000 likes)</li>
</ul>
<h2>What all this means for the future of media</h2>
Media startups like ViralNova and Distractify don't care how you find them. They don't care how long you stay on their websites, if you type in their URLs directly, or if you even know their websites' names.
They aren't trying to build brands. They're trying to earn traffic from social media referrals instead of through SEO or direct visits. 
Is it a lasting trend? To some degree.
The digital world is shifting from one that is page-ranked (Google) to people-ranked (Facebook), which means people-recommended content is here to stay. Also, content that is light on text and heavy on visuals is easier to consume on mobile devices. So the Upworthy-inspired article format won't disappear either.
But there is one serious issue these sites will run into: they rely almost entirely on Facebook for traffic.If their Facebook referrals go away, so do their readers and ultimately, their businesses.
Other startups that have relied heavily on Facebook have fallen hard. They include Zynga, Viddy, Fab, Path and BranchOut. The minute Facebook changed its algorithms and stopped promoting their products, their traffic nosedived. Viddy returned money to investors and pivoted. BranchOut pivoted. And Zynga's stock tanked.
Right now, Facebook is being kind to publishers, sending them more traffic than ever before. But all that could change. (LinkedIn, by the way, used to do the same thing. The traffic surges stopped when LinkedIn created an in-house editorial team.) 
Bryan Goldberg is on his second media site. His first was Bleacher Report. Now he's working on a site called Bustle. This time, he feels diversity of traffic is the single most-important metric for his startup.
"Even though the 1 million uniques is a great early milestone, the thing that has me really excited is the [diversity of traffic]," <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bustle-traffic-2013-11">Goldberg recently told Business Insider.</a> "The distribution of sources is almost perfectly even, which shows that Bustle is finding readers a lot of different ways. Having done this for a second time, I cannot overstate how important that is to me."
But until Facebook decides to pull the plug, the Upworthy clones will keep growing.While you can bemoan them for their clickbait headlines, no publisher can force a reader to share content with friends. And these sites' readers are <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-things-like-dustin-hoffman-go-viral-2013-7">sharing a lot.</a>

Upworthy Clones Are Everywhere, Clickbaiting Articles To Millions Of Readers

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image">Twitter via @bgoldberg<keyword id="1815674" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Bryan-Goldberg">Bryan Goldberg</keyword> and the <keyword id="1815675" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Bustle">Bustle</keyword> team.</div></div></div>Bryan Goldberg now openly admits that he <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bleacher-report-bryan-goldberg-new-business-bustle-2013-8">blew his startup's launch</a> with a <a href="http://pandodaily.com/2013/08/13/ive-raised-6-5-million-to-build-and-grow-my-new-company-bustle-com/">snarky blog post on PandoDaily</a> in August.
Despite his public fumble which provoked articles titled, <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=3&amp;cad=rja&amp;ved=0CEUQFjAC&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.forbes.com%2Fsites%2Fjeffbercovici%2F2013%2F08%2F15%2Fwhat-was-this-bro-thinking-bustle-coms-bryan-goldberg-explains-himself%2F&amp;ei=_miGUtynErih4APnkYCgBA&amp;usg=AFQjCNG0lCfRqVvnbR9WYwdrpBDjGnhyJQ&amp;sig2=WqH3q-zoVjjZF5bP2b2ocw&amp;bvm=bv.56643336,d.dmg">"What Was This Bro Thinking,"</a> and <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/press/bryan-goldbergs-bustle-gaffe-makes-laughingstock-launch-151863">"Bryan Goldberg's Bustle Gaffe Makes Laughing Stock Of Launch,"</a> early traction signs for his women-focused site look good.
Yesterday at Henry Blodget and Sarah Lacy's PandoMonthly interview, Business Insider sneakily glanced over Goldberg's shoulder and saw Bustle's Chartbeat numbers.
Chartbeat shows publishers how many people are on their site at any given moment, much like Google's real-time Analytics.
At 8 PM, Bustle was tracking about 450 people on its site. When we asked Goldberg about it, he shared a few more details.
On October 7, two months after the "Bustle gaffe," the site was pulling in about 760,000 uniques per month and 1.2 million page views.
(Apologies for the fuzzy screengrab. The <a href="https://twitter.com/bgoldberg/status/395920543725395968">original screenshot is here</a>.)
<div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image on-image">Quantcast via Bustle/TwitterBustle traffic from early October 2013</div></div>
Now Bustle's numbers are even higher. With its staff up to 16 people, including the recently-poached founding editor of Huffington Post Women Margaret Wheeler Johnson, the site is now pulling in nearly 1 million monthly uniques and 2 to 3 million page views. There are eleven editors and four tech people on the pay-roll, plus some freelancers, for a six-figure burn rate.
The burn rate sounds high, but it also covers benefits and salaries that are "a lot more than $30K a year," according to Goldberg.
Here's the traffic chart this month:
<div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image on-image">Quantcast via Bustle</div></div>
How good is that traffic?
To compare apples and oranges, you can look at PandoDaily, where Bustle first made its "launch gaffe." Bustle has already almost surpassed it in both uniques and pageviews. Its weekly traffic already looks higher. 
Here's PandoDaily's traffic. PandoDaily's staff is <a href="http://pandodaily.com/authors/">about the same size</a> as Bustle's but reaches an entirely different audience (older male executives versus young female professionals). It raised about $4 million two years ago; Bustle raised $6.5 million pre-launch.
<div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image on-image">QuantcastPandoDaily's traffic from November 2013</div></div>
Where's Bustle's traffic coming from?
Some of it is paid. Goldberg says he allocates a few hundred dollars per week to Facebook advertising.
"That [Facebook advertising] is the only money we spend on anything other than salaries and general corporate expenses," Goldberg says. 
The rest of the readers are finding Bustle almost evenly through direct visits, search engines, and social networks. Referrals from other sites is a smaller chunk of traffic. Goldberg says he's become very pro-Pinterest after examining its referral power. That's why his team often puts together visual stories like this one on <a href="http://www.bustle.com/articles/7523-peeps-in-halloween-costumes-are-everything-we-wanted-and-more">marshmallow peeps in Halloween costumes.</a>
Here's the Bustle traffic chart as of today:
<div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image on-image">Bustle</div></div>Diversity of traffic is extremely important for a content startup. If you look at a company like Upworthy, which boasts <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/upworthy-traffic-2013-11">50 million monthly uniques</a>, the vast majority of the traffic comes from one source: Facebook. Other sites that have relied on one source only, particularly Facebook, have been burned badly overtime. Examples range from Viddy, to Branchout, to Path to Zynga.
"Even though the ~million uniques is a great early milestone, the thing that has me really excited is the [diversity of traffic]," says Goldberg. "The distribution of sources is almost perfectly even, which shows that Bustle is finding readers a lot of different ways. Having done this for a second time, I cannot overstate how important that is to me."

Bryan Goldberg's Bustle Has 1 Million Monthly Readers 3 Months After Its Launch

<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/dellphotos/8936217272/">Dell Inc./Flickr</a></div></div>Nobody becomes an entrepreneur because it's easy. What these <keyword id="6355515" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Business">business</keyword> leaders share in common is that they're driven by an unstoppable dream. It's a life calling, not a career. We hold ourselves to relentlessly high standards, and when we fall, we fall hard.
Luckily, so many others have been there before.
In honor of <a href="http://www.gew.co/about" target="_blank" title="Global Entrepreneurship Week">Global Entrepreneurship Week</a>, here are 23 lessons learned from some of Clarity's top <keyword id="53533" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="entrepreneurs">entrepreneurs</keyword>. 
1. David Sifry, Founder at Technorati "Always trust your gut. Always."
2. Rick Marini, Founder at BranchOut "Being an entrepreneur is hard <keyword id="6355058" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Work">work</keyword>. Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty."
3. Chris Goward, Founder &amp; CEO at WiderFunnel "1. Always have a plan. 2. Your plan will not always happen."
4. Jason Cohen, Founder at WPEngine "You spend 99.9% of your life working on the path, and 0.1% experiencing the euphoria of an exit or the disappointment of a final failure. If you're not fulfilled by the journey, you're wasting your life."
5. Angie Chang, Founder at Women 2.0; Director of Growth at Hackbright Academy "When you first have an idea, TELL EVERYONE. This will help vet your startup idea."
6. Dan Martell, Founder at Clarity "The only thing stopping you from doing anything is deciding."
7. Ariel Poler, Founder at I/PRO, Topica, TextMarks "Speed is Overrated. What good is going fast in the wrong direction? Better to focus on finding the right course and making steady progress." 
8. Laura Klein, Principal at UsersKnow "Best Practices aren't always best. You've always got to test designs to see how they work with YOUR product and YOUR users."
9. Cheryl Yeoh, Founder at Reclip.It "Figure out what your superpower is. Then identify what other superpowers you need for your business to be successful. Build your team around it."
10. Sujan Patel, Founder &amp; CEO at Single Grain "Focus. Don't try to do too much. Entrepreneurs are always thinking of the next thing to do. It's great, but we only have so much time and brain power to focus on the right areas." 
11. Erica Swallow, Cofounder at Deliverish "The best breakthroughs are the unexpected ones."
12. John Doherty, Founder at HireGun.co "Always ask your customers before you change a business model or launch a new idea. If you alienate your best customer, you've lost."
13. Ashley Kingsley, Founder at Daily Deals for Moms "Entrepreneurs do not work in an emergency room. Everything does not have to be or feel like an emergency."
14. Vanessa Camones, Founder at tMa "Always be honest with your team and clients, whether good or bad."
15. Vitaly M. Golomb, Founder &amp; CEO at Keen "Listen to how your customers perceive their problem and deliver more value than you extract."
16. Francine Hardaway, Founder at Stealthmode Partners "Watch your cash. Running out of money can happen when your business is at its most successful."
17. Jeremy Gregg, CDO at Prison Entrepreneurship Program "Success in entrepreneurship has less to do with what you do than who you are. Confidence, integrity, and drive are critical."
18. Fred Perrotta, Cofounder at Tortuga Backpacks "You can't figure out everything beforehand by reading about it. Just do it and make your own mistakes. Get back up, dust yourself off, and do better next time." 
19. Nick Eubanks, VP of Digital Strategy at Snook &amp; Associates "Everyone is deserving of your time and attention. There is no customer (or person for that matter) that is insignificant."
20. Scott Meyer, Cofounder at 9 Clouds "Show up and give your best effort every time. You never know who's listening."
21. Ben Way, Founder at The Rainmakers, Inc. "However many times you fail - as long as you have your passion, you will always succeed."
22. Ben Hanten, Angel Investor at Two Bridges Capital "It is better to feel a little uncomfortable now than it is to feel a lot of resentment later." 
23. Brad Feld, Partner at Foundry Group "Give before you get."

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