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Traffic

Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral

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Traffic

Written by: Ben Smith
Narrated by: Ian Putnam, Ben Smith
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About this listen

“Engrossing and suspenseful."—The New York Times

“Expertly pulls readers in.”—The Guardian

“Smith sharply chronicles the revolutionary moment.”—Financial Times

The origin story of the post-truth age: the candid inside tale of two online media rivals, Nick Denton of Gawker Media and Jonah Peretti of HuffPost and BuzzFeed, whose delirious pursuit of attention at scale helped release the dark forces that would overtake the internet and American society

If attention is the new oil, Traffic is the story of the time between the first gusher and the perceptible impact of climate change. The curtain opens in Soho in the early 2000s, after the first dot-com crash but before Google, Apple, and Facebook exploded, when it seemed that New York City, rather than Silicon Valley, might become tech’s center of gravity. There, Nick Denton’s merry band of nihilists at his growing Gawker empire and Jonah Peretti’s sunnier team at HuffPost and BuzzFeed were building the foundations of viral internet media. Ben Smith, who would go on to earn a controversial reputation as BuzzFeed News’s editor in chief, was there to see it, and he chronicles it all with marvelous lucidity underscored by dark wit.

Traffic explores one of the great ironies of our time: The internet, which was going to help the left remake the world in its image, has become the motive force of right populism. People like Steve Bannon and Andrew Breitbart initially seemed like minor characters in the narrative in which Nick and Jonah were the stars. But today, anyone might wonder if the op­posite wasn’t the case. To understand how we got here, Traffic is essential and enthralling listening.

©2023 Ben Smith (P)2023 Penguin Audio
Business & Careers Media Studies Popular Culture Business
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What the critics say

"“Engrossing and suspenseful . . . Can viral political content ever be valuable political content—and vice versa? Anxiety about this question haunts Smith, and this moral seriousness is what lifts Traffic above other accounts of adventures in start-up land.” —Virginia Heffernan, New York Times

“This is a rollicking and fun, but also unnerving, chronicle of how the colorful characters at Gawker, BuzzFeed and other outlets invented the era of viral media and what the consequences, both bright and very ominous, have been. It’s a joy to read, but it will also open your eyes to how hot medias have melted our democracy.” —Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of The Code Breaker

Traffic is the definitive account of the rise of digital media and the attention economy. The book is smart, entertaining and insightful. It reveals how technology and our shifting media landscape have forever transformed culture, politics, and the world we live in. It’s a fascinating read and peek behind the curtain of how culture gets made. Having played a key role in the industry itself, Smith is an expert chronicler of the promise and the failures of digital media and tech giants. The book captures the highs and lows of the dawn of social media and the influencer world. You won’t be able to put it down. It’s authoritative, captivating, and a must read for anyone who cares about our information ecosystem.” —Taylor Lorenz, technology columnist, Washington Post

“Ben Smith’s account of the rise and fall of BuzzFeed and Gawker Media, the pioneering group of blogs run by Nick Denton, is an amusing story of New York ambition and hubris. But it has a deeper social significance: both the news business and politics were infiltrated by the clickbait techniques they developed. . . Smith sharply chronicles the revolutionary moment. . . [he] tells the story energetically, with plenty of insider gossip about the digital journalists who briefly became media stars (at least to a small circle of like-minded Manhattanites). But Traffic would be less worthwhile were it just a traditional narrative of the rise and fall of a business. Its insight lies in Smith’s reflections on how many of the techniques pioneered by Peretti and Denton have been absorbed into the mainstream. Everyone craves traffic now.” Financial Times

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Tawdry, trite, & trashy

A sad account. The low life appeal to appetites for gossip, trash, and non-news during the early days of the internet.

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The story of how web 2.0 came to be

Very interesting article if you’re interested in this kind of thing. The inside track on how web 2.0 came to be.

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Six chapters in, and I'm done. An unappealing story, told in a very tedious manner.

I'm usually pretty choosy when buying books, but I bought this one on an impulse. I noticed something was off about the book from the beginning, but gave it the benefit of the doubt for six chapters, and now I just can't listen to any more of it. I feel sorry for the narrator who had to drone on about a bunch of shallow uninteresting people plodding along from one digital venture to another. Their claim to fame was figuring out that the internet could be used to spread gossip. Wow, such outside-the-box thinking. Their mothers must be so proud. Maybe the author was eventually going to say something insightful about digital media, but at this point, I don't care. I just want to get back to my life.

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