Traffic

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

By: Ben Smith

Narrated by: Ian Putnam, Ben Smith

“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

Critic reviews

"“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

Social media good or bad

Smith’s explanation of internet potential for doing good and bad seems very even handed. Because he was deeply involved in the development of the internet as we now experience it, his story rings true to me.

Ruined by Narrator

Doesn't do a great job of introducing you to the characters/personalities - so I feel like it relies on someone who has even a passing familiarity with the people it talks about.

But truly ruined by the Robotic mono-tone narration that invites your mind to wander while listening.
I struggle to keep focused on this.

I'm sure this book would garner more stars from me had I read it, or had a better narrator been utilized.
I would return it if I could - because I know I will not finish it.

a classic race to the bottom outlined in detail

a useful expose how two new internet news reporting companies lose their virtue through intense competition. it seemed one or the other media reporting company might choose to focus on if it leads, it succeeds. as it turned out, both focused on base case: if it bleeds, it leads. as it turns out, traffic goes to the venerable NY Times, who takes the high ground and drafts quality forces to win share. well written and useful insight.

How We Got From the Blue Dress to the Proud Boys

Ben Smith tracks how we went from the optimistic “the Internet brings us together” early 2000s to our state of polarized vitriol. An important story where it’s clear it wasn’t only Facebook that moved fast and broke things.

Smith provides a full history of the rise of Internet sites and social media fueled by the imperative to generate “traffic.”Fascinating how the first viral moments of “is the dress blue or white?” gave way so quickly to the conspiracy theories et al. Learning how Jonah Peretti mined Pinterest for cute puppy pictures with the most likes for Buzzfeed lists along the lines of 25 Puppies You Will Love will make you cringe to recall just how many such lists you once clicked on, masterminded by a cynical Peretti.

Smith is very forgiving towards the protagonists who set the tone and pace at Gawker and Buzzfeed whose “irreverence” very early on were clearly destructive powers. Smith owns up to what he missed — that the right wing fringe figures sharing the same world have turned out to be more central to our society’s story than he is.

But he doesn’t dwell on how his compadres could have made better choices much earlier on. It’s great that Nick Denton of Gawker turned into a better man. But even at the height of Gawker, it was clear that the site was a reprehensible presence that made life worse for basically everyone, including those who took pleasure in the snark and schadenfreude of it all. Peter Thiel was an avenging demon. But his subsidizing Hulk Hogan’s suit was no more sneaky and destructive and an abuse of power than many of the things Gawker approved of. Smith’s view that Hulk Hogan could not have afforded the lawyers to pursue his suit against Gawker and hence we live in a world where a pissed off billionaire can bring down a site does not credit Hulk Hogan’s case. Thiel, who I loathe, is not solely at fault. By Smith’s argument, people whose privacy was invaded by Gawker could not have afforded to sue Gawker at its height and just had to accept their lives being ruined because Gawker was too powerful to go up against. So who was sneaky and abusive of power in those cases?

I also hope never to spend much time with Jonah Peretti ever again. It seems that if he had had a less libertarian anything-goes view of how to use and gin up traffic, and more willingness to show the world how virality worked, and how sites courted traffic as the ultimate goal, we would have benefited as a society.

The book’s narrator did a good enough job but I found his reading oddly monotone and unmusical. Even though I wanted to hear more of the book, I had to take a break after an hour or so because the narrator became a bit tedious. Don’t want to be snarky about the reader but — maybe this isn’t the best use of his talents, and writers need good readers for their books.

All in all, I recommend this book. It’s important and the only one I can think of that really shows how we got here, even though the way out, if there is one, is by no means clear. For starters, I’m going for a walk in the woods without my phone.

WHY THIS NARRATOR??

Great story, well written, but AS ALWAYS an atrocious narrator. Like, come on Audible. Up the narrator game!!

Iconic, but wish Ben Smith read it

Amazing book if you are interested in digital media and it’s larger effects and history. Wish Ben Smith had done the reading himself though!

fascinating and binge worthy

I found this book incredibly easy and exciting to listen to. so much new and interesting information.

Horrifying

A dismaying portrayal of an industry searching for the lowest common denominator, reveling in and living for absurd images and concepts (what color is the dress) and spending countless hours and billions of dollars merely to enable time wasting, but doing so as a professional objective.

One must ask what is wrong with intelligent people who would devote their lives to such meaningless endeavors or writing about them. Greed? Deficient character or values? It is hard to say.

Dry in parts

Ben Smith’s writing is good but there are some significant lulls. And the narrator’s cadence was grating, seemingly uninterested. Did enjoy the history, particularly of gawker.

Really good book for history. Authors bias is far too evident in the 2nd half

Fun listen. Lots of interesting history. Spends a lot of of the 2nd half of the book focused almost exclusively on the far right, which has its place, but could be a bit more balanced