Steve Jobs admits: “iPhone was designed by aliens.” (Honest!)

Sensational headlines like the one above, have been used for years, as a way to attract readers.

If a headline sounds really interesting, there’s a better chance people will read it, than if that same, equally good article or blog post has a more “realistic” title.  However, there’s a big difference between making a headline as compelling as possible, and writing a headline that’s factually incorrect and linking it to a non-story, just for page views.

Tech news and page views

There’s what seems like an epidemic of fake rumours and inaccurate reports flying around the tech news industry, because these fake stories with their even more outrageous headlines grab the page views that pay for our favourite tech news sites.  These sites live or die based on the number of page views they can deliver to their advertisers.  This need for page views is also why, even respected publications like pcmag.com, now produce single blog posts, which run to many pages.  This simple post was stretched over (wait for it) 12 pages! It’s just a post about some WordPress plugins they like, which is a 1 page post!

The Elyse Porterfield dry erase hoax, is a great example of non-news getting widely reported, because tech news outlets knew it would drive lots of traffic.  The fact that the story featured a model, had a too-good-to-be-true story, came from someone with a history of hoaxes and was delivered via a series of professionally-shot photos, means EVERY leading tech news outlet knew it was fake.  However, they all published it as a fact – Before retracting.  They knew that the story was hot and that the retraction would ALSO be hot.  That means page views.

In my opinion, every time a news blog puts the need for page views above the needs of it’s readers, it fails it’s readers.  Failing their readers to appease their advertisers is maybe not a great long term strategy.