4 stories in Taringa!, 1,4 millon views
In Taringa! users tell several first-person experiences, discuss current events or share information about how to solve different situations (collective intelligence). Over time, Taringa! has worked as a springboard for thousands of projects, as a meeting point between people and showcase of achievements. We chose four stories to analyze their route on the site, four experiences that achieved a total audience of nearly a million and a half views (1,450,459).
The value of these chronics lies in what ordinary users do, users that are not always experts on a particular topic, but they speak from their point of view, from their experiences and it is through the empathy of their stories that the publication manage to cross the boundary of the platform to other talking points: either in social networks from which it capture the attention of users, such as entering events marking the media.
Analytical mountains
Every week we analyze metrics in Taringa! and we know that 70% of the sessions come from Search, 20% is direct traffic to the site and that the first source of referral traffic is mailing achieving 4% of total sessions followed by a 3% traffic derived session from social networkings.
But some days we ran smack into a mountain, a peak that is impossible to go long when it comes to referral traffic from social networks. Sometimes we identify an increase for certain actions or campaigns, but sometimes we are surprised by the finding and began to investigate. When we investigate that specific metric we discover content that would go unnoticed just watching metrics within Taringa! There are stories that act as magnets that attract readers from other platforms. We discuss two cases that happened earlier this year and mid-2015, forcing us to investigate to see what happened.
- Conversation. Pepper spray in the Boca-River
The publication called “Superclásico, the things that nobody saw” written by the user @runy12cabj relates with videos, photos and comments the event of pepper gas in the super classic Boca-River on 14 May 2015. The post was published just hours after the game and collect a series of images and videos that the user analyzes to base his theory on what happened. According to his account, was the team River itself the author of the attack with pepper spray to avoid playing the game. Although after writing the post, the author reconsidered its position. The truth is that this post was the most shared post on social networks during May 17 and increased by almost 50% the referrals from Facebook to Taringa! generating a visible rise in date analytics. Looking at the blue line (sessions referred from Facebook) it clearly shows a rise, however if we see the orange line (sessions in Taringa!) there is hardly a lift, so if you only look at the popularity of a post in Taringa! we are missing much of what happens to the content.
2. The impact of “referral”. A miracle in the first person
Another emblematic case was in the midst of the controversy detention of activist Milagro Sala, in Jujuy, province of Argentina. Numerous news comments were shared in Taringa!, notes that although internal discussion generated were not more relevant than other content. But on January 17 the user @Niko_seba published a post titled “I Lived in Jujuy and tell you who is Milagro Sala”. The story stripped of slant that have large media about this case, the details and the closeness of the anecdotes makes users react differently, taking the author as a reliable benchmark of what was happening in Jujuy. This publication was also a surprise to us, we discovered it when looking at metrics few days later. Here are the referrals (external references) which function as thermometer those stories that transcend Taringa! internal climate.
In this case the first thing we saw was an increase in sessions from Facebook, a fact that did not correlate in direct sessions. By isolating the content that generated the increase was discovered that the post dedicated to Milagro Sala generated the movement.
In these two cases that we analyzed, the post of Taringa! functioned as a direct source from a cojunture theme that was positioned in the media as a trend, but with a direct gaze and testimonial by users who wrote about it from their own experience. Usually we discovered this after it happens and we see it reflected in the metrics when session marked increases in a short period of time.
3. Generating agenda. Do it yourself!
In other cases, the opposite happens: users generate content which is then reflected in the media. That is, they are no longer commenting on the media publications juncture but are based on an own initiative and generate social impact. These publications highlight inside the Taringa! and we detected that at the time when is rising until they reach their peak becoming weekly Top post (the ranking is visible in the Homepage).
These publications generate peak visits within Taringa! but they go completely unnoticed in metrics referrals. However, these post described below are looking to make schedule and are often imperceptible outside Taringa! until someone discovers them.
The landmark case in the history of Taringa! It is thetale of a user who built an electric bass with the hope of giving it to Paul McCartney while visiting the country in 2008. Its publication had such an impact (today has more than 705,000 visits)that he could contact people who in turn they contacted him with the production of McCartney´s show and presented him the musician. The history of this user ran the media, several music journalists interviewed him and asked him to tell his story, “the guy who built a bass to Paul McCartney” became famous for a few days.
4. News that smell fishy. The Taringa! fish
Another particular story is one publication of a user who wrote about a finding in his province, a vampire fish. The post of ElMagiador achieved over 48,000 views. It contains pictures of fish in question, descriptions, and data on the type of fish which is not common in that area and is of great danger for fishermen. The post quickly began circulating in Taringa! and a few days later the author published a second post telling he got contacted from various news media to cover the event by asking permission to use his material. The user replied that he was not an expert on the subject, but gave them permission to quote its publication.
Within the rhetoric of gender in first person-and as a way to differentiate themselves from information cited by other means- it became very popular the image “certified” which is a signature of the author, a photo with a sign with the user name showing that he was in place or did what he says in his post. Here is an illustration:
A dozen media almost replicated the original post almost copied which resulted in a group of experts who made a statement refuting the information. In the same statement joked with the fish quoted by the user is the “fish Taringa”. Unfortunately, the story was not “certified” by a photo of the user.
