22 Words is the second most shared website on Facebook. What's the secret to its success? Source: Facebook Source: Supplied
IT'S the second most-shared website in the world. It's more viral than Buzzfeed. It's run by one guy and chances are you've probably never even heard of it.
Twenty Two Words is a site that grabs the cream of the internet crop and posts it. It describes itself as the "source for the crazy, curious, and comical side of the web" and last month twelve million people enjoyed its content. What's the key to its success you ask? Facebook.
In an interview with Esquire , 22 Words creator Abraham Piper explained how the Facebook gods smiled upon him and made his website the second-most shared site in the world.
Twenty Two Words, which has been running since 2008, grabs stories and features from around the web (carefully picked by Piper) and when they hit Facebook (and its billion plus audience) his chosen stories are the ones that have people clicking that share button.
A blog called Newswhip researched a list of the most viral publishers on the internet and based on Facebook shares per article, 22 Words is the second best website, coming second to upworthy.com.
The best websites on Facebook, based on article shares. Source: Newswhip Source: Supplied
Piper, it seems, has an uncanny knack for knowing what makes the internet audience click. He's like some sort of internet whisperer, with the content he finds often going viral and the reason why you had to email your circle of friends that video before you could do any work.
Clearly, he's doing something right.
Despite suspicions, he has no connections at Facebook, in fact he admits to suffering from social anxiety disorder. Other than "coffee and Coors Light" his method is simple: "get up early and find as much awesome content as I can".
Trying to find the reason 22 Words has exploded cannot be found using mathematics or looking at some sort of trend analyser. It appears to come down to the old adage, 'content is king'.
"I've been doing this long enough that I can usually guess what my readers will like. Of course, sometimes my gut is way off, but other times I get lucky and a post goes viral."
"I try to manage the site so that on the whole it comes across sort of like a likable friend - intelligent but not superior, goofy but not inane, sentimental but not saccharine, and consistently interesting without being full of itself," he tells Esquire.
While Piper is keen on delivering his own content one day, he makes the point that he's not taking any credit away from the original creators that make his website so popular.
"I am not taking views away from an artist by posting her paintings - I'm increasing them (sometimes dramatically) because everyone who sees my post can then click through and see more from her site. And almost everyone who clicks through wouldn't have visited or maybe even known about her site otherwise."
When internet success is big, it's really big. But the internet is also a fickle place full of booms and busts. Piper knows surges in popularity are quick and short-lived. Whether 22 Words can maintain its popularity is anyone's guess, especially should for some reason it cannot piggyback off Facebook's monstrously large audience anymore. All Piper knows is that he must "keep doing what [he] has been" because "who know what it will be next".
