http://digitaldirections.com.au/speakers/baratunde-thurston

1. @baratunde at #DD11

2. crowd work

3. about me

4. comedian

5. political writer/activist
@jjpolitics

6. tech geek

7. f/k/a
@the_swine_flu

8. #MayorThurston
@DeliNYC

9. director of digital
@theonion

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Established 1756

11. History
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18. NEWS
o the ONION
VOLUME 37 ISSUE 34
AMERICA’S FINEST NEWS SOUR ™ #
®
CE 27 SEPTEMBER–3 OCTOBER 20
01
SPECIAL REPORT
Hugging Up 76,000 Percent American Life Turns
Into Bad Jerry
see NATION page 10A
Bruckheimer Movie
Jerry Falwell: Is That Guy
A Dick Or What? Above: Flanked by Condoleezza Rice and Donald
Rumsfeld, President Bush pledges to “exact reve
as we know who we’re exacting revenge against nge, just as soon
see PEOPLE page 3C and where they are.”
Rest Of Country U.S. Vows To Defeat Whoever
Temporarily Feels Deep It Is We’re At War With
Above: An actual scene from real life.
NEW YORK—In the two we
eks since
Affection For New York WASHINGTON, DC—In a
televised
terrorists crashed hijacked pla
World Trade Center and Pentag
nes into the
Bush said during an 11-minu on, Ameri-
see NATION page 8A address to the American people te speech can life has come to resemble
Tuesday, a from the Oval Office. “The Unite a bad Jerry
determined President Bush d States is Bruckheimer-produced act
preparing to strike, directly ion/disaster
vowed that the U.S. would
Massive Attack On defeat “whoever exactly it is and decisively, against you,
whoever you are, just as soon
movie, shellshocked citizens
Tuesday.
reported
we’re at war with here.”
Pentagon Page 14 News “America’s enemy, be it as we have a rough idea of
your identity and a reason-
“Terrorist hijackings, building
up, thousands of people dying
s blowing
—these are
Osama bin Laden, Saddam
see NATION page 14A Hussein, the Taliban, a multi- ably decent estimate as to see MOVIE page 13
where your base is located.”
STATshot national coalition of terrorist
Added Bush: “That is,
organizations, any of a
A look at the numbers that shape your world. rogue’s gallery of violent
Islamic fringe groups, or an
assuming you have a base.”
Bush is acting with the full
Not Knowing What Else
entirely different, non-Islamic
we’ve never even heard of... be
aggressor
support of Congress, which
on Sept. 14 authorized him to use
any nec-
To Do, Woman Bakes
warned,”
see WAR page 6 American-Flag Cake
Hijackers Surprised To Find Selves In Hell TOPEKA, KS—Feeling helple
the wake of the horrible Sept.
ss in
11 ter-
‘We Expected Eternal Paradise rorist attacks that killed tho
Christine Pear-
usands,
O
son baked a
For This,’ Say Suicide Bombers cake and deco-
rated it like an
JAHANNEM, OUTER American flag
being fed honeyed cakes by 67
DARKNESS—The hijackers Monday.
virgins in a tr

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A Sampling Of Divisions

22. The Onion Newspaper
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27. NEWSWIRE:
Area Man Urges Calm In Middle East So He
Can Catch Up On News
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30. The Onion Publishing
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32. The Onion News Network
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33. ONION NEWS NETWORK
• Founded in 1896
• Seen in 92.2 Million U.S. Households and 500,000 U.S. Prison Cells
• Broadcasts in 152 Languages in 811 Countries
• 9 Billion Viewers Worldwide
• Peabody Award-Winning
• Ad Based
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35. #Television
#SportsDome & @ONN

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Onion Digital

37. theonion.com
• Online since 1996. Winner of countless Webbys
• ~7M uniques/month (15% mobile site)
- Another ~2M for avclub.com plus 2.5M total
comments
• Under the hood:
- Django-based homegrown CMS; custom server-
side video encoding solution; dynamic photo
cropping; postgres + python; our own video ad
server, e-commerce and mobile; GIT to manage
source code
- All with four servers, one database; CDN-
based; only three developers
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38. And now, a series of important words...
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39. Conversation
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40. Participation
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41. Always-On
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42. Real-Time
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43. SOCIAL MEDIA!!
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46. social media
• Big numbers: Twitter 2.6M followers; 0 following;
4th influence rank; Facebook: 1.5M fans
• How we use it
- Basic content distribution
- Viral distribution from web, mobile sites, apps
- Breaking news
- Live event coverage
- “Participation”
- Nation-building (especially TV show support)
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47. apps
• 1 Million app downloads on Android and iPhone
• Generally in top 10 in news
• Some notes
- Apps are like children. Gotta feed and clothe them
- Android growth much faster than iPhone
- Providing something people don’t want fails
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48. Digital Choreography
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49. Exhibit A.
Onion News Network on TV
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51. OMFG CUTE!!!
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56. Numbers
• @ONN Mentions: 922 (vs daily average of 30)
• @ONN New Follows: 711 (vs daily average of 150)
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57. Exhibit B.
#Oscars
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59. Image from TweetReach.com
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60. Image from TweetReach.com
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61. Numbers: The Doubling
@BrookeAlvarez Followers:
4,169 to 8,400
Facebook Fans:
1,250 to 2,172
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Tu Stultus Es.

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You Are Dumb.