Comment on Electric car sales are booming in Australia, but it's not where you think it is
Tau@aussie.zone 8 months agoThe ABC now likes to do clickbait style headlines like that to try and grab attention, it’s a trend that annoys me. They also often rotate through options including a more traditional headline depending on what device you use and what time you access it - currently the headline is showing for me as “Electric car sales in Australia’s outer suburbs take off as commuters pocket ‘ridiculous’ savings”, which while still a bit hyped up is more informative.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 8 months ago
Often what they do is have the actual article headline be something properly journalistic, but they set a meta tag on the article called the “og:title” (og stands for “open graph”, which is a standard for describing the contents of your article to social media sites)—which is what usually gets set as the title if you use the “copy suggested title” button, or what is displayed as the title under a link on Facebook—to something more clickbaity.
Personally, I don’t like it, especially from the ABC who have no revenue incentive, but strictly logically it makes sense. Keep your on-site journalism having integrity, while displaying to social media what is going to get the most clicks.