Viral Content With a Liberal Bent

There is conventional wisdom about what kind of material will go viral on the Internet: celebrity slide shows, lists like 10 tips for losing belly fat, and quirky kitten antics.

Then there is the path of Upworthy.com, whose goal is to make more serious content as fun to share as a “video of some idiot surfing off his roof.” Surfing idiots are tough to beat, of course, but Upworthy has shown that by selecting emotional material and then promoting it with catchy, pretested headlines, it can fulfill its mission: to direct Internet audiences to what it deems socially worthwhile subjects. Already the site has drawn millions of people to share videos about sober topics like income inequality and human trafficking. A video featuring Patrick Stewart discussing domestic violence was uploaded more than six million times after it was posted in May.

Eli Pariser and Peter Koechley, Upworthy’s 32-year old founders, say the effects have gone beyond simply tugging at the conscience of viewers to inciting them to action. The two point, for example, to a 20-minute biography of a young musician dying of a rare bone cancer that persuaded Upworthy viewers to donate about $100,000. A video by the founder of GoldieBlox, a company aspiring to make toys that will encourage young girls to be interested in engineering, was also a hit; Upworthy viewers bought enough toys to ensure a first production run.

Allison Fine, co-author of “The Networked Nonprofit,” which advocates for harnessing social media to enact progressive change, said most charities had not yet mastered how to use video to their advantage and needed all the help they could get. Whether Upworthy will be that aid, she said, is unclear.

“If this is going to be a series of one-offs, then skepticism is warranted,” she said, “but if this is going to be strategically planned as part of a larger effort of grass-roots fund-raising and organizing, then that will be their long tail of success.”

Only 19 months old, the site has experienced explosive growth; it is 41st on Quantcast’s rankings of most popular American Internet sites, above both Fox News and the Yellow Pages, and attracted more than 38 million unique visitors in September, according to its own Google analytics report.

One goal remains elusive, however: profitability. As the company lives on $12 million in venture capital from, among others, Chris Hughes, an early founder of Facebook, they are testing strategies to make money. Their primary revenue stream to date — charging nonprofits for each potential donor sent their way — has been fruitful. But they now see even richer opportunities in having foundations or corporations pay a fee to be recognized as a sponsor of content related to a specific topic, like global health. They are also testing a model they call “ads we like,” where they recommend video created by advertisers.

The concept for Upworthy began when Mr. Koechley and Mr. Pariser were running MoveOn.org, a nonprofit group that uses digital media to aid liberal causes and politicians. Late in the 2008 presidential campaign, Mr. Pariser created a video of a postelectionnewscast contending that Barack Obama had lost by one vote because you, the viewer, failed to show up. Filled with humorous touches, it was viewed by 23 million people.

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