Not Upworthy

For the past few months, I've noted that a highly popular site that is being shared and reshared on Facebook is called Upworthy. Invariably, the pages are video posts embedded from YouTube. The pages are highly engaging, entertaining, thought provoking or whatever. It's generally good content in the videos.

However, the site Upworthy is crappy and annoying and I'd prefer it go away. They curate and post the videos themselves and I guess that's okay, but what bugs me is they have not one, not two, but three --no, I'm sorry, FOUR-- "share this" on Facebook/Twitter buttons. One set above the video, one set below, one set overhanging the left side of the video and a "Follow" set that variably displays by the curator's profile at the top right. There is also a "Recommended" box that appears in the bottom right and overlays the video a bit. Additionally, they mess with the YouTube embed just a bit to interfere with the built-in "Like/Share" features from YouTube.

All taken together, I find it to be way too overbearing. The videos are great, high quality stuff but they didn't create any of them, just curated them. Their site adds little value, and although this isn't unusual, their promotion and sharing features are too jumpy and obnoxious. I've done similar stuff with my blog and other pages I've written, but this is just way too far.

Please stop sharing their video pages. Instead, start the embedded video and click the YouTube icon in the bottom right of the embed to take you TO YOUTUBE. Then share them on Twitter/Facebook or wherever you want. Here's a crazy idea! Post them to your blog. DO it now!

Here's a video that's on Upworthy's home page right now. It's brilliant and beautiful and worth sharing...

And it was worth sharing when I first saw it back in 2009. I probably saw it on this Boing Boing article. Whatever, I'm done. *drops mic*