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By The Numbers

Marketplace’s most-viral stories of January 2014

Raghu Manavalan Feb 4, 2014

Thoughts, disclaimers, bad jokes, etc.: This is our look back at Marketplace’s top stories on Marketplace.org, Facebook, Twitter, reddit and Stitcher in January 2014. Unlike our look back at 2013, there was significantly more overlap between platforms on what became popular. Jeans and hoodie-wearing college students who bought whiskey at Target are our target audience, apparently.

Most viewed on Marketplace.org: These were our most visited stories in January 2014, even if the article was posted before the month. ‘How to get rid of your student loans without paying’ was written in the summer of 2013, and still remains a popular article. And a popular story about Silicon Valley’s dress code didn’t include any women, which prompted a large number of comments. Marketplace’s Queena Kim wrote a follow-up with an explainer about why she reported the story the way she did.

  1. “We’re sorry you got hacked”: Target’s letter to unlucky shoppers
  2. How to get rid of your student loans without paying
  3. Silicon Valley has a dress code? You better believe it

APM Marketplace on Facebook: Facebook posts are sorted by “total reach,” essentially the number of people who saw that post, because they like Marketplace on Facebook or saw the post through their friends. This list includes Facebook posts from January 2014.

1.

2.

3.

@MarketplaceAPM on Twitter: Figuring out how to measure Twitter is problematic, since it depends on what your goals are. Do you rank by the most clicks to the actual story? Story most tweeted about? Most re-tweets? All of those things are good, so here’s the top story in each of those categories:

  1. Most clicked:

  2. Most tweeted about:

  3. Most re-tweeted:

  4. Most traffic from Twitter: Silicon Valley has a dress code? You better believe it

Marketplace on Stitcher: Stitcher is one of our most popular audio platforms that allows people to share and listen to individual audio segments.

  1. American presidents and the rhetoric of poverty
  2. AT&T declares war on T-Mobile
  3. How American Idol changed television

reddit: Articles on reddit are sorted by which stories received the most upvotes, basically reddit’s equivalent to Facebook’s likes. The second story refers to an article that cities are bringing in less money from fuel taxes, and could start taxing hybrid drivers and bicyclists.

  1. Graphic showing which company owns each whiskey brand
  2. Are you kidding me? Like the commenter says, this is a policy only an oil company executive could love.
  3. TIL that the YKK on a zipper is an abbreviation for a Japanese zipper company called Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha, which has about half the world’s zipper business.

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