As an avid Arsenal supporter, I’ll read almost anything the UK newspapers write about them. I’ll read The Guardian, Telegraph, Times and even papers I otherwise try to avoid like Metro and the Evening Standard. Of all these papers the Telegraph has some of the best sports writers around, which makes one particular feature of their online presence even more annoying: The slideshow listicle. The Slisticle?
A listicle is an article that’s actually just a list. List + article = Listicle. Like Buzzfeed’s 28 Most Middle-Class Things That Happened In 2014. A slideshow listicle is the same except every entry is a slide so you have to click “next” each time you want to see a new item. Like The 50 Greatest Sci-Fi TV Shows Ever. Great content – horrible user experience.
Why does the Telegraph and other outlets publish content as a horrible, unusable slideshow? Probably because they count every click as a new pageview. Each time you click, the banner on the right reloads and shows a new ad. And banners are usually paid for by impression.
It’s a classic example of people focusing on the metrics, in this case impressions, and forgetting to think about the experience. Slideshows don’t even have to be bad. Techniques like pre-loading can make them absolutely tolerable. But there are a lot of bad slideshows out there used only to generate pageviews.
I never thought I’d say this but: Bring back the listicle.
