Hit me with your algorithm stick: How Facebook is taking aim at paid-for content

FACEBOOK has dealt a serious blow to paid-for content creators by introducing a big change to the way its newsfeed algorithm works.

I've written briefly in previous blogs about how the site decides on what we all see in our newsfeeds - this includes giving ratings to the things we click on, and the stories our friends have viewed before.

But the latest change means it doesn't just register what we click on - it also registers how long we stay there.

This means that if you click on a link on your newsfeed and stay on that site for along time, you are even more likely to see more from that site in your feed later. If you just click and return to Facebook straight away you will see a lot less of that site's stories in future.

The measure is designed to discourage 'click-bait' style stories that don't deliver on the promises they make. Often cheap, ad-heavy sites will employ click-bait tactics to get users to click, then just bombard them with ads once they've navigated there.

So far, so good. After all, who wants to see loads of crappy links in their feeds?

Unfortunately, the new measures have had some negative consequences.

Facebook has essentially taken aim at paid-for content sites, just at a time when the media is struggling to work out ways to fund itself.

Many people are seeing their reach - or, number of people who see their posts - decrease

To fully understand the problem, you have to look at the situation from a paid-for website's point of view.

If your content is not free, then a large number of the people that click through to your stories from Facebook aren't likely to stay there very long. You are relying on much smaller numbers to subscribe to read. But, of course, to get those small numbers of subscribers, you need a large number of clicks.

So if increasingly smaller numbers of people are staying - or 'dwelling', as it's often referred to - on your site, the new changes mean you will find the number of users who see your posts goes down dramatically.

These changes work really well for providers of free content, as their slice of the readership pie will continue to increase. Aggregator sites who employ relatively few journalists, like the Huffington Post, and other small, lean operations like Buzzfeed provide all their content free.

The changes benefit free sites like Buzzfeed. LOL.

The BBC too is of course free, and will be taking an increasing interest in social media in the next few years.

But the bigger newspapers, who employ lots of people and undertake far more traditional investigative journalism will suffer more and more unless they commit to keeping their content free.

Many will - The Mail, The Mirror, The Guardian and The Independent are all still free. But all are seriously struggling to make ends meet.

It's a tricky problem, but one that Facebook should take seriously. The majority of online advertising money now goes straight to Facebook and Google. So if they aren't careful, Facebook could end up cutting off readership from paid-for sites AND ad revenue from free sites.

Facebook now dominates the market in terms of online ad revenue

If that happens, all content providers will have less money to invest in good quality articles. It would mean that either people migrate away from Facebook (encouraged to do so by increasingly angry news sites) OR Facebook's dominance makes this impossible and the quality of web content just gets worse.

Neither is desirable, but Facebook aren't stupid. I expect changes to come sooner rather than later - not least because many of the big media organisations that own these sites invest a great deal of ad money in Facebook themselves. The threat to cut it off could prove decisive.

The incentive is clear, the solution less so.

Brutal, but not clever - Here's why you don't need to be afraid of the IS media machine

MUCH has been made recently of the way social media and the web have changed the face of global terrorism.

The narrative says the barbaric Islamic fundamentalists IS have become incredibly web savvy - as seen in their horrific beheading videos - and now threaten a whole new type of terror, which we in the west will have no idea how to deal with.

I'm not so sure.

IS video of the brutal murder of US journalist James Foley

IS do, of course, have a better understanding of technology and the internet than their predecessors in Al Qaeda (probably helped by the brainwashed idiots flying over from countries like the UK). 

But being better than other Middle Eastern terrorist organisations at using the web isn't really a very big ask. It's a difference of scale rather than type, and not one that makes them necessarily any more dangerous.

The most obvious way they've employed their internet marketing skills is in the promotion of the infamous beheading videos.

IS recruitment video

There has been a lot of talk online about how the clips look incredibly professional - but I'm not overawed. 

Yes, they are put together better than the camcorder-in-a-dark-room terrorist vids we're used to seeing. They have more than one angle, employ some effects, and switch between different shots with linking sequences like fade-outs. 

But these are the kind of techniques any A-Level media student would be able to put together with ease. It's hardly The Matrix.

The savagery of the acts committed on screen is what gives them their power, not the production process.

Another worry for us in the west is the way the clips have been distributed and received online - the seemingly massive reach of the super-tekkie militants.

But, again, I think the truth is less worrying.

The now-infamous IS flag

IS were synchronised in launching the clips online, but the mainstream video sharing sites removed them almost immediately. And IS's own servers were clearly not well enough equipped to deal with all the traffic, as the video download on their channels was very slow and crashed constantly.

Even when the clip was available, something very interesting happened on social media - people CHOSE not to watch it. 

I refuse to see the video of #StevenSotloff. Sharing the video of his execution in social network only gives ISIS what they want.
— Imma Casanovas (@immacb) September 2, 2014

They enforced a sort of self-censorship, believing that by refusing to watch the video they were taking the power away from IS. 

As with James Foley, I refuse to watch the Steven Sotloff video. You should too. If you do, you should not put it in front of others' eyes.
— Jack Moore (@JFXM) September 2, 2014

But they didn't just quietly shuffle off - most took the opportunity to post tributes to Steven Sotloff, remembering his life, rather than leering over his grisly demise.

I hope, and have faith that, the people I follow will not give IS the propaganda they want be tweeting the video of Steven Sotloff's murder.
— Alex Halpern (@HalpernAlex) September 2, 2014

ISIS Black Out. Refuse to share video or images and remember #stevenSotloff for the journalist that he was.
— Laura Wilkens (@Laura_Wilkens) September 2, 2014

IS have no way to combat this kind of smart, rational response, so they will never be able to win the information war (because, make no mistake, we are at war).

This point is even more salient when you compare the IS tech machine with the capabilities they're up against in the west.

Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter - all of the platforms they use are owned and operated by American companies. The foundations of their castle are built on western sand.

We have rightly been debating the extent to which the secret services should be allowed to watch our own digital movements - but I don't think any of us have any complaints about MI6 or GCHQ using their considerable expertise to monitor and shut down terrorist communications. And their methods and capabilities are far in advance of anything IS will be able to cook up.

These maniacs are a threat - a very real one. But we should be realistic about the capacity of their much-feared media machine, and also be confident in its eventual defeat.

NewsFed: How Facebook is closing our minds, and what we can do to stop it

YOU may not realise it, but Facebook records every single thing you do while you're logged in.

Liking a friend's status or looking at your mum's holiday snaps might seem inconsequential - but it all translates into incredibly valuable data.

The world's most popular social network uses what's called a filtered feed. It's a complex algorithm that works out what you want to see when you log on by using the things you've engaged with - or, liked, clicked and commented on - in the past. 

When you look at your news feed, you never see everything that everyone you know has posted. You couldn't - it would take all day. According to Facebook's own blog, the average user could potentially see about 1,500 new stories every time they log on. Those with lots of friends could see as many as 15,000.

So instead of simply showing us all these in order - like Twitter does - Facebook works out the posts we are most likely to want to see.

It does this by ranking every possible post we could see according to a number of different factors. These include:

- Interest: How much the user (YOU) is interested in the post creator (this could be a friend, a news site, or a brand - anything or anyone that posts to Facebook)
- Post performance: How popular the post has been with other users
- Creator popularity: How popular other posts by the same creator have been
- Type of post: If it's a photo, video etc
- 'Recency': How new the post is

These factors are also weighed against a whole host of other, more personal details. For example, it might be that someone very close to you - like your wife or brother - has commented on a photo. That would give a high likelihood that you will like it too. 

This great TechCrunch article explains it all in greater detail.

The system works incredibly well, and it's one of the main reasons Facebook is so successful. It allows us to see plenty of the things we like, and less of the things we don't.

The problem, though, is that it gradually blocks out the other things people are talking about that don't fit the general trend. Over time, this causes a long, drawn out confirmation bias. You will tend to look at posts that confirm beliefs you already have, rather than ones that challenge them. 

This is all well and good when it comes to mundane news stories or gossip from friends, but what happens if the things you tend to click on are racist? Or homophobic? Or just idiotic? 

You can see my point. Facebook's algorithm would then effectively be encouraging slightly bigoted users to become more and more so through a system of positive reinforcement.

I've given an extreme example, but all of us will tend to find that we get the same old stuff coming up in our news feeds. If we haven't heard from someone in ages, we're very unlikely to see what they've been up to, precisely because we haven't heard from them in ages. This is surely the opposite of what Facebook is supposed to be all about.

On top of all this, the friends we do have left are increasingly getting crowded out by brands who've paid for space on our news feeds. If we then engage with the brands who have paid for the space, we'll never get rid of them.

This ecosystem is all part of what social media marketing is all about, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. People do actually like to engage with brands, and are often happy to see more and more of them in their feeds. But I suspect that is not always the case. In fact, I doubt whether many people even realise it's happening at all.

So what can you do to take control of your feed?

Well, you could just switch your news feed from 'Top Stories' to 'Most Recent'. Then you'll get everything in the order it was posted. 

But, of course, that will mean you become much more familiar with that girl you went to school with, who now has three kids and posts hundreds of pictures of them all day... every. single. day.

Like I said, the algorithm isn't necessarily a bad thing.

- Alternatively, you can begin un-liking. Remember when you thought the pages you 'liked' were just there to show the people who looked at your profile all the cool things you're interested in? Umm, yeah... that's not what that's for. 

Every time you like a page you make yourself a better target for advertisers. To be fair, since they know more about you, you're probably more likely to actually want the things you see in the ads - but that's not what Facebook is for! Obviously, if you really do like something and want to see more of it in your feed, then like away - just ditch the ones you're bored of. 

- Second, go through your friends list and look for people you haven't seen in your feed for a long time. It may be that they haven't been posting - but it's far more likely they're being crowded out by everyone else. Go to their page and like a few status updates or pictures - you'll start to see more of them when you log on. 

- Third, stop clicking on shit you don't want to read. We all do it - the "You'll never believe what happened next" posts get me every time. You click the link and, surprise surprise, you absolutely CAN believe what happened next. And guess what happens next?? That's right, you get a load more rubbish posts from the "You'll never guess what happened next" brigade next time you log on.

- Lastly, try to engage with things that challenge your beliefs. The more you stay in your comfort zone, the tighter the circle will close around you. Some of the most interesting things you'll see on Facebook will come from people or pages you completely disagree with, because they'll challenge you to figure out why they are wrong. Sometimes they might even change your mind. 

Either way, you will keep your horizons open and avoid the confirmation bias. 


I'd love to hear what you think - so get in touch on here, or tweet me @TheTommyEdwards.

Chewy Luis in the news: Why the soap opera is more important than the sport

SPORT is big business on social media, and big events get loads of coverage - but it's not always the matches themselves that people want to talk about.

Bit off more than he could chew: Luis Suarez after chomping on Chiellini

Three of the biggest stories we've ever had on social at The Sun revolved around football stars Luis Suarez and Cristiano Ronaldo - and boxing champion Carl Froch. None of them really had very much to do with sport.

The first was a story about Froch proposing to his girlfriend in the ring in front of thousands of people, immediately after knocking out rival George Groves. 

What a champ! Carl Froch won the bout of his life - then went down on one knee in the ring: http://t.co/4xaZD8JJy5 pic.twitter.com/9M9qNWNlVj
— The Sun (@TheSunNewspaper) June 1, 2014

We posted some amazing pictures of a battle-weary Froch getting down on one knee, which our followers on Facebook loved. The tweet about the same story (above) also did very well.

Second is a story about Cristiano Ronaldo getting a zig zag haircut during the World Cup. The star got his new look in tribute to a boy whose £50,000 brain surgery he paid for. It's a real feel-good tale that was incredibly popular with readers. 

Cristiano the redeemer: Ronaldo's hair was a tribute to ill fan

The story had a magic combination of three things: the most popular sportsman on social media (Ronaldo has over 27 million followers on Twitter), the most popular sporting event in the world and, crucially, a brilliant human interest angle.

The third of our big hitters is a story that has dominated the news agenda ever since it happened - Luis Suarez biting opponent Giorgio Chiellini on the shoulder. You'd have to have been living under a rock to have missed this one. 

So what do these three stories have in common?

They are all very famous sportsmen at the top of their game, on a global stage, doing something which is NOT sport. The stories show us that it is often what the big stars do outside of the game that people are interested in.

There is a kind of public fascination with the fact that these revered, almost god-like, sporting heroes are just real people with real emotions that do real, everyday things. Like giving to the needy, proposing to their partners - or stupidly lashing out when they are angry.

The moment of madness: Suarez gets his teeth into rival Chiellini

The sport itself is just a platform for a much broader dramatic narrative about fearless heroes, pantomime villains and ancient, unappeasable rivalries.

The games and the goals are just a part of that. A very important part, of course, but not the full package. The press conferences, interviews and ad campaigns all have their roles to play. And so does social media. 

Suarez's bite on Chiellini was generating a staggering 107,000 tweets per minute during the game - including this gem from former boxer Evander Holyfield...

I guess any part of the body is up for eating.
— Evander Holyfield (@holyfield) June 24, 2014

Mentions of Suarez (@Luis16Suarez) on the day also went up from 100k before the bite, to about TWO MILLION after. 

A few days later, when he apologised on Twitter, the post was re-tweeted over 70,000 times and will have been seen by millions of people.

My apologies to Chiellini: pic.twitter.com/CvfkkjxzlM
— Luis Suarez (@luis16suarez) June 30, 2014

I should mention here that there are hundreds of millions of tweets posted about the matches themselves, which are incredibly exciting in their own right.

But the point I'm trying to make is that social messages achieve huge success when there is that potent mix of both a massive sporting occasion AND some other kind of drama, which combine to create a bigger picture.

And, of course, social media managers like me are happy, because it means we get a chance to hop on photoshop and have some fun.

Once Suarez had been handed a four-month ban for the bite, we came up with this idea: 

How many months, Luis? pic.twitter.com/KUeAdtCKwc
— The Sun (@TheSunNewspaper) June 26, 2014

As you can see, I've given Luis an extra finger. Or, rather, extended his ring finger out. His celebration usually has just his thumb and two fingers raised, which most fans will know. The third finger was added for comic effect, so Luis could gleefully demonstrate how many months he'll be banned from football for.

To create the extra digit, I had to cut out his middle finger and move it across. I then blended it in using the clone stamp and blur tool.

To finish up, here's some other Suarez-related funnies that caught my eye...

Hey @luis16suarez, if you're that hungry, why not get your teeth stuck into something really tasty? pic.twitter.com/TPrPoC6ljt
— Nando's (@NandosUK) June 24, 2014

Finally, a picture from the Luis Suarez bite that isn't photoshopped! pic.twitter.com/5x0J01GXTG
— Sunday League Footy (@SundayChants) June 25, 2014

Update from Luis Suarez' house.. pic.twitter.com/oeFJBm0DTP
— Paddy Power (@paddypower) June 28, 2014

Suarez has sent in his response after his 4 month ban pic.twitter.com/KZjDA8ADHK
— Troll Football (@Troll__Football) June 26, 2014

Chat's Life - inspiring conversation with graphics on social

CONVERSATION is the spice of online life, and we social media managers are always looking for ways to get people talking.

I'm luckier than most - because I work at a national newspaper. That means there is usually plenty of interesting, provocative content to get our followers going. 

Original graphic: Simple, but effective

But a simple question written into a tweet with no image and no context is likely to get ignored by most people, regardless of how great the story is. 

On our team, we decided that wouldn't do - we needed to make the question itself more engaging.

So here's what we did.

The Sun's website had been running "Have Your Say" articles for some time, and we thought it would be a good idea to try to translate this concept onto social media. 

Roxanne: This was my first go at making a graphic. Unfortunately, I saved it as a jpeg (rather than png)
file so the text looks a bit wobbly. But it still had a great response from followers

The first - and most obvious - thing to do was create a hashtag from the title. This would give continuity to our feed and mean regular readers would come to expect the #HaveYourSay tweets.

Baby steps: The drop shadow is improved on this one and the hashtag reads better

We then started to work on some ideas for graphics. The hashtag itself on a Sun red background in a Sun font was the first idea, which worked OK - but I thought we could have a bit more fun with it. 

Big head Barlow: If you've read my previous blogs, you'll know I find over-sized heads hilarious.
This is no exception.

So the next idea I had was to use a graphic (600x300 pix) which had the hashtag, a question and an picture from the story we were referring to. This would show the question and the context in one concise, eye-catching, shareable image.

Translucent juice: I had to cut out the beer from the middle of the glass on this one, then increase
the transparency so you can read the words through it. I think it works well.

We now try to do these as often as possible, and move the words and pictures around to keep it interesting. But, of course, the style (ie. colour and font) remain the same to give consistency to the concept, and to make it more recognisable.

Food for thought: I experimented with a larger picture on this with an added outer glow. The words
also have a black stroke, which I hadn't done on any of the others. I'm still undecided on whether
I like it or not. But it is certainly striking. 

What do you think? #HaveYourSay!

EU should choose carefully: Why Facebook loves UKIP, but Twitter can't stand them

SOCIAL media went UKrazy this week when Nigel Farage's party stormed the European elections.

But the gap in sentiment between Twitter and Facebook couldn't be bigger.

Twitter, it seems, can't stand them. Whereas Facebook might as well be rolling out the red carpet. Here are a few tweets I found earlier today:

Hoping this UKIP success isn't a reflection of what's going to happen at the general election.
— India. (@IndiaCaitlin) May 26, 2014

Just hearing about UKIP on the news makes my blood boil
— DOMO (@wxlfdomo) May 26, 2014

This might look like I'm just cherry-picking anti-Ukip posts, but I can assure you I am not. Try it for yourself - the bias is clear.

I even put in different search terms - like "I voted Ukip" and "ukip immigrants" - in the hope of finding some Farage fans. But again, the overwhelming majority of opinion was against him.

You voted UKIP? I voted for you to be shot.
— (@ofmiceandbrad) May 26, 2014

UKIP's popularity kinda proves how little the older generation knows about the economy and how much they blame immigrants for it
— Luke Ambrose (@LukeAmbrose69) May 26, 2014

UKIP complaining about 'foreigners and immigrants' like they dont go out for an indian takeaway every friday night pic.twitter.com/f5W7riW1lN
— ricarda'emilia ✨ (@nothinklikeu) May 26, 2014

There are, of course, exceptions. But the general trend on Twitter is definitely not in favour of Farage or his party. 

So where are all the Ukip fans? 

Well, they're on Facebook, apparently. The following comments are all taken from the pages of mainstream UK news sites.

I should also mention that they have come from both left and right-wing newspaper audiences. I've anonymised them here, but you can go and see for yourself - there are readers of The Independent and The Guardian who are just as anti-EU as readers of The Mail.

This is obviously not a scientific study, but the examples I've shown here - as well as the hundreds of others I've seen while researching for this blog - show a striking difference between the two platforms. 

It can even be seen in the numbers of followers on the official UKIP pages: their Facebook has 173,000 likes, as opposed to just 59,000 followers on Twitter.

There are three main reasons for this.

The first is the age gap - Ukip supporters tend to be old. A YouGov poll last year found that 71% of them are over 50 and just 15% are under 40.

Of course, the average Facebook user doesn't come anywhere near this kind of age range, but they are certainly older than their counterparts on Twitter. 

Another reason for the difference could be privacy. Twitter is an open, public forum where anyone can see anybody else's posts. Facebook tends to be more closed, with a broad range of settings to protect the things a user says. 

This might mean people feel more comfortable expressing views they think the rest of the world will regard as extreme. The posts I've shown above are placed on publicly accessible comment sections, but the generally high level of percieved privacy could still be influencing what people choose to say. 

Users are also see more posts from friends and family on Facebook (as opposed to a broader range of journalists, brands and public figures on Twitter), which again might make them feel easier about expressing more radical opinions. 

A third reason could be that Facebook is more accessible to less tech savvy people. Twitter tends to be populated by more well-off, well educated people - exactly the type that are less likely to vote Ukip.

Facebook has a far broader socio-demographic range of users, which means more people from poorer households are on it. The same YouGov study on Ukip support showed just 23% of Ukip supporters come from households earning over £40,000. This is compared to 38% for the Tories and 28% for Labour.

Either way, the difference is clear - conversation across the two social networks differs hugely. UKouldn't pay most tweeters to get behind Nige, but FarageBook is firing on all cylinders. 

Stat's life

TWITTER is just a series of little information nuggets, and the best ones are filled with as much gold as possible. 

I have found that a great way to pack posts full of good content is to use images creatively and write lists onto pictures using photoshop. This essentially gives me an unlimited word count and allows our team to share large groups of factoids in a single tweet.

You see this technique used across all sorts of different subjects on twitter, with varying degrees of quality and success. They can range from cropped screen-shots of websites to professionally crafted graphic designs.

The 'record-breaking' season that led to David Moyes losing his job... http://t.co/VNnN6jxPK3 pic.twitter.com/PqLtM9ctnD
— The Sun (@TheSunNewspaper) April 22, 2014

Of course, the opportunity to have a much larger word count than Twitter would usually allow shouldn't be abused. Part of the reason for its success is that the 140 character format encourages users to be concise and clever about what they post. So with that in mind, I'm always keen to make the text in the pictures just as snappy as it would be in a tweet. 

In many ways, twitter encourages everyone to write like a journalist and cut out all the unnecessary words. These rules still apply.

An obvious area where stats and facts can be really effective is football reporting. Football fans famously love a good stat, and huge numbers of them (including myself) are active on Twitter.

The example above is one I created after David Moyes was sacked as Man United manager. It was a huge story, so very obviously a good story to follow up on. 

I made sure the background was Man United red by taking a screenshot of their website and pasting into photoshop, then using the eyedropper tool to get the correct shade. I then cut out a picture of Moyes to paste in and added a drop shadow onto the cutout image. 

After that, it was just a case of assembling the facts from various online sources, checking them, and writing them in around the image. I also made sure to link back to Sun goals digital service, as we are constantly looking to cross-promote social media and paid-for Sun content. 

As you can see, the post was retweeted hundreds of times. It also went on to become our most successful ever post on Google+. 

#SUCCESS

What A Pardnut

Back in March, during a football match between Newcastle United and Hull City, Toon manager Alan Pardew headbutted Hull midfielder David Meyler. For the following 24 hours there was obviously very little posted on Twitter that wasn't in some way related to this incredible pitch-side assault. 

I've never been one to avoid jumping on a decent-looking bandwagon, so I thought I'd get in on the action. This is what I came up with:

Leaked: Alan Pardew's tactics sheet for yesterday's game against Hull... pic.twitter.com/095Po9zqg9
— The Sun (@TheSunNewspaper) March 2, 2014

It may be simple, but I thought the basic pen & paper play on the Magpies boss's temper tantrum worked quite well. My views were reflected by the readers' reaction, which was predominantly positive. 

The key to the post's success was that the text made it appear as if some interesting breaking news about Pardew was soon to be revealed. The humour then comes from the surprise at the message on the paper, which implies Pardew is a head-case. Maybe the silly face helps a bit too.

The raging coach was, of course, fair game, as his antics had already outed him as a bit of a nut-job. Not right in the head, perhaps. Maybe even a few slices short of a loaf. Regardless, it was always going to be easy to make him the butt of the joke. 

The post eventually got retweeted 89 times, which I thought proved I was heading in the right direction.

#SUCCESS

The Horse Has Bolted

The Cheltenham Festival horse racing event is a big driver of newspaper sales, so in March our team was asked to generate as much interest in it as possible. 

The Sun was running full racing coverage throughout the event both online and in print, which meant there was plenty of content to push out through all of our channels. However, as many non-horse racing fans will know, horse racing can be pretty boring if you don't like, er, horse racing.

So to keep the rest of our followers interested, we decided to try to create some content that would raise a smile from those who aren't especially keen on racing, while still keeping the conversation focused on the festival.

The post we came up with is below.

As #CheltenhamFestival gets underway, suspicions are raised after a flood of bets are placed on an unknown horse... pic.twitter.com/wA76PlBwPl

— The Sun (@TheSunNewspaper) March 12, 2014

If you've read my previous blog post about Simon Cowell, you might now be starting to think that all we ever do at Social HQ is photoshop people's faces onto the heads of other people (or animals). I promise you that is not the case, regardless of how plainly hilarious I believe this technique to be. However, on this occasion I must admit to being convinced that this bladder-burstingly funny gag was destined to be our most successful ever.

Sadly, this wasn't to be the case. A large number of people who responded accused us of racism.  

When we conceived the idea, neither myself nor the social editor had even the tiniest inkling it might be construed as racist. To me, the concept was simple: Usain Bolt is the fastest man on the planet and a famously cheeky, larger-than-life character. If we put his face on a horse, and imply that he has inexplicably turned up at the Cheltenham Festival, it will be funny because:

- The picture is clearly hilarious (or is it just me??!)
- The picture will take the reader by surprise after the ostensibly serious text about cheating at the festival

Some readers did like it - it got 36 retweets - but many responded with messages accusing us of slavery-related racism. Their reasoning was that horses are essentially enslaved by their owners and are often associated with being forced into work.

We should perhaps have anticipated such a reaction, but I still to this day can't fully accept their point. Why would we try to use the Cheltenham Festival as a way of making complicated metaphors about slavery? Isn't the much more simple explanation (Fast man + fast animal + unexpected situation = funny) also the more obvious one? I even suspect the outrage might just have sprung out of an unconscious reaction to the striking similarity between the horse's coat and Mr Bolt's complexion. I suppose I'll never know.

So to sum up: I'm sad to say there really isn't any way that I'm able convince myself this post was a success (despite the positive responses we did receive), so I'm duty bound to record here this blog's very first #FAIL.