What can we learn from Diply.com?

Because I've never heard of this website before...

So I was looking at the most popular websites on Alexa to get the lay of Internet land and lo and behold I found a top 20 site in the US I've never heard of. I was going to analyze more of the popular websites to pick up some growth and product strategy ideas and I'll get to those websites later, but I'm intrigued with this website. There aren't many stories about Diply, but there's enough to piece together what may be some of the secrets to its success. Here's its wiki entry.

So it launched in November 2013 and by August 2014 they were number #20 in the US? It became the fastest growing website in Internet history!

Here are some tidbits from a Nov. 2015 article on USAToday:

"(Co-founder Elkholy) approached me about this opportunity about going online and leveraging social media to get eyeballs on content."

"Publications aren't able to bring enough content for people to consume on a daily basis. People are spending so much time on social media. We thought we can take advantage of this. A lot of traditional platforms hadn't leveraged social media with their fans. That was kind of our opening. If you are able to pick up content and be there first, your distribution opportunities are greater. The average Facebook user has 300 friends. If you can make that content memorable or shareable, that’s where you get that viral effect."

"A lot of big media companies really don't understand how to engage users from the social media perspective. Over 80% of our traffic comes from social media."

"We’ve got a creative team of over 50 people. Our writing team is about 25. They’re creating, curating 60-plus articles a day. We also have a freelance group. But the majority of content comes from the internal team. There are (other community pages) on Diply (like Chicken Soup for the Soul or Aunty Acid) that are trying to get exposure on our platform. Our content team creates content for these influencers. They’re also creating content on their own."

"Facebook (is) 70%-plus of our social traffic. "

Here is even a better article on the blog Bialorology: Influencers Partnerships Are Viral Steroids

Here are some tidbits from that article:
"How does Diply work?
The short answer: influential social media accounts."

"Diply appears to have partnered with hundreds of influential social media accounts, primarily Facebook, but also other social networks such as Twitter and Google+."

"There’s LittleThings.com, right behind Diply, with 72 million global monthly unique vistors. OmgFacts.com (15M uniques) and Dose.com (35M uniques), whose founder was profiled in the New Yorker earlier this year, make good use of influencer accounts. As do UpRoxx.com, ViralNova.com, TheChive.com, Bustle.com, APlus.com, Matterdome.com, ijreview.com, Distractify.com, TwentyWords.com, BroBible.com, Guff.com, and many more."

"Given this situation, the strategy to get a large amount of Facebook traffic is simple: get a large number of influencers to post your content."

Anyways the rest of the article has other great insights and details.

One other interesting piece of info I found is that Diply is affiliated with GoViral, a company that has a tagline: "We connect publishers, content, and advertisers, bringing you results." In the USA Today article the two co-founders spoke about struggling until a third co-founder Gary Manning joined the team. Gary has a couple good blog pieces he wrote on the GoViral website titled: 5 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SOCIAL NEWS and WHAT IS NATIVE ADVERTISING? These articles give further insight into how Diply operates.

Conclusion: Leveraging Facebook & social media influencers with viral and shareable content is a winning strategy.

What do you think? How can Steemit use a similar strategy?