The strategy of the Daily Mail runs against conventional wisdom in digital media. Home pages of websites matter less than before. Many news sites have ceded the job of distributing content to Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and other platforms. But organisations that let Facebook and others publish their stories risk losing their ability to profit from them. The Mail uses its home page as a distribution hub, helped along by its titillating “sidebar of shame”, which features celebrity gossip and racy photos on continuous refresh. Since 2012 it has claimed the title of the world’s most-visited English language news site. It now attracts an estimated 220m monthly unique visitors to its various sites around the world, including Mail Online in Britain.
