The Rise and Fall of Digital Media Giants: Lessons Learned.

Ben Smith's new book "Traffic" chronicles the rise of digital media through the story of a snowballing, head-to-head competition between characters like Jonah Peretti and Nick Denton of Gawker Media, between the right and the left, and eventually between the newfound power of social networks and the institutions they helped create. The book explores how virality, social media, and identity have shaped the media landscape, and how Facebook ultimately dominated by successfully identifying what people were prone to sharing and talking about, transforming what was once traffic into real political power.