Trinity Mirror builds on the success of UsVsTh3m with launch of Ampp3d

This week the Daily Mirror's publisher will make its second foray into socially shared content with the launch of data journalism experiment Ampp3d, as mainstream media companies inspired by the BuzzFeed model line up to tap into a user-driven world. Ampp3d follows in the footsteps of UsVsTh3m, which in just six months has rocketed to 7 million users thanks to timely, populist games and quizzes such as "How much are you hated by the Daily Mail?" and a North-o-Meter test that tells players "how Northern you are".

Adopting the same startup ethos as its older sibling, Ampp3d's content will be generated by a skeleton staff of one full-time and two part-time data journalists hired from outside parent company Trinity Mirror, and it will have a three-month window in which to prove its worth.

Ampp3d is the latest venture by a traditional publisher into content created to be shared via social media, taking its lead from BuzzFeed and the way consumers use Twitter and Facebook. Heat and Grazia publisher Bauer Media recently unveiled plans for The Debrief, targeting 20-something women with a "best in class social and community strategy", and the same approach can be seen within Trinity Mirror in Sue Douglas's attempts to give an online voice to the digitally-neglected Sunday People.

As Trinity Mirror's canary down the coal mine UsVsTh3m has proved a hit since launching on 28 May. Conceived as an under-the-radar experiment in reinventing the traditional news publishing model, it could now form the template for a rethink of Trinity Mirror's digital editorial strategy.

"Like most publishers we are reliant on Google and keywords for a lot of traffic, UsVsTh3m is about experimenting with different ways of telling news stories and how to make socially shareable journalism," says Malcolm Coles, digital product developer at Trinity Mirror. Only 2% of traffic to UsVsTh3m — the name is meant to suggest a challenge to other internet content — comes via search engines. For a typical newspaper publisher that figure could exceed 50%.

"Look at BuzzFeed with its list style, it is conducive to shareability," he says. "Or sites like Upworthy with mysterious headlines ("you won't believe what happened next...") which tease and tap into the idea of clickability. The principle established early for us was about sharing and this idea of consumption in a stream, like Twitter or Facebook, not click and read, click and read."

UsVsTh3m was deliberately launched like a startup – it runs off Tumblr, not Trinity Mirror's technology platform, and its skeleton team were outsiders hired specifically to work on the launch. "Media organisations could spend months putting together a business case, investigating brands and consumer research, we just got out there and learnt as we went along," Coles says. "We had a three-month traffic target and if we didn't hit that it was going to be shut down."

Coles also says that serious consideration is being given to how to the company's newspapers can use some of the interactive tools UsVsTh3m has masteredThe one glaring issue to be addressed for UsVsTh3m is that it makes no money. While Trinity Mirror has been proudly boasting of its 7 million users, Sun publisher News UK delightedly revealed on Friday that it had 117,000 paid digital subscribers, just four months after it erected a £2-a-week paywall.

Mike Darcey, the News UK chief executive, said he did not miss the 30 million users who had come to the Sun's free site, calling most of them "passing trade, not very valuable inventory who may not even know they are on a Sun page". Coles has found similar issues, admitting that while almost 4 million people played the North-o-Meter game only a "few thousand" went on to either "like" UsVsTh3m on Facebook or follow the brand on Twitter. "We want to convert more," he says.

However, he also points out that clever mechanics within some of the content – such as "Where in the hell is Hull?", launched after it was named city of culture 2017, and "How down with the kids are you?" – has provided geographic and demographic data that "most publishers don't get from a drive-by audience".

Daniel Knapp, digital analyst at IHS, praises UsVsTh3m's social media-savvy approach and younger digital users but has his doubts about its longterm commercial viability. "Creating a 'meme', or content that is being shared widely, is hit and miss, that's part of its magic," he says. "We have seen how responsiveness to online trends and foresight about how a meme unfolds are great tools in attracting audiences. But I do not see a business model behind UsVsTh3m. I see it first and foremost as a publishing experiment that at least for the time being primarily serves to expand Trinity Mirror's attempts to foster its own digital literacy."

Coles is unfussed about commercial targets, quipping that the first ad deal, which he struck via a direct message exchange on Twitter, was for a £500 logo sponsorship for sex brand Love Honey. "We've not gone out to make money," he says, taking a leaf out of Mail Online's book. "It is scale first, revenues later."