There’s one measure of internet success that rises above all others: generating the most traffic. 

That’s the focus of “Traffic,” a new book by Ben Smith, the current editor-in-chief of the news website Semafor, and the former editor-in-chief and founder of Buzzfeed News. 

In his book, Smith looks into the “genius, rivalry, and delusion in the billion-dollar race to go viral,” and a lot of those rivalries cut right through New York.  

The timeline tracks the founding of Gawker and the Huffington Post. 

Smith also covers how BuzzFeed quizzes swept Facebook in the 2010s and goes behind-the-scenes of the widely debated “blue-and-black or white-and-gold dress.”