Jeff Bercovici

Getting readers to click on headlines and share articles is what Upworthy does better than almost any other website in existence. That’s the talent that allowed it to become one of the fastest-growing media start-ups ever, with more than 10 million unique visitors in June, according to comScore.

But in a surprise twist worthy of, well, an Upworthy headline, the people behind the viral-with-a-purpose publisher are on a mission to cleanse the web of content that exists primarily to be clicked on or shared. Their latest source is a piece of open-source code to encourage publishers and advertisers to distinguish between content that’s actually engaging and content designed just to produce page views, Facebook shares and other blunt-instrument metrics.

The code is a tool that lets publishers start measuring what Upworthy calls “attention minutes,” a new metric it’s attempting to promote as an industry standard. The web analytics firm Parse.ly is adding Upworthy’s code to its product, and Chartbeat has taken up the banner as well, adopting attention minutes as a standard metric.