These tweets are proof that startup people are crazy(liamgooding.com) |
These tweets are proof that startup people are crazy(liamgooding.com) |
My 2 cents - still a fun experiment
Worth noting, I churned a few twitter followers during his period too who I suspect were pissed off at being link-baited :-(
The conclusion I’ve drawn from the data you’re about to see, is that we’re all looking for the ‘hacks’. The shortcuts. The non-obvious variables we can change to have a directly causal effect on helping us to get the things we really, really want: raising investment, getting MRR (and as you’re about to see) getting a date!
Surely, as you apparently agree, the conclusion is that people aren't looking for hacks, but rather they're looking for idiots to laugh at. The only causal effect going on here is that people who tweet stupid links cause people to laugh at them.
I doubt you'd do this experiment again, but an idea might be to ask those who clicked why they did it and what they were expecting to find.
I can understand and appreciate the intention and the potential to learn and share something useful from such an 'experiment'. It's a topic I'm actually quite interested in.
I just disagree with using a bait-and-switch which doesn't deliver anything of value to an unknowing participant. It'd be cooler if the links led to genuine articles along with a footnote explaining that there's an experiment running on the side. That just seems more fair and wouldn't impact the result.
I'll laugh off a rick-rolling from a mate but I don't need the distraction from a company I don't have much of a relationship with. No hard feelings but hence the unfollow.
As I said on the tweet, I should have pinged you on the headsup that I was using your tweet for the "against" argument. Sorry again about that, poor judgement call on my part, but thanks for the positive words about the whole idea at the time and again now that I've blogged it all up.
You make a great point, and something I really wish I'd done at the time, in terms of the "trick" article actually having something else of value. Perhaps a list of some of the best (genuine) article headline crafting guides, some posts about real pitch decks, some actual sleep/life hacking posts.. etc.
Looking back I think that would have made the 'testing' phase much better experience for our followers, and just better all around and had a +ve brand impact instead of the minor hit our accounts took.
A lot of recent Stanford and Berkeley grads I've met sound more like real estate agents than technologically oriented people.
Maybe a Victoria Secret model is actually very technically switched on, regularly reads HN in between outfit changes, trolls reddit when parties get boring, loves to Buffer her selfies, manages tickets to club appearances with Eventbrite and has her accountant send her weekly reports directly in Xero.
Either way, it’s not true. And not likely. But I’m proud to report I’m engaged to a stunner, and I met her when I was a poor student :-)
I know this is just gentle snark, but yes, one of my closest friends is a very successful model that does pretty much everything you listed, often on sites I haven't heard of yet. (She only reads HN with me but she chooses the links and always has insight). So maybe kill the snark a little? It makes you look less cool and maybe distances some people who could be truly awesome, unique friends. There are some extremely savvy models out there. She travels constantly and is basically my chief advisor on international communication trends. Now try to imagine what she overhears when some [redacted] dude wants to fly her to Bali on his private jet... Yeah. You think they ask her for an NDA?
Anyway congrats on your engagement! Money is NOT what it takes, right? Carry that message to the youngins ;)
As for the article, I could totally imagine myself clicking on these ridiculous titles just to see what the articles say. I hope that was the motivation for most of those clicks too...
Or when they're of the type "look at me, i'm so different". No you're not. :)
I appreciate the humour, don't get me wrong, but I'm just not sure this is 'proof' of anything [EDIT:] about startup people specifically.
That said, if I see an article titled "How our unscientific link bait experiment helped us raise $xxM" next week I'm not sure if I will laugh or cry.
Would be interesting to see how these "types of titles" (How, Tips, Shortcuts)convert in terms of "time spent", "bounce rate" etc...
I guess that this is also really "Twitter" oriented. On other distribution channels like HN it might be different.
Last thing, I'm wondering if it's sustainable. So many "tips" and "shortcuts" articles are shared on Twitter nowadays. Maybe it's rooted too deep in the human brain :-)
(Not guaranteed to work on all headlines; feel free to contribute filters)
For example, I can't remember the last time a headline with "This/These" or "You" wasn't clickbait.
When something goes mainstream, it gets a little whack anyway.