Using A/B testing to find story ideas

http://www.andymboyle.com/2011/10/28/using-ab-testing-to-find-story-ideas/

by danso • 15 years ago

9 8 15 years ago

danso2• 15 years ago

So basically an in-house, impromptu trend analyzer a la Demand Media?

rwolf3• 15 years ago

Please do not do this. Everyone has a tendency to write about whatever's in the news today anyway--we will spot your over-topical posts a mile off.

Have an interesting point of view, or some experience your audience lacks. Be helpful, be opinionated. If you don't care about the topic why should we?

This is the second article on the homepage to mention adcenter, which I had not heard of until today. HN reader/writers: I'd be interested in an adwords comparison that did not boil down to "less eyeballs, cheaper."

andymboyle2• 15 years ago

I guess I'm confused as to what you're disappointed about. My audience is mostly for newspaper/media folk, and I tend to try and bring ideas from the web development world to them. So that's what I did with this quick post.

I'm not sure how I don't care about the topic, as I did write about it and offered ideas for how newsrooms could use this.

I hadn't heard of adCenter until today, either. But I thought it worthwhile to mention a tool that isn't Google for once.

rwolf3• 15 years ago

I'm not disappointed about anything.

You're on the front page of HN today, so whatever your regular audience, your audience today includes a number of tech bloggers.

For newspapers: you will not be catering to your audience, you will be catering to the people who clicked on those ads.

I was not suggesting you did not care about your topic.

I was not suggesting it was in any way improper for you to mention adcenter. But it's funny, you just parroted what was in the news and instead of useful trend data about the popularity of adcenter among bloggers we just have more noise.

jfruh• 15 years ago

The point is that article that newspaper folk produce using this method will essentially be along the lines of the Google-chasing Demand Media content farm stuff. Give people exactly what they're looking for at the top of their mind and a lot of important reporting goes away.

It's not your article he's complaining about, it's the articles that your article encourages people to write.

danso2• 15 years ago

I don't necessary disagree with you but there is middle ground here. While there is a problem with mass media only appealing to the masses (I.e. most of tv news), there's an opposite problem of an ivory tower editor caring only what happens in his or her world. there's an old saying in newsrooms that news is whatever happens to the editor.

So this technique could be used to suss out important topics that are outside of your newsrooms social sphere. And en evaluate the demand versus what your news outlet has currently produced for said topic.

For example, most editors live in their city centers and have little clue about the much more populous surrounding areas. So, not "Paris Hilton" and "Kim Kardashian"' but "Morningside Heights" vs "Flushing"

rwolf3• 15 years ago

Fair point.

Given that you have to enumerate the topics ahead of time to create an A/B test, I'm not sure how this can help editors see outside their city center.

Personally, I don't read newspapers and greatly enjoy blogs with tiny ivory towers over which the author has a large amount of experience/insight. I can see that that may be a uniquely "internet kid" point of view.

Using A/B testing to find story ideas

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