Contently Strategist

It's been really common for years to split test headlines[1] for content. Even most email marketing platforms have a variation of it, where they stagger out emails, sending out a few variations with different subject lines to a subset of users first, identifying the one with highest engagement, then releasing the email to the remainder/bulk of your email list using that subject. I wouldn't put it past the major publishers to have moved beyond A/B testing for an overall headline winner to more segmented optimization based on tying A/B performance to first and third party data they have available on you, and further optimizing their headlines to reflect whatever performed well for traffic like you, rather than just performed best overall for all traffic. 1. https://contently.com/strategist/2015/02/04/how-buzzfeed-r29-and-other…

Instead of creating your content for potential customers, create it for influencers who are already reaching them. This simple change gave to Buffer startup a big change in users by content marketing. I recommend you this article: http://contently.com/strategist/2014/03/31/how-buffers-blog-posts-get-…

Specifically these two sentences are hard to understand: Hey the other day you said you said that the downloaded certificate is one factor, so with the password, that's already two factors, and the rotating token would be three. But the CTO is confused then -- how was the certificate securely transmitted in the first place, to the point that we can count it as a second factor? They are complex sentences. This makes them hard to understand. The email's reading level is at grade 11 on the Flesch-Kincaid scale. [1] Anything above 9 is considered "Fairly difficult to read". Best selling authors tend to score less than 9. A lot less. You don't need to write emails like you were a best selling author of course. That's silly. But it helps if you write them for the recipient. Don't just word vomit your train of thought. Here's how I'd write your email (from what I can guess/understand of the situation): Hey, The other day we talked about auth factors in our app. You said the certificate was one factor. Adding the password, that makes two. A rotating token would make three. Do we really need the rotating token, then? But the CTO is confused: how do we know the certificate transmitted securely? It can't be an auth factor if we're not sure. Cheers, ~Bla That said, we have way over-analyzed your email :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_tests [2]…

https://contently.com maybe?

- Advertorials. When it does work well: The Onion? https://contently.com/strategist/2016/05/23/dont-make-a-commercial-the…

I analyzed technology proficiency level vs adult literacy level. Listing the equivalent literacy level with relatively equal % of population. ie, level 3 proficiency is 5% of population; above a college reading level is 5% of adult population: Cant use computers ~ Under 4th Grade level including illiterate Below level 1 ~ 4-6th grade reading level Level 1 ~ 6-10th grade reading level Level 2 ~ 10th-college reading level Level 3 ~ College+ reading level Literacy %'s from https://contently.com/strategist/2015/01/28/this-surprising-reading-le…

Since when is a 'middle-schooler vocabulary' a bad thing? I distinctly remember learning on hn (when the Hemingway app became popular) that simple is better for readability. https://contently.com/strategist/2015/01/28/this-surprising-reading-le…

I think you're confused about what "native" ads means in this discussion. Publishers may have no option but to implement them in the end but that won't be a good development: https://contently.com/strategist/2015/09/08/article-or-ad-when-it-come…

This site has a graph that say 55% of visitors to gaming sites use adblock http://contently.com/strategist/2015/07/10/why-adblockers-should-scare… . I would assume hacker news visitors would have a similar number. That would be an interesting thing to measure. Someone who gets to the front page of HN should measure what percent of people with a HN referer block ads. And many ads are paid per view, not per click.

Lets take the Okcupid anecdote out for a ride. I'd say, from personal experience of myself, friends, and Okcupid's old blog posts, that these algo's do a piss poor job [1]. Not because the algo is bad, but because the person at the top is a capitalist. Their job is to maximize profits, not to get people together. Additionally, people are not honest in their profiles. So you get a case of 'shit in, shit out' for the algos. Also, men in particular, are blind to anything but the face[2]. Still, more and more people are meeting online and staying together. In fact, the divorce rates seem to be lower for online meetings[3], 6% vs. 8% for traditional meetings. Ok, stats and anecdotes aside, this is straight creepy to me. I agree with you, it seems that the programmer is becoming the only real job left. If some dating algo can do a better job than yourself ever could, the only logical choice is to use that algo. But, dammit, its so freaking sterile to me! Yeah, I am old fashioned here, but having a computer say that I am a better match and will have, statistically, a better life with $person is terrible. I have no control of my life then! This person that I might have children with was not chosen by me. Rather, I chose to reject the algo or roll the dice again. A recent video produced by "A studio on Fuxing Road" contrasts the Brittish, US, and Chinese election systems[4]. The piece is very pro communist. It glorifies the system of paperwork that insures good governance of China…