Here are a few notes from a recent cross-country flight. I’m not sure what I was reading at the time (“The Lean Startup?”), but it’s sound advice. Any really good accountant will tell you that the numbers should inform your decisions, not make them. Analytics work best when chasing incremental growth, not opening up new […]
The Religion of Analytics Read More »
Since the election, my former co-worker Sean Gallagher has been doing a great series on the presidential election’s digital campaigns for Ars Technica. After reviewing the campaigns’ financials, his overall conclusion is that by hiring great people and focusing on open-source and off-the-shelf tools, the Obama campaign created a competitive advantage while saving huge amounts
IT Dept Deathmatch: Obama’s Project Narwhal vs. Romney’s Orca Read More »
In the past two years, many large media properties have begun focusing on delivering “sharable” content — articles aimed at increasing links in social media. This is somewhat in contrast to a common strategy of the previous years: creating “searchable” content, aimed at increasing an article’s presence in search. However, in spite of the emphasis,
Delivering ‘Likeable’ Content NPR-Style Read More »
Trying to parse political rhetoric is always a challenge, but the Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman would like us to at least make the distinction between disagreements, errors and lies. Not quite “Liars, Damn Liars, and Statistics,” but still an interesting take. Here are his classifications: Disagreements — Differences of
Krugman on Politicians’ Three Kinds of Wrong: Disagreements, Mistakes and Lies Read More »
Steve Jobs once said that he was as proud of the products that he didn’t launch as the ones that he did. He believed that he kept his company focused by saying “no” to virtually everything. It was a lifelong trait. In 2004, he told Businessweek that his success “comes from saying no to 1,000
Steve Jobs And the Power of “No” Read More »
This may be my favorite cartoon ever. The marvelous webcomic XKCD explains in one simple diagram what is wrong with most websites: They aren’t about what the users want. Has this always been so? In 1981’s “The Soul of a New Machine,” Pulitzer-Prize winner Tracy Kidder describes an engineer examining Digital Equipment Corp’s new
Why Your Site Fails To Attract The Audience It Deserves Read More »
The totem of chat: The lowest, that would be Facebook, followed by Gchat, then texting, then email, then phone. Face to face would be ideal, but it’s not of this time. — Lena Dunham of HBO’s “Girls”
A wise project manager once gave me a short course on using email that I’ve been passing along to my teams ever since. The central idea is that the recipient should instantly be able to determine the following three things at a glance: Is this email time-sensitive? Does this email require a response? Is this
Email for Power Users Read More »
In an essay entitled “The Age of Criticism,” Randall Jarrell said that most critics’ attitudes toward living poets was, “Go away, pig! What do you know about bacon?” When you plan new projects, launch new products or market your site, how much do you listen to your users?
Listening to Users: “Go Away Pig, What Do You Know About Bacon?” Read More »
Constant experimentation and improvement is the heart of any digital strategy — especially for media properties. As part of their world-domination plan, Google has integrated A/B and multi-variate testing tools in the Analytics suite. With Content Experiments, you can develop several versions of a page and show different versions to different visitors. Google Analytics measures
Google Launches Content Experiments Tools for Publishers Read More »