

Hacking Traction: The Dark Side of Marketing Optimization - mspeiser
http://gigaom.com/2009/06/07/hacking-traction-the-dark-side-of-marketing-optimization/

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russell
You get what you measure. Frederick Taylor
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor> ) invented
"Scientific Management" by measuring the behavior of manufacturing employees
at Western Electric. He got amazing results. Only later was it observed that
any goup of people improved their efficiency if they knew they were being
watched. Another corollary: if you give salesmen higher commissions for
product warranties, they will sell warranties at the expense of actual
product. So if VC's ask for quantifiable "traction", they will get
quantifiable "traction" at the expense of real innovation. Of course, it looks
slightly wrong to the VC's, just as backing the "perfect team" gives only a
10% chance of a home run.

A disruptive venture is going to be disruptive because it cant be quantified,
giving rise to "I cant define it but I know it when I see it." Or maybe not.
Ask the VC's that passed on Google.

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skmurphy
The Hawthorn experiments were run by Elton Mayo.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elton_Mayo>

A disruptive venture can be quantified by revenue (at least in hindsight).

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mspeiser
In hindsight...

"Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them
looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in
your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma,
whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the
difference in my life."

<http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html>

~~~
skmurphy
"Life must be lived forward but can only be understood backward." Soren
Kierkegaard

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ajju
The author is using machine learning and multivariate testing as straw men.

No matter how much multivariate testing you do to optimize your "copy, size,
color, font and placement of data fields; the format and text of buttons; the
flow of pages", in order to get millions of users to sign up, you still have
to a) Get millions of users to your web page b) At least appear to offer
something they think may be valuable. Millions of people won't sign up for
free TPS reports no matter how well you design your site.

What's more, if the number of "accounts" was the metric everyone used to judge
companies, MySpace would be hot hot hot. Active accounts have to be considered
and their definition obviously matters.

The author's last argument is the only one that I find to be strong: First
spend time building a great product and then focus on optimizing things like
font size using multivariate testing. When you build something people want,
any traction you get is there to stay.

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paraschopra
Don't you think the article is lacking depth and is based on unfounded
assumptions. Moreover, the author doesn't cite any examples.

To me the title of the article seemed interesting, but when I read it, turned
out to be very vauge.

