

Rebecca Black Means The (Internet) Fame Game Has Changed - iwh
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/20/fun-fun-fun-fun-fun/

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ramanujan
The AOL-ization of TechCrunch headlines continues apace.

More technically, SEO-ified titles like this are a great example of Goodhart's
law:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law>

<http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law>

Techcrunch is going to lose its audience with posts like this over time
because they are improperly using a global trend ("Rebecca Black") to attract
a local audience (fairly technical/entrepreneurial crowd, or used to be).

One possible technical solution would be for Facebook to launch Facebook
Trends, such that you could start cross-sectioning Google Trends by
_demographic_. This would mean blogs could stop going for lowest common
denominator stuff and start at least putting together linkbait titles
optimized for their intended audience.

[Of course, this only works if the global strategy actually is suboptimal
relative to the local audience strategy. Empirical question.]

~~~
wyclif
TechCrunch is dead to me, and was long before AOL bought them. The AOL
purchase was simply public acknowledgment that the fix was in.

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cgranade
The article seems unnecessarily harsh, frankly. It's easy to forget in all of
this that Black is still 13 years old.

~~~
aChrisSmith
Being young doesn't (and shouldn't) give you a pass in life, in any industry.
For a HN crowd example: just because you started your first company in high
school doesn't mean it's any more or less legitimate than one started by
college students. Results and talent should be the measure of success. The
article simply points out the 'results' and 'talent' of the Ms. Black...

~~~
cgranade
I'm not saying she should get a pass in life. I'm saying that mercilessly
mocking a teenager for failing at something like this is just out of line.

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newchimedes
Rebecca Black is the gift that keeps on giving. Here's another business
idea...get kids parents to spend $2000 and then produce their kid's music
videos.

