How The Huffington Post Utilizes The Awesome Power of Split Testing

A great article on NiemanLab.org explains that at a conference earlier this month, The Huffington Post’s chief technology officer Paul Berry revealed to the audience that for the first 5 minutes an article is live they run an A/B test that displays two different headlines to their readers.

Thanks to The Huffington Post’s awesome amount of traffic, 5 minutes is enough to get statistically relevant data on which headline their readers respond to the most.

You can instantly see the power of this. Headlines are notoriously the number one factor that decides if someone reads an article or not.

I’m not surprised that The Huffington Post is the first major news site to split test their headlines like this (that we know of). The kings of old media journalism are still largely stuck in their old ways of doing things, slow to spot and adapt to new opportunities in the marketplace.

The Huffington Post started online. It never had an offline distribution model because in 2005, they understood they didn’t need one. They are so great at “online” because they never had an “offline” history they have to evolve from.

No long-lasting traditions that are slow to be re-examined. No “time-tested” ways of doing things that have to be grown out of.

This gives The Huffington Post a great advantage — the advantage of nimbleness, of being able to spot opportunities and take advantage of them rapidly without having to get the approval of the old guards.

Let’s see how fast the other guys follow suit.

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