1. 4 DISCUSSING
  • Ian Lurie   Feb 19 2012   Flag

    A fully descriptive headline wins EVERY TIME.

  • Jonathon Colman   Feb 19 2012   Flag

    BOOM! Great story and an excellent example of copywriting on Forbes' part. Never bury the lede!

  • Rob Ryan   Feb 19 2012   Flag

    As mentioned on hacker news, while that title wins in general online the story was done as a cover in depth piece for the new york times magazine. Times subscribers online and off would probably dislike the more link bait headline for such an in depth piece. One option is for their own staff to write a similar blog summary as Forbes did.

  • Danny Sullivan   Feb 19 2012   Flag

    It's a little more complicated than burying the lead or not having a fully descriptive headline. After all, the Forbes headline wasn't descriptive of the entire article. Rather, it's a good example of why you should cherry pick and blog your own content from longer pieces, rather than leave it to third-parties to do. The New York Times could have pulled three or four different items out of this longer piece easily, promoting key parts in a way that would catch possible new readers. But that's not the thinking, though it's the type of thinking they need to do.

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