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You have arrived at the web home of Noah Brier. This is mostly an archive of over a decade of blogging and other writing. You can read more about me or get in touch. If you want more recent writing of mine, most of that is at my BrXnd marketing x AI newsletter and Why Is This Interesting?, a daily email for the intellectually omnivorous.

January, 2013

Shifting headlines & ever-wasserism

The evolution of web headlines and their changing nature.
Over at The Awl, Choire Sicha has an interesting little piece on how headlines have changed in the last few years. The gist:
Here's a flashback. In 2007, a popular video of a baby getting dropkicked by a breakdancer (hard to believe I just typed that) was headlined "Times Square Still Extremely Unsafe for Children" on Gawker, which is pretty so-so as a headline but still funny. There's no way that would get that headline now. ("Breakdancing in Times Square – Baby goes flying!" was the YouTube video headline.) "Watch This Baby Get Drop-Kicked By a Subway Breakdancer" is what I'd predict for our age. You have to really tell the folks on Twitter what's happening for your clicks 'n' shares, you see.
It's an interesting capture, and clearly a result of the shift of social as a traffic driver. It also feels a lot like what was written as we shifted to SEO'ed headlines, but maybe that's just the ever-wasser in me talking.
January 23, 2013
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Noah Brier | Thanks for reading. | Don't fake the funk on a nasty dunk.