Thursday, July 10, 2008

Small Differences Make a Big Difference

Small differences can magnify and snowball into different results. If yesterday a certain layout on a given social networking profile resulted in 1% of visitors choosing to play a video, and today a change in the profile layout made by you makes 2% of visitors choosing that same video, it deceptively seems minor. However, changing from 1% to 2% ends up doubling the number of views that profile is generating.

If, for instance, the profile generated 25,000 views yesterday, but generates 50,000 today, that may lead to a threshold being crossed: recently some have suggested that 50,000 views of a video in the first 24 hours on YouTube will place the video at the bottom of the YouTube site-wide most viewed page. This can snowball into even more views since the most viewed pages are commonly used to find new videos. Now it seems that 1% can make a big difference. Since the reverse can also happen, every view and detail can make a large difference. Just like each person can. Many details together can make for even bigger differences.

No comments: