Small changes

Smile, they said! It's better than looking surprised.

Let's talk about MrBeast.

First, let's make sure you know who he is. Basically, imagine everyone who has ever tried to become a big-time creator and influencer on YouTube.

Then, consider the one individual whose success they'd all aspire to match. Right now, that's MrBeast. 

Officially named James Stephen Donaldson (or Jimmy), he has more than 181 million YouTube subscribers and has earned a reported $500 million or more over the years.

As for describing his videos, maybe we should just start with the first one that I think made him a big star, in which he simply counted out loud, from 1 to 100,000 during a 24-hour-long YouTube video.

It's addictive stuff: a lot of stunt videos, now with incredible scale.

In one video uploaded to his channel, for example, Donaldson and his team do things like building and toppling the largest falling dominoes in history, and firing a rocket from a real military tank (actually tanks, plural, as it turns out) at a Lamborghini.

He's also known as "YouTube's biggest philanthropist."

Anyway, the point here isn't to send you down a rabbit hole of YouTube videos, which I admit is a risk. Instead, it's to talk about a tiny change that Donaldson says he made to the thumbnail images that preview his videos on YouTube, and how it paid off.

He worked it out via an A/B test, and it really is such a small change given the scope of what he's doing in the videos:

• In some thumbnail photos, the image of Donaldson had him with his mouth open, as if he were gasping in surprise.

• In other thumbnail photos, the image of Donaldson had him smiling, with his mouth shut.

That's it: mouth open versus mouth shut. A change so small most people would never even notice. Everything else about the videos was the same. 

The result? People stuck around and watched the videos where he had smiling thumbnails, he said, longer than the ones in which he had a surprised face in the thumbnail.

"Now that I can actually A/B test thumbnails," he wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter), "I don't have to guess and I just test and see what people want. My mouth would have closed years ago if I'd had this tool."

Why does this work? I have no idea, and if Donaldson does, he's not saying.

Maybe people subconsciously stick around longer if they expect happiness rather than shock? Who can tell?

The one thing I can tell you, however, is that there is a massive lesson here. That lesson is: A/B test lots of things -- meaning:

1. Identify an objective you'd like to measure.

2. Pick one small thing to try several different iterations of.

3. Track how people respond to each iteration with regard to the result you identified.

To be less esoteric, a store might try running a "2 for the price of 1 sale," and a "50% off sale," which works out to the same discount, and see which one improves sales more.

• Or a restaurant might try a menu board visible to one half of the seated customers that reads, "Check out Today's Specials" and one visible to the other half that reads, "Try Our Most Popular Items," and track which customers order or tip more.

• Or you might do some of the more classic A/B tests -- things like changing the color or wording of the "Buy Now" button on a website, or sending an email with a discount code to half of your customer list in the morning and half in the evening, and then tracking purchase rates.

• Or you might try firing a rocket from a tank at a Lamborghini, and firing one at a Ferrari, and see which one does more damage.

OK, that last one is a joke. But it's in the same spirit. Besides, it can also be a lot of fun to try.

(By the way, I know there’s some controversy involving Donaldson these days; we’ll address that in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

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7 other things …

• A former police chief who led a raid on a Kansas newspaper has been charged with a felony. Gideon Cody faces one count of interference with the judicial process, a felony with a possible punishment of seven to 23 months in prison. The case stems from Cody’s actions following the Aug. 11, 2023, raid on the Marion County Record when he allegedly told local businesswoman Kari Newell to delete texts between them. (Kansas City Star)

• Some Jewish organizations at US universities have voiced concern about the potential resumption of campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza as the start of the academic year nears. The end of the last academic year was marked by pro-Palestinian students’ opposition to the Gaza war, leading in some cases to mass arrests and police action, as well as the disruption of exams and commencement ceremonies. (Semafor)

• President Joe Biden pledged in October to crack down on financial advisers who recommend retirement investments based on which ones pay them the highest commissions. Lobbying groups representing New York Life, Lincoln Financial Group, Prudential Financial and other companies sued to stop the effort. Now, it's in political and legal limbo, facing the possibility that it may never take effect. (Washington Post)

• An electronic music festival on a beach in eastern Spain has set up tents where revelers can drug-test their drinks to ensure they do not contain psychoactive substances slipped into the beverages without their consent. The testing kits at the Medusa Sunbeach Festival detect GHB, also known as liquid ecstasy, a colour- and odourless party drug that acts as a central nervous system depressant. In recent years, it has gained notoriety as a "date-rape" drug. (Reuters)

• A planned community for about 55,000 residents in Toronto will include the usual playgrounds, bike paths and shops. It will also feature 11 airplane hangars and more than a mile of airport runway -- since it will be located at the city’s former Downsview Airport. Those old hangars, for instance, will anchor the project’s first neighborhood: a 50-acre residential district with 2,850 homes, mainly in mid-rise apartment buildings. The runway will be preserved as a pedestrian thoroughfare lined with stores, restaurants, public patios, schools and a library. (WSJ)

• A surprising city has been named as the most desirable market in the country for the first time, according to Realtor.com. Oshkosh, Wisconsin, has taken the title - thanks to its budget-friendly homes and beautiful surroundings. Properties in the city, known for being the home of children's clothing store OshKosh B'Gosh, have an average list price of $374,000 - which is $65,950 less than the national median. Listings in the city received 3.7 times more views per property in July than the national average. (Daily Mail)

• The final point of many space missions? It's a space graveyard under the South Pacific that is about as far from land as you can get on earth. Much of the focus on the upcoming SpaceX Crew-9 mission has been on a potential delay and whether or not two seats will be left empty for Boeing Starliner’s stranded crew. When SpaceX’s Dragon returns to Earth in 2025, its unoccupied trunk will be jettisoned into this spacecraft cemetery. (Jalopnik)

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Thanks for reading. Photo: YouTube/fair use. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments.