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by ouid 1324 days ago
well, for starters, there would have to have been a product that improved at all. Those are already rare enough that I can enumerate them, and in each of those instances involuntary A/B testing can be ruled out for other reasons.

When craigslist added the map that shows you where all of the people are offering the thing you are interested in. That was a very good change, but thats pretty far from how craigslist operates.

When dominos stopped serving hot glue on cardboard, its pretty easy to see how that didnt come about by furtive A/B testing. They were pretty confident people would like the new pizza more than the old pizza. So they told them about it. Boy did that work for dominos.

That actually speaks more generally to my point. If you're making a change that you think people will like, you tell them about it, because even if it turns out that they dont like it more, the fact that they thought they would and you did it generates quite a lot of good will for them.