To put it in web terms, it's almost like these quant funds are just adapting to industry best practices. We see that people like social networking, crowdsourcing, "web 2.0" page layouts, etc., so we see lots of sites racing to add these features--because hey, that's what works, that's what users want. But what happens if people get sick of one of those features (or any other you pick)? The relationship between the market and that feature breaks down. All those sites who counted on that strategy will all fail (or adapt) at around the same time, and many will rush into the next hot area (Pointcast-style "push" technology, anyone?).
Quant funds are basically just advanced machine-learners; you could implement a black box-of-sorts on your website by looking at Comscore numbers/trends for different sites and plotting that out against the features/layouts/topics they use, and instantly adding some new widget to your sidebar or something when you see a positive relationship with traffic generation. (Techmeme is a great example of a web black box, BTW, always on the hottest tech trend.)