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Comment by mos1 | Hacker News Reader

"Foo is a fast, easy way to bar." makes it clear what Foo does, and on what dimensions it's supposed to excel. That's clear and useful.

Please don't bog me down in details right out of the gate. Give me the 30,000 foot view, with an option to drop down lower if I like the lay of the land.

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But neither "fast" nor "easy" carries any semantic weight in the sentence—no one will ever say "Foo is the slow, difficult way to bar." Just say that "Foo helps you bar" or even "Need to Bar? Try Foo."

This is why I wrote that it indicates "on what dimensions it's supposed to excel". Here's a non-abstract example:

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Mercedes CLS550: the safe luxury car.

BMW M5: the sporty luxury sedan.

Toyota Camry: the reliable family car.

Hyundai Sonata: inexpensive, practical transportation.

Jeep Wrangler: fun off-road vehicle.

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Nobody is going to refer to their car as unsafe, not sporty, unreliable, impractical, or not fun, but that doesn't make the brief descriptions unhelpful. It tells me why the creator thinks their car is different than the others.

And while nobody will say "the slow, difficult way", they might well say "the most powerful way", "the fully-customizable way" or "the environmentally responsible way" all of which indicate to me that they are differentiated by something other than speed or ease of use.

Your proposed alternatives tell me absolutely nothing except what market the product is in. You're making me work to discover why your product is different than others in the market, and that can't be a good thing for you.

You make a good point—I was assuming, though, that the product was in a market where speed and ease-of-use were the only possible dimensions by which to evaluate the product. This happens a lot—tax preparation companies, for instance, aren't going to say they're the "most powerful" or "most eco-friendly" way to do your taxes; they're going to say they get you out of the building as quickly as possible and back to your day. They're all going to say that. And so, in those cases, it's meaningless. Many segments of the web application market that those around here like to target have the same problem.

I absolutely agree that one should, at a minimum, test meaningful statements before resorting to pointless or tautological verbiage.

That said, if it turned out that 'Infiniti G37: car.' was split testing better than 'Infiniti G37: the high-performance luxury sedan', I'd double-check their work, then roll out the new slogan. After all, at some level it's more to do with what works than what is elegant and satisfying.

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