Community | University 

Aug 28, 2025

Hello, GrowthHackers! 

Welcome to your Weekly unfair advantage.

Once a week, we cut through the noise to bring you sharp insights, fast news, and fresh sparks to light up your brain and fuel your hustle. From scrappy hacks to big tech moves, AI shifts to culture flips—this is your intel to stay ahead, move fast, and break boring.

Think of it as your growth-fueled espresso shot.
Short. Smart. Addictive.

Let’s dive in.👇

Quick Hits

1. Google’s AI Mode expands globally, adds new agentic features
   (Search is no longer static. AI Mode = your new growth playground)

2. Common Hosting Defenses Ineffective Against WordPress Threats
   (If your security plan is ‘hope for the best,’ you’re already hacked.)

3. I Search’s Privacy Gap? Perplexity Comet Exposed Data to Attackers
   (The question is: can trust scale as fast as features?)

4. Spotify are bringing back DMs 
   (Expect playlists to become the new conversation starter.)

3-Minute News Bulletin with
Growth Hackers

This week's 🙌 News Bulletin explores:
Tech Trends and Insights Driving Innovation and Growth

🚀 GrowthHackers Weekly: AI, Metrics & Growth

From GrowthRocks’ guides on PMF and startup metrics to TeslaMate’s security scare, the week is packed with lessons in scaling smart and staying safe. Meanwhile, Google, Anthropic, Snapchat, and Instagram push AI deeper into learning, browsers, and social engagement—just as Apple readies the iPhone 17.

Innovation belongs to those who measure fast and adapt faster.

Latest Growth Hacking News

Strategies

• Product-Market Fit: The Definitive Guide [2025]

  Everything starts with the problem. A problem you’ve observed that exists, and you now want to solve. You probably face this very problem yourself daily. So you try to find a solution for this problem: a product that will bring the solution, and the right team to build this product.

• Traffic is just a vanity metric until you give it a conversion strategy.

  Peter Richman outlines a conversion rate optimization (CRO) framework to help marketers turn organic traffic into revenue. He emphasizes improving UX, benchmarking, user journey mapping, code efficiency, and site speed.

• Google Quietly Announces Search Partner Network Placement Visibility

  Google enables site-level reporting for its Search Partner Network, allowing marketers to audit ad placements. This transparency improves decision-making and budget allocation in Google Ads campaigns. A long-awaited growth tool for digital marketers.

• Google: Why Lazy Loading Can Delay Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

  Google's Martin Splitt warns against lazy-loading hero images, which negatively impacts LCP scores—a Core Web Vital metric. He explains how that slows performance and user perception—key considerations in growth-focused technical SEO.

• Perplexity’s Discover Pages Offer A Surprising SEO Insight
  A post on LinkedIn called attention to Perplexity’s content discovery feed called Discover, which generates content on trending news topics. It praised the feed as a positive example of programmatic SEO, although some said that its days in Google’s search results are numbered.

What's New in Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• Harvard dropouts to launch ‘always on’ AI smart glasses that listen and record every conversation

  Two former Harvard students are launching a pair of “always-on” AI-powered smart glasses that listen to, record, and transcribe every conversation and then display relevant information to the wearer in real time. 

• Libby’s library app adds an AI discovery feature, and not everyone is thrilled

  Libby introduces “Inspire Me,” an AI book recommendation tool using reader prompts and saved titles. Despite privacy assurances, some readers and librarians express discomfort with AI integration.

• Perplexity Comet Browser Vulnerable To Prompt Injection Exploit

  Perplexity’s AI browser, Comet, has a severe vulnerability allowing prompt injection via malicious web page content, raising concerns over AI browser security and potential manipulation.

Find your customers on Roku this Black Friday

As with any digital ad campaign, the important thing is to reach streaming audiences who will convert. To that end, Roku’s self-service Ads Manager stands ready with powerful segmentation and targeting options. After all, you know your customers, and we know our streaming audience.

Worried it’s too late to spin up new Black Friday creative? With Roku Ads Manager, you can easily import and augment existing creative assets from your social channels. We also have AI-assisted upscaling, so every ad is primed for CTV.

Once you’ve done this, then you can easily set up A/B tests to flight different creative variants and Black Friday offers. If you’re a Shopify brand, you can even run shoppable ads directly on-screen so viewers can purchase with just a click of their Roku remote.

Bonus: we’re gifting you $5K in ad credits when you spend your first $5K on Roku Ads Manager. Just sign up and use code GET5K. Terms apply.

Use code GET5K now