http://www.infowar-monitor.net/reports/iwm-koobface.pdf
Not worried about botnet affecting the online ads industry? Read about the sophistication of Koobface. Here's an example: "...The operators of Koobface have been able to setup a stable botnet infrastructure that allows them to maintain tens of thousands of compromised computers and profit immensely from PPC and PPI, earning a total of $2,067,682.69 between June 23, 2009 and June 10, 2010."
My favorite part is faking CAPTCHA to users to create new spam accounts. This is pure evil and brilliant at the same time!
Monday, December 13, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
Archiving Public Materials vs. First Amendment
News: Archive of Geocities will be released as a ~1TB torrent.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101029/03055711647/archive-of-geocities-released-as-a-1tb-torrent.shtml
While this is great news to archivists and web historians, for the rest of the people who contributed to Geocities, their content is now exposed to the public. What if some college kid posted dark secrets that could now jeopardize his life? For example, what if a college kid posted a picture of him smoking pot 15 years ago, but is now running for a seat in Congress?
Archiving is full of controversies. Over 15 years ago, I thought it would be really cool to create a Time Capsule by archiving a bunch of my friends' web sites. At the time, I thought it would be interesting to see how people change over a decade, and if we ever have a reunion we'd be able to look back at the Time Capsule and reminisce about the good 'ol days. At the time, I was naive and thought archiving content would be like taking pictures-- people usually thank photographers for capturing precious moments that would have been lost without cameras+films. However, I've come to the conclusion that archiving content is not the same as taking pictures of precious moments. The reason is that most people seem to be embarrassed by the very same content they uploaded many years ago! I know this because in the past few years I've been getting requests after requests by these same friends to take down their sites. I can't really talk about the content of those sites publicly, but needless to say, the contents usually contain materials that are potentially harmful to their professional and/or personal lives.
In almost all cases I'd take down an archived content when asked to do so because I want to be nice. Now, let's suppose I don't play nice. What if I leave the archived content and somehow, the content becomes harmful to those people (e.g. pictures of them smoking weed when they were young, or blog exposing their weird fetishes/political party/admission of crime, and such)? Will the person who repost the content be liable for ruining their professional and personal lives? How about Google, Yahoo, Ask, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and a zillion other services that archive content... can these sites be held liable for archiving potentially damaging materials to the uploader? How does the First Amendment protect from reposting archived public domain content? How much legality is there to leave the content? How much obligation is there to take down the content?
As you can see, arguments can go in all directions. So I asked my friend D. Silverstein who is a lot more familiar with law than I am, and here is his response:
======================================
Kevin,
Much of what I say is based on seeing the EFF's copyright/patent/trademark for programmers. First of all, the copyright notice doesn't matter. Under modern IP law (as agreed to by most developed countries), things are automatically copyrighted the moment they pop into existence. Technically, when you send an email to someone it has a copyright. But, given how email is used, it's very questionable that you could enforce that copyright, i.e. sue or collect a fee from someone who forwarded your email without your permission. Web pages are a little different. They have some more protection, but still, if it's a web page on the public internet, it's probably fair game. But there are some complications. Is the web page protected by a robots.txt file? Not all indexers respect robots.txt, but let's assume the ones in question did... the first thing that will reasonably happen before people actually try to take legal action is they will send you a cease and desist (C&D) letter. I take the stance i.e. if you're not hosting something that has legal attack dogs tied to it (i.e. copyrighted music or movies), just put it up, and don't worry about it until you get a C&D. If you get a C&D you can, at that point, decide if you want to fight or take it down. Also, since you're archiving it... you may qualify as a third party for DMCA safe harbor purposes, assuming someone gives you the content to host, or ask you to host the content. If you receive a takedown notice and honor it, you're not liable. If you simply copied it, then you probably don't qualify as a third party provider for DMCA safe harbor. Just to give an example, third party provider or ISP for DMCA safe harbor purposes is, e.g. YouTube. They host content that other people post. Either way, don't worry about it unless you get a C&D. Keep in mind that C&D's are basically lawyer nastygrams. They cost nothing to send, and they rack up a couple billable hours. So usually that's the first step someone takes before taking more serious action, i.e. trying to sue you. In short, the copyright is the one that has the most teeth, but these aren't secrets and this isn't content that he's trying to profit from. There might also be an angle where he could go after you for defamation... but if it's content that he wrote or collected... then I would think it would be hard to make a defamation case. And, in general, litigation is expensive.
Lastly, if this person is famous (e.g. running for public office/people who are highly public, such as celebrities, getting a promotion at work, etc), he/she knowingly give up a reasonable expectation of privacy that "private" citizens are entitled to. We actually owe that to Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler Magazine. :) They published a satirical article that suggested Jerry Falwell committed incest, and it went to the supreme court. The First Amendment's free-speech guarantee prohibits awarding damages to public figures to compensate for emotional distress inflicted upon them. Thus, private citizens are entitled to more privacy than celebrities! There are of course exceptions to libel/slander and copyright laws for parody. Obviously if you publish malicious falsehoods about a celebrity, you may still be liable. That would be considered lying, and that is a totally different can of worms.
D. Silverstein
=======================================================
So, that is his response, and it makes sense, but it makes me wonder what the world will be like 15 years from today.
In the mid 1990s, only geeks logged on the internet and created their own web sites filled with ugly HTML/blink/bold content. Fast forward to the 21st century and you see that almost everyone has contributed some content to the public web, be it a blog, Facebook messages, Flickr pictures, Twitter messages, Yelp review, Amazon votes, so on so forth. I can't help it wonder what the ramifications of archive be in yet another 15 years? Facebook (and Google and Twitter and all the other sites) are archiving EVERYTHING people contribute today. There's MORE content than ever, and much of the data will be potentially damning to people's lives in the future. What do you think could happen 15 years from today? Will there be lawsuits from people to take down archives? How much leg will they have? Should the law protect common people from embarrassing themselves, or should the law protect archivers?
-Kevin
=======================================================
Follow-up:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/01/california-bill-criminalizing-online-impersonations-in-effect-starting-today/
"California’s SB 1411, which adds a layer of criminal and civil penalties for certain online impersonations, goes into effect starting today." Is archiving considered impersonation?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101029/03055711647/archive-of-geocities-released-as-a-1tb-torrent.shtml
While this is great news to archivists and web historians, for the rest of the people who contributed to Geocities, their content is now exposed to the public. What if some college kid posted dark secrets that could now jeopardize his life? For example, what if a college kid posted a picture of him smoking pot 15 years ago, but is now running for a seat in Congress?
Archiving is full of controversies. Over 15 years ago, I thought it would be really cool to create a Time Capsule by archiving a bunch of my friends' web sites. At the time, I thought it would be interesting to see how people change over a decade, and if we ever have a reunion we'd be able to look back at the Time Capsule and reminisce about the good 'ol days. At the time, I was naive and thought archiving content would be like taking pictures-- people usually thank photographers for capturing precious moments that would have been lost without cameras+films. However, I've come to the conclusion that archiving content is not the same as taking pictures of precious moments. The reason is that most people seem to be embarrassed by the very same content they uploaded many years ago! I know this because in the past few years I've been getting requests after requests by these same friends to take down their sites. I can't really talk about the content of those sites publicly, but needless to say, the contents usually contain materials that are potentially harmful to their professional and/or personal lives.
In almost all cases I'd take down an archived content when asked to do so because I want to be nice. Now, let's suppose I don't play nice. What if I leave the archived content and somehow, the content becomes harmful to those people (e.g. pictures of them smoking weed when they were young, or blog exposing their weird fetishes/political party/admission of crime, and such)? Will the person who repost the content be liable for ruining their professional and personal lives? How about Google, Yahoo, Ask, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and a zillion other services that archive content... can these sites be held liable for archiving potentially damaging materials to the uploader? How does the First Amendment protect from reposting archived public domain content? How much legality is there to leave the content? How much obligation is there to take down the content?
As you can see, arguments can go in all directions. So I asked my friend D. Silverstein who is a lot more familiar with law than I am, and here is his response:
======================================
Kevin,
Much of what I say is based on seeing the EFF's copyright/patent/trademark for programmers. First of all, the copyright notice doesn't matter. Under modern IP law (as agreed to by most developed countries), things are automatically copyrighted the moment they pop into existence. Technically, when you send an email to someone it has a copyright. But, given how email is used, it's very questionable that you could enforce that copyright, i.e. sue or collect a fee from someone who forwarded your email without your permission. Web pages are a little different. They have some more protection, but still, if it's a web page on the public internet, it's probably fair game. But there are some complications. Is the web page protected by a robots.txt file? Not all indexers respect robots.txt, but let's assume the ones in question did... the first thing that will reasonably happen before people actually try to take legal action is they will send you a cease and desist (C&D) letter. I take the stance i.e. if you're not hosting something that has legal attack dogs tied to it (i.e. copyrighted music or movies), just put it up, and don't worry about it until you get a C&D. If you get a C&D you can, at that point, decide if you want to fight or take it down. Also, since you're archiving it... you may qualify as a third party for DMCA safe harbor purposes, assuming someone gives you the content to host, or ask you to host the content. If you receive a takedown notice and honor it, you're not liable. If you simply copied it, then you probably don't qualify as a third party provider for DMCA safe harbor. Just to give an example, third party provider or ISP for DMCA safe harbor purposes is, e.g. YouTube. They host content that other people post. Either way, don't worry about it unless you get a C&D. Keep in mind that C&D's are basically lawyer nastygrams. They cost nothing to send, and they rack up a couple billable hours. So usually that's the first step someone takes before taking more serious action, i.e. trying to sue you. In short, the copyright is the one that has the most teeth, but these aren't secrets and this isn't content that he's trying to profit from. There might also be an angle where he could go after you for defamation... but if it's content that he wrote or collected... then I would think it would be hard to make a defamation case. And, in general, litigation is expensive.
Lastly, if this person is famous (e.g. running for public office/people who are highly public, such as celebrities, getting a promotion at work, etc), he/she knowingly give up a reasonable expectation of privacy that "private" citizens are entitled to. We actually owe that to Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler Magazine. :) They published a satirical article that suggested Jerry Falwell committed incest, and it went to the supreme court. The First Amendment's free-speech guarantee prohibits awarding damages to public figures to compensate for emotional distress inflicted upon them. Thus, private citizens are entitled to more privacy than celebrities! There are of course exceptions to libel/slander and copyright laws for parody. Obviously if you publish malicious falsehoods about a celebrity, you may still be liable. That would be considered lying, and that is a totally different can of worms.
D. Silverstein
=======================================================
So, that is his response, and it makes sense, but it makes me wonder what the world will be like 15 years from today.
In the mid 1990s, only geeks logged on the internet and created their own web sites filled with ugly HTML/blink/bold content. Fast forward to the 21st century and you see that almost everyone has contributed some content to the public web, be it a blog, Facebook messages, Flickr pictures, Twitter messages, Yelp review, Amazon votes, so on so forth. I can't help it wonder what the ramifications of archive be in yet another 15 years? Facebook (and Google and Twitter and all the other sites) are archiving EVERYTHING people contribute today. There's MORE content than ever, and much of the data will be potentially damning to people's lives in the future. What do you think could happen 15 years from today? Will there be lawsuits from people to take down archives? How much leg will they have? Should the law protect common people from embarrassing themselves, or should the law protect archivers?
-Kevin
=======================================================
Follow-up:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/01/california-bill-criminalizing-online-impersonations-in-effect-starting-today/
"California’s SB 1411, which adds a layer of criminal and civil penalties for certain online impersonations, goes into effect starting today." Is archiving considered impersonation?
Friday, October 15, 2010
Hiring, hiring, hiring... and... NO GO.
My company is cash flow positive. The VC is getting ambitious and wants to expand expand expand. The problem is, I haven't met a single candidate that blows my mind. 90% of the resumes look horrible, and 98% of the candidates I interviewed are utterly awful, and mediocre at best. The founding eng is a hacky band-aid hacker-- non computer science. I'm a second eng. The third hire is pretty good, but only after scouring 100s of resumes. I've been trying very hard to bring good Googly culture in -- like HIRE ONLY THE BEST so that you don't have to manage, and so there will be no need for silly hierarchy and perf and promotion committee. Some take-away points in my startup so far:
1) I use all standard Google interview process. That screens out 98% of the people who call themselves "developers." Case in point: "Cal State LA doing B2B in J2EE asking for 120K salary." -- this guy can't even do recursion or order 4 functions in the increasing order as n approaches infinity. Or, some can't even do a Venn diagram to explain some hypothetical question! A large # of these guys will give you a dumbass linear scan answer to an question that can be solved in O(1)! Most are just mind-boggling stupid!!!
2) I can't believe how high they're asking for their salaries (doing banking, defense, bullshit B2B or other BS web site). Something doesn't sound right. These companies (in Southern Cal) that pay them that type of salaries are probably stupid, desperate, or both.
3) In my entire life, I'm used to being with people like me (similar background). I've been in the ivory tower and a corporation [that can be best described as a bubble], but I now realize that living in an academically driven bubble is not normal. What is normal in life, is having to deal with a bunch of "normal people" -- loud talking ones. Instead of doing work, I now need to spend much more time explaining, teaching, guiding, and even delegating! UGH!!! Ultimately, the sudden realization that I stepped outside of the ivory tower/bubble/whatever you call it, and having to deal with "normal" people makes me feel-- very very VERY lonely at times.
4) Hiring people who are anywhere close to the average caliber in Google (which unfortunately, doesn't even say that much these days) is near impossible.
5) The VC pressure to do more things, faster, expand, is killing my ability to do just that.
You know anyone who have/had similar frustrations? What's the best way to go about this?
1) I use all standard Google interview process. That screens out 98% of the people who call themselves "developers." Case in point: "Cal State LA doing B2B in J2EE asking for 120K salary." -- this guy can't even do recursion or order 4 functions in the increasing order as n approaches infinity. Or, some can't even do a Venn diagram to explain some hypothetical question! A large # of these guys will give you a dumbass linear scan answer to an question that can be solved in O(1)! Most are just mind-boggling stupid!!!
2) I can't believe how high they're asking for their salaries (doing banking, defense, bullshit B2B or other BS web site). Something doesn't sound right. These companies (in Southern Cal) that pay them that type of salaries are probably stupid, desperate, or both.
3) In my entire life, I'm used to being with people like me (similar background). I've been in the ivory tower and a corporation [that can be best described as a bubble], but I now realize that living in an academically driven bubble is not normal. What is normal in life, is having to deal with a bunch of "normal people" -- loud talking ones. Instead of doing work, I now need to spend much more time explaining, teaching, guiding, and even delegating! UGH!!! Ultimately, the sudden realization that I stepped outside of the ivory tower/bubble/whatever you call it, and having to deal with "normal" people makes me feel-- very very VERY lonely at times.
4) Hiring people who are anywhere close to the average caliber in Google (which unfortunately, doesn't even say that much these days) is near impossible.
5) The VC pressure to do more things, faster, expand, is killing my ability to do just that.
You know anyone who have/had similar frustrations? What's the best way to go about this?
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Repost: Google Buzz Good. Google Wave Bad.
I like Google Buzz. It actually has users, and it's well integrated with something people already use: Gmail. Well done. Kudos. I'm happy that Google finally did something right, and it did it without having to acquire something else. The UI is easy and simple to understand. The flow integration with Flickr, Picasaweb, Twitter, etc is well done. It's not very obtrusive (yet). I like Google Buzz. KUDOS!!!
In contrast to Google Buzz, Google Wave launch a few months back was a colossal failure. See for yourself:
See, even Google search says the Wave a failure, and Google search never lies. It's on the internet, it must be true! You know what the Wave team says in response to criticisms? "People don't get Wave" "It's too far ahead of its time." "It's only for power users." "It makes sense in my corporate niche settings."
That's a lot of spin and crap there. It reminds me of this dude in the oval office recently that made a bunch of hasty decisions based on faulty intelligence, but he would never admit failure. In addition, the way his press engine kept spinning stories left and right made his entire party look really really bad. He lost credibility. I can't believe the Wave team is doing the same thing. It's a total shame people just don't want to admit their failures. For spinning stories, I think they should be penalized with a Reverse-Founders Award; pay back Google millions of dollars they squandered developing Wave, and trying to give it a nice spin.
In contrast to Google Buzz, Google Wave launch a few months back was a colossal failure. See for yourself:
See, even Google search says the Wave a failure, and Google search never lies. It's on the internet, it must be true! You know what the Wave team says in response to criticisms? "People don't get Wave" "It's too far ahead of its time." "It's only for power users." "It makes sense in my corporate niche settings."
That's a lot of spin and crap there. It reminds me of this dude in the oval office recently that made a bunch of hasty decisions based on faulty intelligence, but he would never admit failure. In addition, the way his press engine kept spinning stories left and right made his entire party look really really bad. He lost credibility. I can't believe the Wave team is doing the same thing. It's a total shame people just don't want to admit their failures. For spinning stories, I think they should be penalized with a Reverse-Founders Award; pay back Google millions of dollars they squandered developing Wave, and trying to give it a nice spin.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Google Search Indicates That Google Wave Is A Colossal Failure
Due to contracts and fine prints I signed, I shall not make public comments about the big G. Instead, I'll just post a funny picture. FYI, I think the Google Buzz is really really great. Buzz is not Wave. I like Buzz. I have no comment about Wave. Zero. Nada. Zip. Nilch. Ling. 0.
Friday, February 5, 2010
LA traffic is sick
Ok this is not really technology related but I really don't have a rant post so I might as well as post it here.Having intermittently lived in both S Cal (12 years combined) and N Cal (10 years combined), I've always wondered how much S Cal traffic is so much sicker than N Cal. I wrote up a silly page that compares both locations in real time (see sample image to the right). LA is consistently redder and yellower, during every single rush hour. What the hell is going on with LA traffic? Having seen LA for the past 20 years or so, things seem to get worse and worse. You don't need to spend millions of research dollars on stupid data or graphics like this to tell anyone that things are worse. You just need to have been in LA for the past 20 years.
You know what? None of our politicians did anything in the past. Why do Angelinos tolerate this? Are residents simply idiotic or that the politicians are incompetent, or both? It is just SICKENING to see millions of Angelinos endure crap like this. Just look at it, it makes me want to puke.
Click on http://ereview.com/lasf.html to see a larger page
Monday, February 1, 2010
Ideas for success
Creating something new? Does your new product have all the elements listed below?
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/kanter/2009/11/find-the-15minute-competitive.htmlFor fun, let's apply these elements to the controversial iPad, where 1/3 of the people say it's great, a 1/3 of the people say it's a total dud, and a 1/3 just don't care:
- Trial-able -- can customers try the iPad on a few apps (news, games, videos), and have the option to use it more or not use it at all? Sure. Check.
- Divisible -- can users adopt iPad one app at a time? Can they use it in parallel with current paradigms? Sure. Check.
- Reversible -- if people hate iPad, can they return to whatever they were using? They can use the laptop, computer, or iPhone. Sure. Check.
- Tangible -- does it offer concrete/tangible value? Does it make a huge difference? For iPad, this is very controversial. No one MUST have an iPad, as it doesn't offer 100X better usability or efficiency than laptops. It may offer 10X or 5X better portability, but then again, this depends on who is using it and what that person use it for. No check.
- Fits prior investments -- prior time/money spent applies to iPad? If you bought Apple DRM music and apps, sure. Check.
- Familiar -- very familiar with iPhone UI and laptop. Big check.
- Congruent w/ future direction -- does it align with Apple's other product directs... more apps, more features, better efficiency, etc? Check.
- Positive public value -- does this make the users of iPad look good? It depends. The Zune in many sense was superior than the iPod (more features) but no one wanted it because it wasn't sexy. The iPhone has been built and marketed as a luxury product that increases one's reproductive suitability (like BMW or Armani suit). Does the iPad make people look as smart and sophisticated as the iPhone user? Time will tell.
The iPad gets 6/8 checks (and 1 more may be) on my book. For a controversial product where 1/3 of the people absolutely abhor it, this is not bad. If anything, I'd say if Apple marketing plays the right cards, it'll be as desirable as the iPod and iPhone. The rule of thumb for manufacturing price is that as the production volume goes up 10X, the cost will drop 1/2. I have no doubt that iPod demand will go up in time, and that the cost will drop to 1/2. That's a price that'll surely kill the Kindle.
How about YOU. What are you working on (social web site, B2B niche site, advertising, inventions, etc)? How do these elements fit in the product you're working on? Does your product have all of these elements for success?
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Sun + Oracle = Sunacle or OrcSun
Ok this is hitting pretty close to home as I know people who have or had worked at either Sun or Oracle. I didn't slave away few years in Sunnyvale for nothing. What do I think about the Sunacle|OrcSun acquisition?A few years ago the picture looked like this:
To put it another way, Oracle survives by selling ice-cubes to Eskimos, and Sun survives by making great ice-cubes and trying to sell them in Alaska. You with me so far? So the acquisition means the following:
Oracle's business viability = [world's greatest sales/marketing] + [mediocre and bad engineering]
Sun's business viability = [really really bad sales/marketing] + [amazing R&D and engineering]
Oracle + Sun = [world's greatest sales/marketing] + [mediocre and bad engineering] + [amazing R&D and engineering] + [really really bad sales/marketing]
I'm sure the performance metrics driven Automaton (AKA Larry Ellison) will see this in no time, and knowing him, he will drive up his metrics by doing the followings:
Oracle + Sun - [mediocre and bad engineering] - [really really bad sales/marketing] = [world's greatest sales/marketing] + [amazing R&D and engineering]
Now there's a recipe for greater success! Just fire Oracle engineers (esp. the apps/CRM/ERP group that live on 400/600 Oracle Pkwy, Redwood Shores) and fire Sun sales/marketing team. Stock holders rejoice!
Punch the Monkey and Win! Punch the Monkey and Make Money!
Back in the early days of internet when Yahoo ruled the day, companies were trying to figure out different ways to monetize. Many different online ads and models came out waaaaay before Google and AdWords/AdSense became as prevalent as it is today. Ah, the good 'ol mid 1990s, or more precisely, the annoying Netscape+Java Applet+pop-up+spammy ads days. Do you remember seeing those ads with scantily dressed women + spy-cam (X11 ads) and those moving "Punch the Monkey And Win!!!" advertisements? Those were the good 'ol days. Or, I guess looking back, those were simply... the days. Actually, those were probably the dark ages of the internet."Punch the Monkey and Win" ads by Advertising.com were basically wide banner ads that you find on top of common search engines (Yahoo, Alta Vista, Lycos, Inktomi... hey do you even know what Inktomi was?). It even showed up on content providers like CNN, etc. The implementation of Punch the Monkey went through countless revisions (it could have been motion GIF or Java Applet and later Flash), but the idea was simple: on the ad, show a monkey that moves back and forth, and you use your mouse to click where the monkey is. When you "punch" the monkey at the right time, the ad brings you to another screen that says something like "CONGRATULATIONS YOU WON! Fill out this form to get free coupons and great deals and super discounts at a store of your choice near you!!!" Ok, I don't know why people out there actually fill out these spammy forms, but in the wonderful world of advertising, amazing innovations happen because of an abundance of idiots filling out these spammy forms.
This is just a sample to show you how annoying it is. It is not a real ad.
Ok fine, so Punch the Monkey is a sleazy ad, BUT IT WORKED and made lots and lots of money! It was so prevalent in those days, it was hard to not see a monkey ad during the day. Advertising.com did a lot of analysis on click-through-rates (CTR). Any sort of color or motion or sound caused more people to click, and that was good news for advertising companies that wanted to spam or just collect lead-gen. In fact, it worked so well, that after a while everyone knew what it was all about, and in time people stopped punching the monkey and that was uber bad news for Advertising.com. What did they do in response? They made the monkey ad MORE colorful. That increased CTR, and they were happy for a while...but then... people stopped clicking again. So then they made the monkey move FASTER, and CTR increased... but eventually... CTR went down again! So then they made the monkey more obnoxious by adding multiple monkeys, uglier monkeys, monkeys that popped out of your browser, so on so forth. This kept going and going for about a year and every time Advertising.com did something different, CTR went up a little. As you can imagine, the ads got very obnoxious, especially the unwanted pop-ups (Javascript became more prevalent). Eventually, people got really tired of the monkey and just said "F*** I HATE THIS MONKEY" and simply went to other sites that didn't have the monkey ad.
Moral of the story? You can run your business on... pure business, and you can try to squeeze money from people, but if you provide something of no value to people (adding Punch the Monkey ad to something of value), it devaluates the product, the user experience, and turns people off. In the end, the product DOES matter regardless of how much monkey you make. People will eventually get turned off by your product and never come back again. I guess this is one of the countless reasons why I'm usually turned off by work that deals with advertising, and how people prioritize short term business gains over value and user experience. By the way, Advertising.com was bought by AOL, so I guess the executives were happy about their exit. Now, WHY would AOL buy something like that is beyond me, but I guess AOL isn't so different from Advertising.com where they are first and foremost, business driven (vs. Apple that is very much "quality experience" driven). I'm sure Steve Jobs would not have said anything kind about AOL and Advertising.com.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
How I love Gödel, Escher, Bach. The Self referencing problem. Loop.
I liked this so much, I'm reposting it on the blog. Reference: http://xkcd.com/688/
Monetizing Trash
I was having a conversation with my friend Michael H about dreams, and somehow we started talking about monetizing dreams-- write your daily dreams on the web and then monetize it. However, dreams don't usually make much sense (to me at least). They're usually trashy, useless information. Can you actually monetize things that don't make sense? In another word, is it better to post trash on the internet than to post nothing at all? Let's see now... In the DemandMedia world, the answer is, YES. According to Rosenblatt, it's better to post something, anything, than nothing at all.
DemandMedia pays starving English majors, errrr I mean... aspiring writers a whopping minimum wage (and in many cases below minimum wage) for writing articles ranging from how-tos, to product reviews, to rants about Britney Spears, and other countless things you can think of. Apparently there are tons and tons of writers in America who prefer to get paid peanuts to write, instead of getting paid waaay more money flipping burgers at McDs. Let's go over this now: Writing+passion=10 peanuts. Flipping burger+no passion=10000000 peanuts. The monetary reward is clear, yet passionate writers prefer to get measly 10 peanuts to write, than to make it rich by flipping burgers. So where do all these writing monkeys come from? I don't know. Apparently, there are a bunch of them out there.
Ok fine, maybe monetary motivation is not what motivates writers. As Michael pointed out to me, "there's a fundamental human desire to communicate and that includes writing." People will write, and people will read, regardless of monetary compensations. Furthermore, Michael pointed out that aspiring writers can both flip burgers to survive AND write for DemandMedia. And for these starving English majors, writing is a "gateway" to famedom (this is not a real word, is it?) or getting a Pulitzer Prize. As long as that 0.00000000001% chance of making it exists, these writers will be motivated to write. I guess it's kind of like how lottery and cult work too. You can really motivate (or trick) people by giving them a remote possibility of super-duper-awesomeness happening... similar to how Egyptian workers spend their entire lives building a pyramid so they can go to heaven, or how extremists blow themselves up so they can meet 99 virgins, or how people do good will so they will go to heaven, or how starving writers dump trash on internet so they can be famous one day. Apparently, DemandMedia's Rosenblatt doesn't think his company is dumping trash or exploiting people, so it must be true. It's on the internet. It must be true.
One thing that always baffled me is that DemandMedia generates gets very high ranked and well read articles for some odd reason-- meaning people actually read trash on the internet. But no way! People can't possibly desire trash by spend time on the internet doing unproductive things. I thought that's what tabloid magazines and TMZ are for. Wasting time on the amazingly useful internet??!? It's just inconceivable! The day that pigs fly!!! So anyways, in the DemandMedia world, any content is worth something. Heck, the company is very profitable today, and expanding quickly. As for monetizing dreams, I bet they are worth something too, because posting anything is better than posting nothing. Who knows, maybe I can apply to DemandMedia as a writer if one day, I decide that writing is my true passion/life aspiration (ahem, *cough*, shyeah right... I hate writing). Or... maybe I can just put my content on my blog and monetize it myself. Wait, I'm already doing that. Screw DemandMedia. I guess in the end, the economy of flooding the internet with tons of disposable content written by starving writers, is actually working extremely well. I guess this proves that people really spend time doing unproductive things on the internet after all. Pigs do fly after all!
Thanks for reading my randomly generated trash.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Hierarchy of Earnings
I saw a nice post from Ramit Sethi that reminded me of another blog from 2007 I saw that I really liked:
A) http://www.inter-sections.net/2007/10/01/a-hierarchy-of-earning-methods/ (2007 Post on the Hierarchy of Earnings)
B) http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/3-easiest-ways-to-earn-money/ (Ramit Sethi)
The recurring theme for both of these blogs are as follows:
IMHO, you can't really climb from a lower number to a higher number (employment to productizing) in a short time. There needs to be a bootstraping process. You need capital and time to do 2 or 3 or 4, so you may need to start with 1. You definitely need to build a network (e.g. via consulting) because that is quite beneficial before you plunge ahead and build a product.
The jist I'm getting is basically-- employment offers you pay, but take it only if you really need it and can tolerate it for decades because if you go that route, you'll be stuck with it all your life.
A) http://www.inter-sections.net/2007/10/01/a-hierarchy-of-earning-methods/ (2007 Post on the Hierarchy of Earnings)
B) http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/3-easiest-ways-to-earn-money/ (Ramit Sethi)
The recurring theme for both of these blogs are as follows:
Employment aka "trading time for money". Low risk, hard work, has a well defined upper limit to earnings. Work you put in may not represent what you get back (e.g. if you're a corporate climber with a knack for politics, this is definitely for you).
Consulting aka "trading skills/jobs done for money". Medium risk, but you get to build a network for Productizing (see below). Also, what you put in is usually what you get out.
Productizing aka "trading time and skill for a product." High risk. Competition, market saturation, you really need to know what you're doing and be a hard core entrepreneur to make it out. There is no upper limit to your earnings.
Management aka "doing all of the above using someone else's time."
IMHO, you can't really climb from a lower number to a higher number (employment to productizing) in a short time. There needs to be a bootstraping process. You need capital and time to do 2 or 3 or 4, so you may need to start with 1. You definitely need to build a network (e.g. via consulting) because that is quite beneficial before you plunge ahead and build a product.
The jist I'm getting is basically-- employment offers you pay, but take it only if you really need it and can tolerate it for decades because if you go that route, you'll be stuck with it all your life.
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