My understanding is that people object to this as it is a means of defining them rather than describing them. In fact, I know people who would be insulted with the use of "autistic people" as opposed to "people with autism"
As someone who works in the advertising space I can tell you with a great deal of confidence that SnapChat will not be able to monetize in the way you describe and make enough money (without pissing off users) to justify the price tag.
Unless they've got a very clever model that is more advanced than what you've described or that FB or Twitter have ever used it's a very long shot. Unless the owner has a personal issue with FB and didn't want their money for this reason I do not believe this was a sound business decision.
I'd love to be wrong but I don't think I will be in this case.
I'm biased but I always recommend that anyone interested in SEO start with the Beginner's Guide. It is a fantastic resource that is updated regularly frequently and I find it easier for folks to grasp than many of the alternatives.
It's not "straight from the horse's mouth" as is the case with the Google guide (which frankly what Google wants to drive rankings does not always tie up nicely with what actually seems to drive rankings in practice), but I always have users start there and then look further afield if they're still interested.
I have got to say that I don't tend to place a lot of faith in an article that cites The Daily Mail as a source and I'm inclined to agree with you about the tone. Even the Mail article referenced paints a much more balanced story and the headline is ironically "Vettel did not cheat! Horner defiant..."
As a non-F1 fan though it certainly made for interesting reading.
I'm not sure that's explicitly true about competitions. I know there are a number of rules around weight, helmet design, etc. However, I think there is at least some room for innovation that does occur and at least some variation of equipment (see: http://road.cc/content/feature/85959-tour-de-france-team-bik... as well as http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/4320804). I distinctly remember growing up and watching the debate over which types of TT helmets were allowed, which wheelsets were allowed, etc.
One area where I feel like is also an interesting comparison and where I thought ronaldx was going with this is around performance enhancing drugs and the UCI. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to learn that things that Vettel being accused of now are, strictly speaking, not against the rules but clearly creating an advantage. The innovation is in the details in the same way that the drug regimens of many cyclists throughout the last couple of decades in many cases did not include drugs listed on a banned substance list (e.g. early blood doping '70s vs. became illegal in '86), because the UCI and WADA simply didn't know about them. It will be interesting to see if Vettel is found to be playing in this gray area how he and Red Bull will be judged.
*Please note I do appreciate there is a big difference between doping and mechanical advantage through design, just thought there were some interesting parallels there too.
Yes, exactly. The present state of cycling is such that any R&D budget can be used more effectively on bending the doping rules than on mechanical innovation.
I'm glad that folks like Blekko are trying to improve the search landscape but do you have any figures to back up the declining revenue per click?
I feel as though Google are becoming more and more focussed on profits (evidenced by their (not provided) data hypocrisy, role out of "enhanced campaigns, etc.) but their profits seem to grow[1] and they seem to focus on margins over advertiser or user experience with increasing focus.
I'm glad that folks like yourselves are in the market as I say but until someone develops better algos and better results (for the majority of queries) it's unlikely that folks will get angry enough to move or see a viable alternative.
In spite of these changes I haven't really seen a decline in Google's market share[2] drop consistently or significantly so I don't really see a change coming any time soon.
Read Google's financial releases if you want to see evidence of their declining revenue per click, of follow the news [1][2][3]. Its a combination of factors, the market is maturing, there aren't too many people left who don't advertise on the Internet, and other sources are getting more market share (Bing, Facebook, Etc.)
> I'm glad that folks like yourselves are in the
> market as I say but until someone develops better
> algos and better results (for the majority of
> queries) it's unlikely that folks will get
> angry enough to move or see a viable alternative.
Actually one of the things Blekko has taught me is that search market share is no longer about search quality. At Blekko we demonstrated that we could provide better results in important queries and that how we did that would scale as we got larger. But we didn't get a lot of traction. Microsoft however (who we talked to) were so impressed that they essentially ripped off everything we were doing and put Bing on that path.
Now on the one hand I should be outraged Microsoft ripped us off [4], but I'm not. Its been interesting to see how much time and money they have spent making our strategy into a 'full size' search engine, and realizing that we were not going to be able to raise close to a billion dollars (which is what they will have easily spent by now) to take it to market against Google. The Bing challenge, the editors picks, the whole thing taken right from our playbook. And while I believe they are having the best success they ever have against Google to date (its a good strategy), there is another 3 years for it to run before consumers think that they are equal services. And there is a whole lot of dirty politics between here and there.
As for market share, its a curious thing. You can earn it or you can force it. Look for more and more "search defense" going on, for example non-Google searches getting harder on Android, or in Chrome. Conversely non-Microsoft searches in Windows products. With people like Firefox getting played in the middle (try to search on Google on Firefox on the standard Linux Mint distribution for example :-) Gone are the days where simply having a better product will let you win that prize. Way too much money involved.
I use Ghostery to see what is being tracked rather than block it outright. Call me foolish but I never realised that blocking ads was the primary intended purpose of the tool, I've always just used it to check for missing analytics tags and so forth.
In the context of how others scored I would say 17% is fairly decent as well. However, most Hacker Newsers make up a small percentage of a standard "UK consumer." I thought this number was incredibly low given that most people's interaction with Google would be as the organisation with the stated intent "to organise the world's data" - not as a corporation that makes money from advertising.
With that said, Google & Starbucks have been front and center in the mainstream news a lot lately in the UK with regards to "tax avoidance" claims.
