Our business idea based on the CSS history hack: a new way to monetize web assets. | Hacker News Reader

Our business idea based on the CSS history hack: a new way to monetize web assets.

wozad.com

28 pointsjjfarren-33 comments

This hack can only tell you what sites a user has visited out of a list of sites you specify. A general ad platform based on this hack would presumably have a list of sites to query against, acting as a litmus test for determining a user's interests and socioeconomic status. I would argue that such a list would be difficult to compose (javascript/JSON size vs. generality vs. granularity) and no better than the cookie / flash cookie / geo IP lookup technologies currently being employed by doubleclick and others. Such a list would necessarily have to target sites in the top 500 whereas networks like doubleclick can mine niche sites that may serve as better indicators of a user's true behavioral profile.

It's not necessarily quite that bad. The list can be made modular.

One option would be to start of with a list of the top 500 sites and then determine from that information what demographic the user fits it. Then you could load a list of sites pertaining to that demographic and further narrow down the user's behavior.

Also, if you're talking about ads on a certain site, the publisher can make a list of the sites in their niche and then you could load that list and move on from there.

All in all, this has some very interesting potential. The question is, why hasn't Google done it already?

They have. I'm pretty sure Doubleclick does this. Without the CSS hack though(using the cookie method).

The CSS hack is only worthwhile if you don't have the kind of data sources that the big guys have. If this technique actually made money, you would probably want to sign up for something like Lookery or RightMedia because they'd get you better results.

If you read carefully on our website you will learn about the limitations of cookie based methods.

I think someday that hack will be closed in the browser as a privacy violation, so I would be hesitant to build a business based on it.

but hang on, before you get all up in arms about privacy and rights, this is a possible google adsense / adwords killer and there is going to blood shed before privacy gets in the way of profits.

btw I like it!

Yeah, because no way could Google have figured out how to do this.

Google should really also integrate this hack into google analytics -- that way they can give rough estimates of where else your traffic is surfing.

I believe there's something in Google's S-1 filing that might technically prohibit them from doing this.

Surely they also look at your browsing history, when you use Chrome, or even when you use their search engine.

Surely you haven't even looked at Google's privacy policy, which spells out exactly how they don't do this with Chrome.

I started to build exactly the same a couple of months back but then abandoned the project because a business on a hack is risky!

We had considered the same issue, but decided to give it a try anyway.

Apart the visited link way there are also other means of achieving the same result even working server side. Check out this paper http://wozad.com/docs/sp3.pdf ,it's covering also the privacy issues.

This is the second post I've seen from wozad.com where clicking on the headline simply leads to their top-level site (where they try to sell you their service). Smells like spam to me.

agreed. at least lead us to a page where you talk about the css hack and why it is better than cookies, etc.

Well, the first post title wasn't clear, it has been ignored. I decided to post again because i do think that the matter is at least "interesting".

Smells like spam. Tastes like spam. It is spam!

Your logic is self-serving, don't you think? You have no history of contributing to HN discussion besides posting your company link twice. A post title has little to do with the quality of content on the other side. I think people ignored it for a reason. Not to mention, how is this that much different from Schill's random hack back in 2006?

http://www.schillmania.com/random/humour/web20awareness/

Yes you are right,i should not have linked the post to the main page, this might look a bit rude.Anyway i do think that this application has some kind of value to share. And as i already commented the feedback of this community is very important for us. Finally our methodology is much more extended from the "random hack" you talk about, that random hack is something coded in one evening just to give a proof-of-concept.

Your posts are clearly spam.

i do think that you do not know the word Spam, a duplicate post isn't spam. I've explained why i duplicated and i won't be posting more. My purpose was to get feedback from the community. You might believe that i'm stupid enough to think that i can my business fly by advertising here, well, this is not exactely true. Anyway thanks for your comment.

Why aren't people going to chase you out of the market with pitchforks and torches? This is a severe privacy violation.

If you want to use the CSS History hack - here is something to get you started: http://pastie.org/343984

I think you did not understand that much..

You really do have a knack for endearing yourself to this audience, don't you?

I'd say find a way to get in front of more mainstream publishers, not hackers, this is pretty obviously not your audience.

well, everybody here misunderstood the meaning of this post. It wasn't get instant userbase, but instead get the feedback of hacker news community. This is partly achieved and i say thanks to everybody who partecipated in this discussion.

Here is feedback: it's a scary privacy hole. Having a company trying to exploit this to make money will only hasten its closure.

Sounds like a good idea. But it doesn't work if they have css turned off.

Who the fark browses the web with CSS off?

i think he/she meant javascript not CSS.

note about your site: turn off JS and it has your logo and your footer, nothing else.

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