Fake holidays are the new infographics | Hacker News Reader

Fake holidays are the new infographics

blog.backupify.com

62 pointsjgarmon20 comments

More often that I'd like, I've seen people get too deep into their projects, and forget that things are supposed to be fun.

They start trying to coerce their project into a business, and it not only looks sad, but destroys what they loved in the process.

I certainly understand the temptation, but I hope I maintain the wisdom to know where the line should be.

If you don't extract maximum value from your assets, someone else will.

This changes the moment you realize your 'assets' have free will, a capacity to discern, and really strong opinions

Then it's your fault for not acting to neutralize those risks.

I have a website, Robohash.org, that's embedded in websites around the world. It gets millions (!) of loads every week.

Should I be falling over myself, trying to find a way to monetize it, or should I enjoy that people are using it, and smile when I see one?

Most of us already have good jobs, our bills are (mostly) paid, and we're not in danger of going hungry.

Startups are great, and I encourage people to start one when there's something with a real revenue model, but don't try to force your fun little quirky project into being something it's not.

Try to force a quirky fun project into being a revenue producing startup, is like charging you friends to watch your Garage band play. I understand the motivation, but it's kinda sad.

Time to come clean before this goes too far: I actually agree with you completely. This was a little experiment with devils advocacy. I am somewhat heartened by the result.

EDIT: btw I like robohash. Good work.

wow, didn't know robohash, it's cool :)

just to clarify - robohash is a image made up from discrete robot parts (ears, nose, etc) and assembled according to say every 8 bytes in a SHA1 hash?

So its essentially SSH-fingerprint-art, but waaaaay cooler.

Do not monetize it - the world will come back around and reward you one day.

That is exactly how it works. It's fun!

And I think that's exactly the right attitude ;) It's not something I need to make money on, it's just something cool to have added to the world. (It's OSS, too!)

It's quaint how you ascribe innocent motivations in the first place, as though this wasn't a commercial project from the start.

I like the idea of Saint Backup Day much better than world backup day ... but why not make it Jan 3, though, the feast day of St. Genevieve, the actual patron saint of disasters? Also in early January most people are in a "let's get organized" mood, anyway.

I guess I missed the news that explains the link to infographics in the title. Can somebody explain where this title comes from?

Infographics are a classic SEO black hat scam, where an infographic with random factoids and idiot-enticing charts/graphics is circulated to generate link juice for a site with an unrelated business purpose.

The poster is just saying that Holidays are the new black hat marketing technique.

I don't think that creating content people want to consume in an effort to get them to link to your site qualifies as black hat SEO.

Descriptive terms immediately describe the goods, or some important characteristic of the goods. Trademark law does not protect descriptive terms unless achieve "secondary meaning" in the minds of consumers. That is, trademark rights accrue when the public comes to associate the descriptive term with a particular company rather than the product in general.

[...]

Failure to "police" a mark by stopping infringing uses can result in the loss of protection.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_trademark_law#De...

Two sponsors on the website, yet numerous parties issuing press releases:

https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=world%20back...

We don't know how many emails or C&Ds they've sent.

You don't have to stop use to stop infringing use. If you just want to protect your trademark, explicitly license it to them for free or a trivial amount.

> take down any unauthorized reference to World Backup Day, it’s trademarks

> it's trademarks

I try not to harass people on HN and Reddit with grammar, but I do expect better from a legal document.

These are the people that have never had an iota of power in their real lives.

Besides misspelling "its", the lawyer-impersonators at WBD Legal spammed the WBD phrase several times without even saying that it is trademarked.

Good for Bfy, to displace WBD trolls, unless they set up a fake controversially to make them selves look put upon (cynical because Fake Controversies are a classic marketing technique, older than Fake Holiday and Infographic)

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