DJN

I couldn't agree more. Trafficspaces already provides it. See screenshots - http://www.trafficspaces.com/tour/

You can integrate demographic info from your database to show targeted ads just like in Facebook Ads.

You can thank the plethora of open RESTful APIs for that :)

I've just finished implementing the Trafficspaces ad server API and oh boy does it create all sorts of new possibilities.

I've learned five lessons.

1. Charge from day 1

2. Focus on business customers (the Average Selling Price is much higher)

3. Pump all your profits back into marketing.

4. Never stop innovating.

5. Put a phone number on your site (it does wonders for trust)

The domain of possible consequences of changing protocols and semantics on the fly is hugely complex. What about testing? Are we advocating that we change live systems without tests?

The author writes: "Level 3 introduces discoverability, providing a way of making a protocol more self-documenting."

I reply: The same way good design separates presentation, logic and data, it follows that good protocols separate data from documentation.

I've also got mixed feelings about "retargeting". On one hand, it's great because it keeps your brand omnipresent. On the other hand, it can really bug the hell out of existing customers. For example, I'm an existing Grasshopper subscriber but their insect ad keeps following me everywhere. I wish I could squish it!

Isn't it better to offer an unlimited, resource constrained plan? Note: you can still let them use all the features but with limited resources.

Advantages: 1. You get permission to send them product related emails. 2. They hit the resource limits quickly thereby encouraging them to upgrade.

We do something similar at Trafficspaces and it works well for us. Unlimited free trial but with very low resource usage.

Just my 2 cents.

I don't think you should worry too much about this. Someone who abandons a free service for an inordinate amount of time shouldn't expect to see their data. Especially when the cost of storing such data isn't nominal.

Send them one or two reminders and you should be fine.

and

...the pilots, having expected to collect 95 percent of the airline's profits, will in fact be entitled to 115 percent...

WTF! Did the pilots think about the poor entrepreneurs and shareholders who own the business?

More reason why labour should be fungible. Some unions really rile me up.

It's the least we can all do for the community :)

I was referring to cases where the account holder wants to use an custom domain name e.g. ads.mywebsite.com, instead of the generic mywebsite.mysaasprovider.com.

In that case, we'll need to host their certificate within our Pound load balancer and get it to listen on a dedicated IP.

You need to trim the username before validating it.

You review random sites, get karma points then your site gets reviewed by other users in proportion to your karma. Brilliant. Symbiosis at its best

http://feedbackroulette.com/

I made an early decision to enable SSL everywhere in Trafficspaces with the obvious downside being that I need to allocate a dedicated IP address each time someone requests a custom domain name.

I used to get worried that perhaps it would have been better to only provide SSL in specific stages (such as sign-in and payment) and only through a generic domain name. Not any more.

Firesheep clearly vindicates that decision.

    > A heat-sensing infrared detector monitored the terrace, 
    > but he approached it slowly from behind a large, 
    > homemade polyester shield. The low thermal
    > conductivity of the polyester blocked his body heat 
    > from reaching the sensor

    > An automatic electric pulse constantly shot into the 
    > room and back out along these wires. If any of the 
    > sensors were tripped, the circuit would break. When a 
    > pulse shot into the room, it expected an answer. If 
    > it didn't get one, it activated the alarm.

    > Once the copper wires were exposed, he clipped a new, 
    > precut piece of wire between the inbound and outbound 
    > cables. This bridge rerouted the incoming electric 
    > pulse over to the outbound wire before the signal 
    > reached the sensors. It no longer mattered what 
    > happened further down the line. The sensors were out 
    > of the loop. It was now safe for the others to enter.

That way, you may be able to utilise all your developers fully.

As the saying goes "all problems in tech can be solved by an extra layer of indirection"

To find out the perceived value, you need to get out and talk to customers.

We'll reorganize the feature set as you've described. It seems to make a lot of sense.

Regarding the drop down, whilst it isn't the most ideal implementation, I can't think of a way to allow publishers to pick a plan that meets their specific needs without using the drop downs.

We've tried to reduce the visual complexity by using 4 buckets, hence the drop downs in each category. Getting rid of them, I fear, may create more confusion about the flexibility (or lack of) of the plans. Especially because our customer's requirements are quite varied. We've literally got people on 250,000 impressions and others on the largest plans.

Short of not being backed by hard data, I don't think they were all bad. Definitely not "customer hating" or "clueless"

:)

1. There is no quantifiable data to backup the assertions. Does anyone have A/B test data to back any of the author's assumptions?

2. There is no discussion on how to structure pricing that scales on a specific metric e.g. users, storage space, number of uses etc.

The common approach is to lump all the plans into 3-4 buckets with the last bucket being an "unlimited" plan. Suffice to say, this approach may not be ideal in cases where users have widely differing requirements.

For example, imagine pricing a product based on impressions/page views. Buckets simply don't make sense.

I'm currently experimenting with a pricing table that allows buyers to CUSTOMIZE their plan from a traditional 3-4 plan table.

See http://www.trafficspaces.com/plans/ for how I've done it. What do you think?

"Key takeaway: The quality of your dialogue with customers is directly proportional to the quality of the customers you will acquire. If you understand their needs better, you will close bigger deals with happier customers who consume less resources"

Those words, mate, are essentially gold dust. I wish I could pay/donate for this content. Seriously.

See my other comment about including it in Hacker Monthly. I do hope the curators include it in the next issue.

Two notable examples:

1. Facebook beating Google's Orkut. 2. Youtube beating Google Video.

In addition, the fact that some of Google's products launch with ugly or complex user interfaces creates a clear and present opportunity for startups with good design skills and a focus on usability.

For example, I created Trafficspaces simply because I felt Google Ad Manager and OpenX were both a royal pain in the ass to use.

+1 for the hat. :)

It appears that the first meeting was focused on improving the financing options for startups whilst the second meeting appears to have focused on improving the ROI for investors.

Can someone explain why this is a problem?

If angel investors don't make a good return after risking their own capital, their funds will be diverted elsewhere (as per the rules of a capitalist system) and that is a huge disadvantage to the startup space because valuations will still decrease anyway.

Summary - angelgate is a non-story. Move on people. There's nothing to see here apart from another chance to procrastinate instead of working on your startup (which is highly likely to fail anyway)

It's like Microsoft trying to prevent all software compnies from using the "soft" suffix or the "Micro" prefix.

I suspect that your domain was flagged by a poorly written pattern analysis bot and nobody at eBay has bothered to do any due diligence before firing off this "cease & desist".

My advice - send them an email stating your objection and requesting evidence that it has been construed to have an association with their brand. That should get a human being to actually look into the matter.

It requires a certain level of maturity, introspection, humility and openness to not simply tag opposing views as pointless and therefore worthy of a downvote.

Another way to express it is this - is it possible to upvote a comment that you disagree with? i.e. simply on the ability of the author to substantiate his points?

Perhaps we should introduce transparent algorithmic voting.

Hmmm....

Mike made some serious insinuation of improper behaviour that was targeted at the super angels i.e Dave, Ron et al

Dave has every right to discredit it. Especially when Arrington wasn't a participant and Dave was.