Regarding email formatting, I'm pretty sure that for a given message once you click on the formatting tools once, the bar stays open because they know you are formatting things.
323 karma · joined October 19, 2011
Besides, Google has been killing it on iOS recently.
If they want anonymity they should be personally holding their own wallet. Most exchanges only allow some sort of cash order deposit, for this reason exactly.
Now I'm connected to every apartment manager, recruiter, and random person I've ever emailed -__-
What I really hate is that because this great new feature makes money, as opposed to the previous goal of driving growth, engagement, what have you, it is pushed first and foremost and hides many more useful features behind additional clicks to first say "No, I don't want to buy a gift". For example, the one-click write-on-everyone-whos-birthday-it-is-in-one-dialogue feature was unbelievably useful. Now you have to click twice for each person to write on their wall (once on the thing that says "Buy a gift", then once on "Write on their timeline").
I've noticed several annoying redesigns / changes that hide convenient functionality in order to make the user click through "No, I don't want to give a gift"... Very annoying, definitely makes me less pleased and less engaged with the site.
I would say, though, that claiming that IE and Bing advertising is "wasted" is pretty bold. Sure, OSD hasn't started turning a profit yet, but there is something to be said about Bing having ~30% market share and the fact that if Bing did not exist, Google would almost certainly have a complete monopoly on search today. The data generated from Bing and the Bing ecosystem is incredibly valuable, but Bing Ads have yet to unlock the full revenue potential unfortunately. Consider, though, that Google and Microsoft are the only two companies that have the unbelievably valuable asset that is an index of the entire (within reason) web.
Dalton is right that advertisements that are indistinguishable from content are the best kind of advertisements, but only if they are displayed in a context in which the ad-viewer (read: user) wants to see that.
Google has this explicitly tied to a query (and implicitly with previous queries and increasingly with mobile device information, for Google Now). If a user sees an ad on Google it is almost certainly comparable or better than organic results with respect to RELEVANCE TO THE USER, which is what matters. Users express their intent, and Google only shows ads alongside the content that are directly related and aiming to solve the same problem or achieve the same goal.
On Facebook, what is the parallel? I'm on Facebook so that I can keep in touch and communicate with my friends. My intent is to see stories about my friends about their social interactions, parties, etc. I want to find something to do and see what they've been up to. I want to see the cool new product they bought in action and pictures from the amazing vacation they took - what I don't want to see is that they bought /something/ from Amazon or that they're planning a trip I'm not invited to. Facebook is about sharing your life, your past, your "timeline", not your purchases and plans.
"You shouldn’t have to prep Sunday to Sunday, to get into a good high school... That's extreme." Actually that's how it largely is for competitive colleges, and if people are arguing for a merit-based admission system that is _exactly_ what people should have to do if other people are willing to.
Tough to tell where the author is landing on this point in his article.
On another note, Google is in the process of moving their Google Shopping listings and Product Listing Ads to a fully commercialized Google Shopping portal / product.
I get where she is coming from, and it is something that should be acknowledged by the users of the site. The key point here is that the GOAL of App.net is not to cater to a different market (those able and willing to pay $50 to have an ad-free real-time network with control over their data).
This is just the economic impact of charging something for a service - it will limit the audience that will buy/use the product.
In particular, I think the comparisons to Hacker News and Quora are exactly what it will be like. Quora is a fantastic Q/A site, and as much of a fan as I am, it still has not reached the completely 'mass market' that yahoo answers is used by. In the same sense, Hacker News has very different content on average than, say, Reddit.
So long as the content creators (users) of App.net realize their audience and the effects that have been created by the circumstances and economics of the network, then it will still make sense.
So perhaps the call here should be for people simply to realize that App.net will never be Twitter. And /maybe/ that's a good thing.
Driving a car is a fun experience for a lot of people, when you're not just commuting and putzing along to work.
On the other hand, you're absolutely right about Microsoft taking a loss to gain market share. Xbox was first, and is now the most popular gaming console in the world. Then is Bing, which despite not yet turning profitable for Microsoft did prevent Google from attaining a monopoly and has made Microsoft the only other company with a legitimate index of the internet and reasonable market share in search. I can definitely see Microsoft taking some hardware losses on the Surface to plant the seeds for the Windows 8 ecosystem.
From the sound of your story, it sounds like those three were probably not actually affiliated McDonalds. Were you confident that even Potential Witness 1 was a true employee? Sounds like a scam and heist, but very strange since multiple people involved were wearing (seemingly) legitimate McDonalds clothing. Although, I would note that they were not wearing the uniform that the cashiers were wearing, which may give more weight to the conjecture that they were just lurking in plain site waiting to mug or rip someone off.
I hope you find these guys and they get whats coming to them.