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I understand this and I've noticed trends with the news sites going back to a subscription based model due to adblockers. The drawbacks to any model that is premium is that a large part of the audience is cut off from the content. For the publisher it is ok because that audience is non-monetizing but those readers are essentially cut off from information because they might not be able to afford it. That is similar to the Web 1.0 days when a large part of the world was using shady sites as most US based sites where hidden behind a paywall.

Adblockers and ads actually are a vicious cycle. Adblockers block ads which then requires more ads to be shown to the people without adblockers in order to recoup revenue which forces those people to install more adblockers.

We are already seeing attempts (from shady sites) to mine cryptocurrency in the background. While this might work on desktop, it is killer for the phones and not very usable.

My best bet is for the Web to find their own model of micropayments with freemium content similar to how mobile games are doing it.

I'm not sure that from a consumer perspective, I'm happy about this. Ads won't ever go away so instead of getting ads that are relevant to my persona, I'm going to start getting ads on things that don't interest me.

For example: men receiving women care product ads, or advertising for baby products when I'm single etc.

Even if it's not related to ads, think recommendation sites for books or movies.

Basically this entire thing will at least for a while push us back in the Web 1.0 times. I guess that eventually someone will come with some way to obtain the same results as today (or even better) while completely skirting this regulation.

Edit: Also as all tech regulations, this one also completely ignores the human factor. Bounce rate will increase until people get accustomed to just clicking 'yes' especially if the 'no' button drawbacks are presented in a loss aversion way (imagine big red letters warning about big problems if the 'yes' button is not clicked)

This ruling is pretty disastrous for Uber in some countries where there is ingrained corruption through regulation.

Take România for example: licenses are needed to operate, there is a limited number of them, winning licenses is a black box, there is a maximum limit to the price per kilometer, a phone operator service is required, physical systems that monitor the ride, no credit card taxi support legislation, no legal tipping, cars must be licensed for taxi, drivers need special taxes and tests (some are part time weekend drivers).

In short there is a lot of improvements that Uber brings but the legislation doesn’t cover (like GPS use) and there is no way to change those without hurting the real taxi drivers.

Let’s not also forget that they make a hero a little OP at launch and then it gets tuned.

Good for them. I don’t have the numbers or business plan but I have faith they did their homework.

There seems to be a counter trend in the current micro transaction game market which will catch some of the people who long for pure premium games.

My guess is they intend to use the first game as a platform to bring people into the second. The drawback of premium is that 1 in 50 people who see a game buy it. The drawback of F2P is that 2% of players will spend money in it. This is a move to cause a conversion higher than that by effectively selling the F2P players, a premium game.

The article is right that this can be thought to be new to the social media environment but it is a well known phenomena of which the USA has plenty of experience both in countering and administering and I believe that the effects are now seen due to government complacency. Let's call it propaganda - everyone did it in the past and everyone still does it today.

Both Russia and China have a pretty much inaccessible social media while both also have a very powerful propaganda machine on Facebook or Twitter with hired posters, paid marketing - an entire propaganda system ranging from psychologists to artists.

Unfortunately the government will at some point have to step up their game from TV, radio and newspapers and get with the times - either by making western social media more inaccessible or by pumping those dollars in Facebook pro-democracy ads. Also I noticed that Western governments play right into some of these carefully laid traps like immigration, sexuality or religion policies.

I'm not entirely sure why the points raised in the memo are rebutted without providing evidence to other papers proving the contrary point.

If the papers proving that biologically there's an interest difference between the genders are not enough then we could apply some data science.

Let's assume that nothing can force the gaming interests of women and men such as higher pay or availability (this could be debatable in the past). There are studies like these made on over 250000 gamers which show clear interest differences between the two genres: http://quanticfoundry.com/2016/12/15/primary-motivations/ http://quanticfoundry.com/2017/01/19/female-gamers-by-genre/ The gaming field (and marketing in general) is full of models used very successfully when deciding on a company/business strategy.

Google with their huge data analysis powerhouse could end this debate swiftly in their favor but I fear that either their data proves the writer's points and they're acting hypocritically now or they are avoiding adding fuel to the emotional fire (from a scientific point, Google data would be pure gold for years to come) by not releasing anything (pro or con).

I find it admirable although a bit concerning that there's transparency with the financial metrics. Most employees don't need to know that information, both for the company's sake and for theirs.

That information can affect the employees as they will be making plans:

- if the metrics look bad then they will make plans to jump ship, productivity will drop, word will spread or they will simply worry when it's not their job to worry about financials.

- if the metrics look good then they can expect some pay raises or benefits or improvements which might or might not be in the future plans of the company.

The company being a startup can be affected if the information leaks out. Possible investors might back out or propose some outrageous things or the competition will see inside the company also and they will be "data driving" on your back.

Financial information should be on a need to know basis.

Now back to the issue at hand about "data driven". From my experience, this means that the company will aggregate all kinds of events and data (financial, user, metrics, feedback, everything). Some of it will be for vanity (like app downloads) and some will be actionable (like where did the app downloads come from which allows you do double down on a good source).

The purpose of the "data driven" company is continuous improvement through data. Observe data, propose changes based on data, experiment (A/B testing at the minimum), observe results and carry on the cycle. For example: the UI of the application, the UX, the features offered or the price points for the features. Everything should be registered, tested and improved upon.

You said something related to engineering tickets being related to app downloads. That is a pretty huge conjecture there but if the data shows this then it must be true (!Warning: correlation does not imply causation). Recording the trend and velocity of the engineering tickets is a good metric that can be actioned upon later on. Usually the 5 why are applied to determine possible relations between events and getting to the core issue of something so you can do actions and tweaks on it (why has the number of tickets increased/decreased? etc.).

As for the monthly data/metrics talk: the "data driven" company is based on a constant 24/7 talk about the metrics and how to act upon them.

Also as for making the data requests public, the same as for the financial metrics apply (need to know basis or some kind of marketing point).

Pardon my ignorance as I couldn't find a lot of information on this but if Uber became a transportation company wouldn't that require full-time contracts for all the drivers that would use the application? This seems quite restricting as the purpose of the app is to allow anyone to join the platform and for the driver to drive only when he feels like it.

Forcing licenses doesn't restrict the number of possible drivers? In my country most licenses are held by cartels who don't let any new incumbents in the market.

Also there are some who don't want to be taxi drivers but just do this in off time in the weekends. In my country people that drive for Uber need to have either a juridic registration either as a company or as an authorized person and since Uber has forced online transactions, predetermined pay and a review system, the tax evasion is nonexistent, there is no pay cheating and the drivers behave (as opposed to the taxi drivers who due to cash transactions do a lot of tax evasion, temper with the registering devices and don't care about customer feedback even refusing rides based on tipping).

I hope that if the legislation changes then it also brings the old system to the 21st century.