hvass

I highly recommend it as well! There are amazing examples in the book. And if you look around, you should be able to find presentations on it online. (filetype:pdf / ppt in Google).

What do you mean a theoretical problem? It can happen - just because you can't imagine it happening or that it might happen years, decades or centuries from now, does not make it any less real.

> Describe culture in ways that make people think and debate rather than universally agree.

Great point. As Ben Horowitz compares Square with Amazon, you wouldn't be sitting at a desk made of a door since Square highly values design and Amazon highly values frugality. Also, I can only imagine the discussions at Facebook with the focus on taking huge risk for the sake of innovating.

I guess his sentence also applies to people you would hire - everybody would universally like certain things about a culture, but if you're more risk-averse, I guess you wouldn't fit in as well at FB.

Check out Hadot's Inner Citadel if you haven't, also an amazing book.

I wouldn't start with Epictetus just because I think some of his lines can be easily misinterpreted, for example, the line about kissing your child and thinking about his death can really put people off.

I had the same initial reaction with Marcus, but honestly it might be because I didn't have the right translation (pick Gregory Hays's!!) and not enough background on the man. I would highly recommend watching this short series that mentions both Epictetus and Marcus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLD09Qa3kMk I truly think you'll see the Meditations in a different way after watching this. Also, Pierre Hadot has a very good (but scholarly) analysis on it in The Inner Citadel.

And for Epictetus, I always introduce him with the story of the Vietnam prisoner of war James Stockdale who in a way relied on stoic principles to endure the tortures he was inflicted. He wrote and lectured about the lessons there, Google him around.

For an intro to stoicism you should start with Seneca's letters and Marcus Aurelius' Meditations before you jump into Guide to the Good Life (which I do not recommend, despite Derek's praise of it)

Also, check out the upcoming book 'The Obstacle is the Way' by Ryan Holiday - http://www.amazon.com/The-Obstacle-Is-Way-Timeless/dp/159184...

I had to learn RegEx because of Google Analytics. The folks from LunaMetrics wrote a handy guide - http://www.lunametrics.com/regex-book/Regular-Expressions-Go...

It's still just basic RegEx, but if anyone is looking for stuff with more context related to GA, this is the one for you.

Pocket is amazing. I organize all my content with tags, so you are essentially building yourself a sweet library with (un)read articles on variety of topics, so when confronted with a problem, you might know exactly where to look.

I mean what other tools besides KISSMetrics people use for funnel analysis.

Thanks for your post by the way, helped clarify few points.

I know that a lot of people use PadiTrack to better understand their GA funnels and it provides segments as far as I know? Plus, it's free. http://paditrack.com

What do you guys use for funnel analysis? I think as a paid solution KISSMetrics covers some of the issues outlined in this post.

I strongly recommend using Evan Miller's free A/B testing tools to avoid those issues!

Use them to really know if conversion rate is significantly different, whether the mean value of two groups is significantly different and how to calculate sample size:

http://www.evanmiller.org/ab-testing/

I think people are able to endorse you for anything. The more keyword-rich a profile is, the better targeted the advertising. ;-)

There is a great lesson in one of pg's essays. If you push you better be there for few hours to monitor what is happening. You do not just push and leave. I hope we all learn from this thread.

From my experience with retargeting it drives amazing lift in conversions. A lot of platforms allow you to do this dynamic ad placing where you show the recently added item in a cart, but not purchased.

Also, let's not forget that Amazon is obsessed with testing, I am sure they have troves of it to back up everything they are doing.

I am aware of the study, even so, where does the Expedia AdWords spend come into play as an argument? So they get penalized - they won't cut AdWords obviously, they might even up it. They do not get penalized, they either cut their AdWords budget or it remains the same. Again, where is the incentive for Google to not penalize Expedia? Because the AdWords argument doesn't hold.

I am a bit confused about the argument about Expedia not being penalized because they are spending on AdWords, wouldn't great organic rankings reduce their paid budget? And if Google penalizes them for legitimate reasons I doubt they would cut their AdWords budget.

I am sure Matt will provide more info soon especially after what happened to RapGenius.

This is too good. This I easily see as a link bait at 'Business Insider':

"Why Quit? Because the other company has bigger monitors."

Thank you so much, I couldn't figure out what they were offering exactly. ;-)

The first thing I did was to literally scan for that word.

Use "don't" instead of "can't". Works wonders, trust me. There was actually an article on Lifehacker regarding this.

"Sorry, I don't do x."

Doesn't fit all situations, but for a lot of invitations it works wonders: restaurants/movies/concerts/meetings etc.

You can get creative: "I don't do x with friends" if it's a business project. :-)

Yep.

Dan Siroke, CEO of Optimizely always, always stresses in his presentations it is vital to test. The presentations on his SlideShare are awesome: http://www.slideshare.net/dsiroker

There is no reason this should be trending as #1 on HN. A quip about Facebook's algorithm not getting a post right on time in front of you - and? What's the takeaway? What are the insights?

Can anyone explain how this differs from Microsoft's ranking system? I doubt Marissa is not aware of that practice.

Starting Washington by Paul Johnson and rereading a lot of favorites: John Boyd's biography by Coram & Seneca's Letters from a Stoic.

On the side, I am trying to finish Eisenhower's biography - 500/700 pages.

Looking at their mobile offering, I would love for Amazon to move into the space. I am curious to know what are you lacking right now in GA that you're looking for another free solution?

Awesome, thank you.

How do you have this info? Any chance of those becoming public?

I was about to recommend that book. It's amazing. If anybody wants to read more about Boyd I would also highly recommend Coram's book that the article mentions, I am in the midst of re-re-reading it, what a force of character.

There are also audio recordings of one of his briefings on YouTube.

Thanks, I absolutely had no clue.

Wouldn't you as an investor/owner/marketer for a network-effect platform try to get as much media attention as possible? I think hyping up your startup in the billions range is the perfect way to do so.