Hacker News Reader

jmjerleckion Ask HN: What will happen to Google when somebody disrupts AdWords?

Not only would they have to steal ALL of Google's income, they would have to steal ALL of Googles network. Highly unlikely at any point in the future.

Not to mention the google search product IMO is better than any other available.

jmjerleckion Dunnhumby launches a competition to predict grocery store purchases

This is being done for one reason only: advertising

jmjerleckion Vandalised home puts pressure on Airbnb

I think the important thing to note is that this might be Airbnb's Hindeburg, however this was entirely preventable had they dealt with this sooner and correctly. This could be and (already is) a lesson on how to (not)deal with PR on a business built entirely on trust and community.

jmjerleckion On Safety: A Word From Airbnb

This post is in the right direction and I applaud Brian for stepping up, but this has taken too long for this to happen. If you note in EJ's post, she states that she would not be compensated for any damages and she was on the hook. Airbnb didn't step up to the plate until it was posted on Techcrunch. This has been simmering since June and they really could have gotten ahead of this and handled this entirely different. Imagine had they come out in June and fessed up and said this is how we are going to handle it. EJ we are taking care of everything, we are instituting new policies, looking into insurance and we will have a dedicated 24 hour hotline for customer support. They would have set the precedent for how to handle these situations. Instead they did like everyone else and only dealt with it once it became a much larger issue.

/sidenote if I was Brian I would by no means be quoting EJ's blog post as proof to saying they handled this correctly. Because they didn't.

jmjerleckion The Moment Of Truth For Airbnb As User’s Home Is Utterly Trashed

I agree with you, its perfectly OK to set a tone and personality for the site – but that information to me is critically important to users of Airbnb and why to this day I haven't used Airbnb. It never seemed clear what would happen in this event and now we know. You are on the hook.

FYI In her blog post, EJ points out that Airbnb also lacks a 24 hour customer support phone number.

jmjerleckion The Moment Of Truth For Airbnb As User’s Home Is Utterly Trashed

Will someone steal my grand piano?

Highly unlikely. Grand pianos weigh thousands of pounds and do not fit through doors.

That's just unacceptable. Regardless of whether this ever happened to EJ or not.

jmjerleckion Michael Arrington reportedly to launch “CrunchFund” to invest in startups

It wouldn't be that difficult if he wanted to sticky a post.

jmjerleckion Polly.IM: auto-suggests Twitter responses to local business customers

I think a nice touch would be to auto follow or make it a selection that users can toggle on or off. Let's say someone tweets at my business, I think it adds a nice touch if the business auto follows the user who took the time to tweet about me.

jmjerleckion Hire me: a story of developer burnout and how I want to turn it around

Best of luck to you man. If you were based in the US I would love to have a chat. I have Crohn's Disease and realize the difficulties this can bring on you and the people around you. Stay positive and control what you can.

jmjerleckion Show HN: My weekend project, Startup Tees

This is great and something Dropbox should do. This would make for great PR. The QR code idea underneath my post would be great on the back. Just a huge QR code.

jmjerleckion Show HN: My weekend project, Startup Tees

Most startups don't have money to shell out free t-shirts. I would gladly pay for a t-shirt to help out a start up though (similar to what bands do).

jmjerleckion LinkedIn Surpasses Myspace For U.S. Visitors To Become No. 2 Social Network

The full title includes twitter, but I think its pretty misleading as I highly doubt that graph includes desktop or mobile application usage.

jmjerleckion LinkedIn Surpasses Myspace For U.S. Visitors To Become No. 2 Social Network

I'm still amazed Myspace gets that much traffic. I have no idea why anyone visits that site. Are their music offerings enough to keep driving traffic?

jmjerleckion Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded?

I disagree with this portion of the article:

You have hundreds of friends, but your news feed is always filled up with nonsense from the same 5 friends that seem to send an update every other minute.

I believe Facebook has an algorithm that only displays status updates from the people I interact with most on the service. For example, using Seesmic or Flipboard shows each status update, as opposed to Facebook on the web I seem to see only a small number of updates and I have noticed they tend to be from the profiles I visit the most. I am actually not bothered by my Facebook feed, although I do love the notion of circles. My Mom got a circle all to herself.

jmjerleckion ++ a chrome extension for Google+

It found 9 people on this thread

http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=2734923

Worked great for me. Nice work man.

jmjerleckion Facebook's Three New Products

You are very right about certain groups of people thinking Facebook is the Internet.

jmjerleckion Go Daddy to Sell Itself to K.K.R. and Silver Lake

That list was actually not a bad read. I did love that he was selling a print of it. That seems like something that is very Godaddyish.

Also, "We aren't here for a long time, but we are here for a good time" has been one of my favorite quotes for awhile. Always makes me laugh.

jmjerleckion Insights From Steve Jobs Keynote Circa 1997

"It’s incredibly stupid for Apple to get into a position where for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. That’s really dumb."

Its amazing how on the money that quote is.

jmjerleckion Myspace to Be Sold to Specific Media for $35 Million

If they can get that traffic to level out, thats still a ton of uniques.

jmjerleckion Myspace to Be Sold to Specific Media for $35 Million

At $35 million I think you can make a number of arguments that this is a good purchase – user data, page traffic, ad network. I am unsure how to factor in brand value. Myspace has a huge brand awareness even if it is mostly negative.

jmjerleckion Go Daddy said to be near $2B+ sale to K.K.R. and Silver Lake

That was a conclusion I came to as well, however, with that aside, they could build the tech in a way that can be more easily understood and consumed by the masses.

jmjerleckion Go Daddy said to be near $2B+ sale to K.K.R. and Silver Lake

Does anyone else think Google would be a good company to make a play for this space? They have the right consumer facing brand to offer this type of product.

jmjerleckion Foursquare Closes $50M at a $600M Valuation

I love in all of these posts they claim Foursquare has 10 million users. There is no way the amount of active users is anywhere close to that. So many people I know sign up, check in once or twice, and never use it again.

jmjerleckion JK Rowling's 'Pottermore' details revealed: DRM-free, embedded watermarks

Right but new books have been published since then. I am sure the contract has changed over the years as new things have been brought into the fold, movies for example. You would have thought that by book 4 someone would have brought this up.

jmjerleckion JK Rowling's 'Pottermore' details revealed: DRM-free, embedded watermarks

If it really is the case that Rowling owns the rights to digital distribution of the Potter series, how did the publishers not have the vision to realize how valuable that would be? Are they really that short sighted. That just seems baffling to me.

Kudos for Rowling to put them out DRM free as well.

jmjerleckion Voice search enabled on Google homepage (Chrome)

Now all we need is google instant with voice capabilities. I would like for it to predict what I am going to say.

jmjerleckion Hardly Working: Start-up Guys

"So the company you started 20 minutes ago already failed."

"Yeah it crashed 8 minutes ago."

Also I thought the name Brushfire was hilarious.

jmjerleckion Apple’s iCloud Icon Uses The Golden Ratio

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/06/16/icloud-logo-infused-with...

BS is called in the comments section of this article

jmjerleckion [dead]

GroupMe is doing fine from a funding perspective, but they are going to have one hell of a time trying to monetize. I think they have a great app though. Cross platform went to a must have today.

jmjerleckion [dead]

GroupMe has a lot to be worried about. The best part about that app is it gives groups an actual phone number so it works on any phone that can text. The problem for them is most people won't use the app through the actual interface. They get a group phone number and just run it through the native iPhone messaging app because its faster. They are going to face a tough time monetizing if people aren't staying in their app.