No. I'm in no way basing this on my own preferences.
I'm basing it on data and numbers. If advertising didn't work, it wouldn't be a $multibillion industry.
418 karma · joined June 15, 2011
I'm basing it on data and numbers. If advertising didn't work, it wouldn't be a $multibillion industry.
I work from home, and generally have the TV on all the time, showing me amongst other things, adverts. It doesn't bother me. In fact I find it very useful and interesting.
It's no more a necessary evil than "shops" are.
Shops are pretty much advertising. They connect a consumer to several manufacturers. They stock things you might want to buy. You go in, get bombarded with branding advertising products. You filter out the ones you want, and buy them. The shop gets a cut of revenue, just like a website gets a cut of any sale after a user clicks on an advert (Either directly, or averaged out to a per click/impression price).
Some people do hate shops as well. I've gone to the mall with people who find the whole experience absolutely horrible and uncomfortable. Personally, I love browsing round shops, seeing what you can find.
Most people can tune out things they're not interested in.
Just as you walk down a street, you are bombarded with shop signage, and you filter out the ones that interest you, and the ones that don't. You read a magazine, and when faced with an advert that's not relevant or interesting, you turn the page.
There are certainly people who do not have the ability to cope well with adverts on the internet, and for them, adblock exists.
Advertising is not 'sleazy'. It works, and it provides a service to both advertiser, publisher, and consumer.
Do you also consider online dating to be sleazy, or job posting sites? Because that's essentially what advertising is - matching a consumer interested in something, to an advertiser who provides something.
Without advertising, most consumers would not have a clue what products and services exist. Most manufacturers would have no way to tell people about the service/product they provide.
I'm literally amazed at the naivety.
Respectfully, that's a very naive conclusion to draw.
You may as well try selling wooly hats and coats in the desert, and conclude that making money selling wooly hats and coats is really hard.
If you rule out advertising income because you don't like adverts, or because you don't have the skills necessary, then you're missing out on a slice of a gigantic pie. The vast majority of the general population are receptive to advertising and find it useful.
I think it's worth remembering that most people in the tech world are absolute outliers. In the real world, most people own and watch a TV. Most people buy newspapers. Most people view and click on adverts. Most people don't own ipads. etc etc
edit: You can downmod this all you like. You're the one missing out on the money.
There's unfortunately a lot of people who believe all you need to do is slap ads on any website and watch the money come in. It actually takes time, effort, learning, and to some extent skill to know what will work and what won't work. You either need targeted users with intent, or you need more users.
Saying you can't make money from online advertising is like a non-programmer saying you can't write a tetris game. They're saying that because they haven't learnt to program yet and so it seems impossible to them.
> that doesn't necessarily meant that online advertising works, either.
The fact that Google paid out $4bn or whatever last quarter to 3rd party websites surely shows that online advertising works.
Your comment has been upvoted to the top (I believe) because unfortunately that same culture of anti-advertising spills over to HN.
Remember. Google made $9bn last quarter, mostly from online advertising. A massive amount of that (about half?) went to 3rd party websites. There's money in this game...
All this post says is "Donations are successful for some value of 'success'".
If it was really all that successful, I don't think all the employees would have left.
I've never understood why y-combinator is useful or impressive. Interesting, maybe, but not really useful.
Every time I get passed a github URL, it plonks me in a daunting page full of source code. If you scroll down a page or 2 sometimes you can see a text README file that tells you WTF the project is about.
On Google code, you get a nice UI, telling you about the project, bug tracker, discussions, binaries, AND IF YOU WANT IT the source code.
I think github is built for developers, whereas google code is built for developers and users.
At least with normal un/pw you need to request a password reset from the website.
I don't think we should be tying logins to email.
I don't know how you can reasonably value a company that has only existed for a year or two at that level. Things can die / be killed as quickly if not quicker than they took to grow, and we see it happen every day.
Perhaps "well known within certain programming communities" would be more apt.
That's never going to happen at Apple. The iPhone fills a certain need, but it's only 1 phone.
See also: cuil.com
If people want to read the bible, and believe it as factual "news", they should be able to.
As I say, if people want to live in blissful ignorance, they should be allowed to do that.
Who are you to tell me not to watch Fox News? Why shouldn't I buy a tabloid paper to see who some celebrity has had an affair with?
You're inflicting your views of what is "good for the masses" on others.
If the masses want to be misinformed, non-intellectual gossip merchants (Which basically they do), let them.
Number of raw searches != number of users
That said, Compete numbers have always been hilariously random.
It's sad to see such intellectual crap condemning the masses for enjoying what they enjoy.
If you don't enjoy reading a newspaper, don't buy it.
My point which you gloss over is in the definition of "attack".
Whether browsing to a publicly accessible url with no security is an attack or not, is a very grey area.
Of course they'd be attacking.
The top advertiser, Sky, spends £2m a year with the paper.
So I find it hard to believe that advertisers are all that important.