Was this book updated for the Oct 2015 release? Or is this more or less the same as the book you asked when you originally solicited feedback?
Thank HN: for helping me get traction with DuckDuckGo and Traction book – AMA
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Re: Thank HN: for helping me get traction with DuckDuckGo and Traction book – AMA
#22Great job w/ DDG and thanks for sharing this encouraging thread.
You're very welcome!
Re: Thank HN: for helping me get traction with DuckDuckGo and Traction book – AMA
#23Hey Gabriel, Do you have some plans to open source the search engine of DuckDuckGo one day and let people contribute?
Yes! Check out http://duckduckhack.com/ -- it is our open source instant answer platform, which is becoming more and more of DuckDuckGo. The whole platform is open source itself (in addition to the answers).
Thank you for the reply, but I already knew about duckduckhack - I made a small contribution to it in 2013. What I meant however is the core search engine, that is currently closed source.
Re: Thank HN: for helping me get traction with DuckDuckGo and Traction book – AMA
#24Was this book updated for the Oct 2015 release? Or is this more or less the same as the book you asked when you originally solicited feedback?
Major update, though the overall messaging is the same. It is a much more high-quality book. The first one was self-published and this one is published by Penguin Random House. So the first thing is it re-edited all the way through. We ended up cutting out about 50 pages, even though we added a couple of sections.
Second, the sections we added were a preface about my struggles with getting traction and a testing addendum giving 1-3 suggestions of how to test each of the nineteen channels (something people continually requested).
Third and finally, I really focused on rewriting the five introductory chapters to focus on things I saw readers of the first edition struggle with. We simplified the framework from 5 to 3 steps, and tried to shed light on the more non-intuitive aspects (like don't prematurely optimize marketing tests, etc.).
Re: Thank HN: for helping me get traction with DuckDuckGo and Traction book – AMA
#25Gabriel, do you plan to implement time-bound search filters on DDG? I'm probably not alone in finding it very usefull and would gladly avoid jumping back and forth between DDG and Google. Anyway, kudos for all you've done.
Re: Thank HN: for helping me get traction with DuckDuckGo and Traction book – AMA
#26Gabriel, do you plan to implement time-bound search filters on DDG? I'm probably not alone in finding it very usefull and would gladly avoid jumping back and forth between DDG and Google. Anyway, kudos for all you've done.
Yes! People have been asking for this for literally years (and I want it too). For various reasons it has been difficult to do, but now we are very close. So look for it soon.
Re: Thank HN: for helping me get traction with DuckDuckGo and Traction book – AMA
#27I think there is real value in consumers being able to glean value they want from their own data, would you or have you ever considered a program that allowed users to share data with you in exchange for services, ads or other products they continually found relevant?
We have anonymous cloud save now for DuckDuckGo settings, which is sort of like this already: https://duckduckgo.com/settings -- for example, you can set a language or region setting.
I think more generally you're right privacy is about control and choice, as I tried to explain in https://medium.com/life-learning/privacy-is-at-a-crossroads-...
Re: Thank HN: for helping me get traction with DuckDuckGo and Traction book – AMA
#28Gabriel, do you plan to implement time-bound search filters on DDG? I'm probably not alone in finding it very usefull and would gladly avoid jumping back and forth between DDG and Google. Anyway, kudos for all you've done.
Yes! People have been asking for this for literally years (and I want it too). For various reasons it has been difficult to do, but now we are very close. So look for it soon.
Great! I think it's the last thing missing for me to use DDG exclusively. Cheers.
Re: Thank HN: for helping me get traction with DuckDuckGo and Traction book – AMA
#29How would you self describe the general search quality of DuckDuckGo, excluding the (brilliant) Instant Answers?
How do you evaluate the general search quality?
Do you have any focus on expanding crawling in general? And localized content in particular?
Re: Thank HN: for helping me get traction with DuckDuckGo and Traction book – AMA
#30I think there is real value in consumers being able to glean value they want from their own data, would you or have you ever considered a program that allowed users to share data with you in exchange for services, ads or other products they continually found relevant?
We have anonymous cloud save now for DuckDuckGo settings, which is sort of like this already: https://duckduckgo.com/settings -- for example, you can set a language or region setting. I think more generally you're right privacy is about control and choice, as I tried to explain in https://medium.com/life-learning/privacy-is-at-a-crossroads-...
totally agreed on that post (its one I've read before) - i think a consumer truly having control (I'd even envision a dashboard where you could give or retract access to your data instantly) is what would be most helpful for the consumer to truly take more care into what is happening in their lives as the physical digital worlds quickly merge into one.
That said, I'd also love to see a google apps like product from DDG that could really compete but promise not to sell my company's info or use it for useless ads and general spam