91–100 of 108 posts
We really shouldn't be looking down on this business. They managed to outlive a TON of companies (10 years is great on the internet), and I'm sure provided livelihoods for a fair number of people both at Coudal and their partner blogs who they were monetizing. Kudos to them!
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I'm confused. What aren't you pleased about? An ad network shutting down? Hopefully they all shut down.
The Deck was one of the few clean players. I still fundamentally think advertising is slime, a form of mind control, and a symptom of excess consumption in society, but that's not changing anytime soon. In the meantime, I'd be very happy if everyone were like The Deck.
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We're very much alive! Thriving, even. And yes, we merged AdPacks, Yoggrt, Fusion, and Carbon into just Carbon. Been growing the network ~20-30% or so year over year. The simplicity of the model still works well. Where we deviated from The Deck's model is that we made some changes a few years ago that are working quite well. On the advertiser side we started selling on a cost per thousand impression basis vs a fixed…
Interesting. It appears you guys had seen the writing on the wall and had adapted your business model accordingly. Thanks for your insider's take but who was the originator of the old business model? The Deck or Carbon?
The Deck was first.
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You should join us at Carbon :)
But the Carbon site says it's invite-only. Also, how do you go about advertising on a site with user sub-sites using Carbon?
I'm not sure I understand your question. We put the sites in "circles" and advertisers buy a specific circle.
Metafilter used this ad network: http://metatalk.metafilter.com/24390/Fond-farewell-to-ads-fr... So did Waxy: https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/847188783724322816
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>I find this line ironic since the Network Effect (or Metcalfe's Law) was created to describe literal computer networks. The distinction is that it refers to physical networks (and iirc, referred initially to phone systems, not computer systems per se). At layer 1, the network effect is still very much valid and caused by the capabilities of the physical hardware. This is forgotten because today everyone is plugged i…
I appreciate your thinking, but your understanding and application of networks, as well as your decidedly wishful thinking that they don't apply online, is simply wrong. Mind: I'd much rather this not be the case, but it simply is. Metcalfe's function is, by the way, also incorrect. Very few networks are comprised of nodes of equal value, instead the nodal (and inter-nodal) value tends to follow a power function (Zip…
I agree that networks will continue to benefit as more users hop on the platform. What I mean is that the element of network effects that we consider prohibitive/oppressive -- the "walls" around the "garden" -- are artificial in cyberspace, whereas they are real in meatspace.
There is nothing in cyberspace to prevent that data from flowing freely; there is only the threat that meatspace thugs will come and take your liberty and property for failing to respect the imaginary lines. In effect, it's a political border.
Without the legal armaments at its disposal, Facebook could still be a central hub of activity, but the data could be freed from it and exported.
Instead of creating Google+ and hoping it caught on, Google, seeing Facebook's success, could get credentials from the user and automatically multiplex/multicast the user's streams from G+ and FB into the G+ interface. The user would be using G+ as an FB browsing device, and that should be legal -- just as legal as using any other software as a browsing device.
Yes, the browser could materially modify the content of the page, including stripping the ads off the child stream. But all browsers can do that. Should we make it illegal for Chrome or Firefox as well? The only difference is that Firefox is executed on a box a few feet away from the user, whereas a G+ browser is executed on a box that is (probably) much further away.
In this scenario, Facebook continues to directly benefit from the growth and expansion of its network, and more people hop on Facebook. The difference is that there is no barrier to get up against if you're viewing the network's growth from across the room, and you can tell people on your side of the room "It looks Alice from that other network is brushing her teeth". Facebook would no longer have a monopoly on the content generated by users who are "in their space".
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Worth noting that Metcalf didn't actually think his "law" was particularly correct or insightful; he made it up for Ethernet sales pitches.
I've seen no indication he doesn't think it's correct. The Tilly-Odlyzko correction (the paper establishing it gives it as a "refutation" of Metcalfe's law) strikes me as eminently more sensible. The cost function amendment is my own work.
He explicitly told us this during a lecture. It was something to the effect of "I just made it up, it's an oversimplification, but it's good marketing."
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I've seen no indication he doesn't think it's correct. The Tilly-Odlyzko correction (the paper establishing it gives it as a "refutation" of Metcalfe's law) strikes me as eminently more sensible. The cost function amendment is my own work.
> I've seen no indication he doesn't think it's correct. He explicitly told us this during a lecture. It was something to the effect of "I just made it up, it's an oversimplification, but it's good marketing."
(And rings true.)