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The Internet Made Me Sad Today

raganwald.posterous.com

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Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#61

Post by mattmaroon »

"Someone other than Google is involved in deciding that stock market scams and anti-aging scams and auction site scams are the best way to extract value from my curiosity about dinosaurs."

Those clicks are essentially auctioned off so that someone is quite simply the market. The market, when it comes to online advertising, is largely benevolent. Tons of businesses are built on the fact that Google allows those to buy traffic who can benefit from it the most. The overall wealth creation of such a system is massive, far beyond the wealth created for Google.

Lots of people have jobs because a system exists that allows crappy game ads to interrupt your dinosaur article. it sucks (and the physorg site is kinda shitty for formatting it to look like a headline) but overall the system is a great thing.

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#62

Post by bhousel »

thmzlt wrote: post #57
patio11 wrote: post #39

You're looking at remnant inventory. Inventory (advertiser speak for "a page view plus a slot available on that page which we could sell an ad against") are a lot like cuts of meat. Some are worth a lot of money. Some are not, and end up getting sold to be turned into fertilizer or paste to infect cows with all matter of diseases. Things that tend to make inventory worth more money: 1) Better matching algorithms. Thi…

This is probably the most well written piece of text I have seen here on HN.

I had pretty much the opposite reaction to reading it.

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#63

Post by napierzaza »

Google optimized pricing and delivery of banner ads. But unfortunately every legit type of banner ad has failed to justify itself, and only the most criminal/stupid things are advertized. It's not big secret. Google paid 500,000,000$ because it was advertising illegal pharmacies to American users. As reputable as Google might be, they are serving banners that are not just bad, but criminal.

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#64

Post by zem »

raganwald wrote: post #13
ig1 wrote: post #9

What's the alternative ? Having content locked behind a pay-wall so even less people can access it ? Running ads which are more relevant but don't generate enough revenue to make the site viable in the long term ? Not having the content at all ?

How do you feel about the fact that certain farmers will starve if they can’t grow coca or poppies as a cash crop?

are you seriously invoking the war on drugs to support your point?

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#66

Post by blake8086 »

This is a common theme I see, often with respect to Zynga.

People want things. Some people want things that other people think they shouldn't want (games, drugs, sex, whatever).

Some people get mad (or in this case, sad) when someone provides a thing they think people shouldn't want to people who want it.

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#67

Post by jasondrowley »

patio11 wrote: post #39

You're looking at remnant inventory. Inventory (advertiser speak for "a page view plus a slot available on that page which we could sell an ad against") are a lot like cuts of meat. Some are worth a lot of money. Some are not, and end up getting sold to be turned into fertilizer or paste to infect cows with all matter of diseases. Things that tend to make inventory worth more money: 1) Better matching algorithms. Thi…

I like to think of the information I consume online as more than "inventory".

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#68

Post by agscala »

heynk wrote: post #43
agscala wrote: post #2

I'm very interested in the point made regarding interactive children's education. High schools across the country seem to think that giving students iPads to use as text books is a good idea. I think that if I was in high school and I had an iPad, I'd be surfing the web the entire time I was in class. I'm certain that's what the next generation will be doing if high schools do indeed end up going that route.

And then some entrepreneur will realize this problem, and sell a solution that prevents students from surfing the web while in class. I never got all the fuss about digitizing education, because it seems like the biggest downside is 'distractions.' Even if there is no way to prevent distractions, are digital textbooks not worth the improvement in costs, accessibility, and breadth (and type) of information?

It's hard to estimate the power of distraction for students. Having interactive textbooks would be really awesome, but what does it matter if kids are just playing Angry Birds instead? Also the cost benefits aren't really all that great. Schools typically reuse textbooks and iPads are very expensive and are more prone to damage.

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#69

Post by moocow01 »

rryan wrote: post #46

This viewpoint as raganwald expressed it is too oversimplifying for my tastes. It's pretty .. well, wrong.. to say that all Google engineers are working on is putting ads on web pages. Similarly it's not true that a whole generation of people are working on ads. Google is working on a tremendous number of things -- as is the rest of this industry. It boggles the mind. I do; however, agree with the generalization of h…

Yeah I think in many cases its all a matter of perspective. You can look at any Google product, analyze it long enough and then understand how it will lead to a stronger advertising business model for them. On the other hand you can look at it and say that is potentially exciting technology for reasons that have nothing to do with advertising.

Probably most of the engineers at Google don't think of themselves as working in advertising and probably shouldn't but Id say almost indisputedly their paycheck is mostly coming from advertising and people clicking on mindless ads.

I think the main problem is how do you solve and build business around interesting problems that don't have the ability to be monetized through click advertising which most of the internet seems to be funded by.

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