The Tyranny of the Marginal User

Post by XCSme » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 12:41 AM UTC

ChefboyOG wrote: post #721

zmmmmm wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's an interesting counter narrative then to the currently in vogue idea that you can stop individual ad targeting and instead target people based on their high level interests. Reddit is like a distillation of that, the logical end point of it ... if that is a dead end, Google is in for a rough time with the pathway they are pursuing with Chrome.

My experience with Reddit ads (years ago now) wasn't that subreddit-level targeting was bad—there's a reason sponsored content is such a big marketing channel, after all—but rather that the ads platform just never worked very well. And by "never worked very well," I don't just mean "We ran ads without good results." The whole experience was just sort of confusing and underwhelming, especially when compared to other c…

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 1:32 AM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #781

robotresearcher wrote: post #729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I think that might be overly cynical. You might as well complain that a brain surgeon only removes tumors because they get money for it. Does Nike want me to run and jump less , to participate in sports less , to work out less often? No, they run expensive ad campaigns encouraging me to make exercise a regular part of my life. To sell apparel, yes, but they aren't telling me to eat more cheeseburgers or drin…

Where is their skin in the game? A doctor that makes a bad diagnostic might suffer a malpractice lawsuit, or at the very least will be known for their incompetence. What happens with Nike for customers that bought their products but never get to do anything? Do they give any type of money back?

Post by syphon » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 3:45 AM UTC

lr4444lr wrote: post #454

raisedbyninjas wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody else remember the data blog posts? Those were interesting and satisfying. It was another confirmation that I'd found the right dating site and probably a like-minded userbase.

I fondly remember the one that showed men's rating of women approaching almost a perfect normal distribution, and then the men messaging mostly the hot ones anyway, whereas the women rated most men as ugly and then sloping downward toward very few as good looking, kind of like an exponential distribution, but that they also messaged the men almost exactly in tandem - uglier getting the most, with a steady drop as men…

Post by dredmorbius » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 4:56 AM UTC

kortex wrote: post #785

dredmorbius wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect smartphones affect this in two ways. One is that they put the Internet in everybody's hands, literally. The other, though, is that by virtue of the interface, both display (tiny) and input (shitty, to put it mildly), the effective IQ of those participating, regardless of whatever it was initially , is severely penalised. When I'm typing at a keyboard, I can look at the words I'm typing, or the source I'm ty…

Have you ever heard about the MessagEase keyboard? It's a pretty radical departure from the usual touch qwerty. Once you get the muscle memory down, you can even disable the letters completely. Right now I'm typing on a featureless black 3x3 grid (save for a purple dot in the center). It's a great conversation starter too, cause folks see me typing and are universally like "wtf how are you typing". I never thought of…

Post by dredmorbius » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 6:53 AM UTC

narag wrote: post #776

dredmorbius wrote: post #740

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember WAP, and had an early-phase smartphone with limited Web support (Palm Treo/Centro) which ... remains one of the better phones that I've had (hard keyboard among other features). You wouldn't want to read much on that, but as a quick on-the-go reference, particularly when travelling, it was handy. One of my daily drivers is a large (13.3") e-ink tablet. Reading on that is actually a pleasure, though it's le…

The eyesight I wouldn't complain at all. Until recently I didn't need glasses, except for reading. Hypermetropia is also called far-sightness for a reason. Worst period is when I only used glasses for the screen. Someone would come to interrupt and talk, I took the glasses off, then we were commenting on the screen contents, I put it on again, then back to talk and glasses off... At home I use a 27'' screen with the…