I love hot dogs.
Read this before lunch and hoping that the author was opening an actual restaurant in his postscript.
Hot Dogs & Caviar
11–20 of 47 posts
Re: Hot Dogs & Caviar
#12We get it... the ad model is broken, a subscription model is, in theory, always better. It's simpler. Generally, simpler is better. However, I don't think the app.net experiment will succeed. I'll be brief: - Outside of phones (& WhatsApp), I can't think of a single paid non-business communication platform. - App.net will not have a good one-player or even two-player mode (good 1-player: DropBox, Github, Evernote). -…
If we agree that the ad-supported model is broken, why not try to create an alternative?
Re: Hot Dogs & Caviar
#13We get it... the ad model is broken, a subscription model is, in theory, always better. It's simpler. Generally, simpler is better. However, I don't think the app.net experiment will succeed. I'll be brief: - Outside of phones (& WhatsApp), I can't think of a single paid non-business communication platform. - App.net will not have a good one-player or even two-player mode (good 1-player: DropBox, Github, Evernote). -…
> We get it... the ad model is broken, a subscription model is, in theory, always better... However, I don't think the app.net experiment will succeed.
I agree that if App.net succeeds it will be construed as a data point for this line of reasoning, but I think Dalton's business experiment should be regarded as independent of his technical experiment. Things fail for lots of reasons, not just because free is better than paid.
> - If it does succeed, twitter could just copy you.
By that logic, MySpace could have just copied Facebook.
> - App.net will not have a good one-player or even two-player mode (good 1-player: DropBox, Github, Evernote).
That seems like a given, but I wonder if it's a foregone conclusion that App.net will turn into the same kind of thing as Twitter. After all, technically there isn't a huge difference between HN and Reddit, but the way they're used is very different. Even cultural differences can be dramatic. I haven't invested in App.net, but I do find myself toying with the idea of having something I could use like Twitter, but without being Twitter, and I admit I find the idea attractive. If I could control whether the messages are public or private, I could see using it as a pub/sub framework if the payloads were essentially encoded API messages. That's not something I'd be inclined to try out with Twitter, even though it's free.
I guess I'm saying subtle differences can be meaningful; maybe they can be the difference between success and failure.
Re: Hot Dogs & Caviar
#14We get it... the ad model is broken, a subscription model is, in theory, always better. It's simpler. Generally, simpler is better. However, I don't think the app.net experiment will succeed. I'll be brief: - Outside of phones (& WhatsApp), I can't think of a single paid non-business communication platform. - App.net will not have a good one-player or even two-player mode (good 1-player: DropBox, Github, Evernote). -…
If we agree that the ad-supported model is broken, why not try to create an alternative?
[deleted]
Re: Hot Dogs & Caviar
#15I, as a company owner, would like to pay Twitter, as a news distribution service, to make my tweets more visible to my followers. Stick 'em, emphasize 'em, repost 'em - I don't care, but do something that would help me reach these people. They are already targeted. In fact, they have targeted themselves, voluntarily.
So here's the money, Twitter, take it. Help me help my subscribers get the information that they have subscribed for. Thank you.
Re: Hot Dogs & Caviar
#16I think Facebook and Twitter ads are being unreasonably benchmarked against Google adwords ads. Facebook in particular.
Google ads typically convert to a total handoff of the user from Google to the ad buyer. That's the only dynamic Google really admits to. But that's OK, because people routinely engage with Google in order to find products and services. Very low conversion rates are repaid by purchase intent.
People don't engage with Facebook to find products and services. So the ad dynamic Google has doesn't work very well on Facebook. And so, story after story about how nonperformant Facebook ads are compared to Adwords.
But Facebook has a compensating strength: it admits to other dynamics.
So for instance, after "Liking" almost everything (I actually liked) from the "Recommended" block on Facebook, my feed is awash in announcements from brands. Not an entirely welcome development, but not a horrifying "hope you like hot dogs" experience either, since those announcements tend to actually be announcements. So far as I know, every one of the brands that got something on my page that way paid nothing to Facebook to do that.
People do engage with Facebook in order to "Like" things, for the same reason they fill out personality quizzes: benign narcissism.
So Facebook ads can have the objective of generating "Likes", which give advertisers many possible bites at the apple for each user down the road. I know there are brands that have exactly the same process on Twitter. The "like" count isn't all that interesting, but any measured conversion from announcements to "likers" establishes an ROI for Facebook ads.
It's not at all surprising that lots of big companies haven't figured this out; they're still throwing Google ads at Facebook to see if they'll stick; the ads don't stick; they drop the ads; the only ads left are from a few "savvy" brands trying to generate "likes", and from skeezy "hail mary" inventory that generates so much return from a single scammed conversion that it's worth posting ads anywhere.
Re: Hot Dogs & Caviar
#17To make matters worse, social media ad inventory is rapidly moving to phones, where advertising is even more challenging.
Re: Hot Dogs & Caviar
#18I, as a company owner, would like to pay Twitter, as a news distribution service, to make my tweets more visible to my followers . Stick 'em, emphasize 'em, repost 'em - I don't care, but do something that would help me reach these people. They are already targeted. In fact, they have targeted themselves, voluntarily. So here's the money, Twitter, take it. Help me help my subscribers get the information that they hav…
So you want something like this then?
http://swapped.tumblr.com/post/22976646861/twitter-is-doing-...
Re: Hot Dogs & Caviar
#19We get it... the ad model is broken, a subscription model is, in theory, always better. It's simpler. Generally, simpler is better. However, I don't think the app.net experiment will succeed. I'll be brief: - Outside of phones (& WhatsApp), I can't think of a single paid non-business communication platform. - App.net will not have a good one-player or even two-player mode (good 1-player: DropBox, Github, Evernote). -…
> We get it... the ad model is broken, a subscription model is, in theory, always better... However, I don't think the app.net experiment will succeed. I agree that if App.net succeeds it will be construed as a data point for this line of reasoning, but I think Dalton's business experiment should be regarded as independent of his technical experiment. Things fail for lots of reasons, not just because free is better t…
1. In the past even five years, we've seen huge changes and experiments in business models (just saying that these have been tried at scale in the past 5 years). Some have been successful, others have not: In-app purchases (Zynga), SaaS (37 Signals), Freemium (DropBox), Daily Deals (Groupon), Early Advantage Buying (Pinboard), User's Choose (HumbleBundle), Razor/Blades (Nexus 7, PSP), $.99 (iTunes, Google Play) etc. I'm not arguing that free is always better than paid, just that in app.net's case, it probably is.
2. The core difference between "MySpace + Facebook" vs. "Twitter + App.Net" is that the reason (at least published) why App.Net is better is because it isn't supported by ads (& that the Twitter team is focused on how to sell ads diminishing the importance of the user). I don't believe that this is a strong enough reason to change my user behavior.
3. Subtle differences can be meaningful. Agreed.
I guess who knows what will happen with app.net but I think the great biz model experiment will only accelerate in general.
Re: Hot Dogs & Caviar
#20I, as a company owner, would like to pay Twitter, as a news distribution service, to make my tweets more visible to my followers . Stick 'em, emphasize 'em, repost 'em - I don't care, but do something that would help me reach these people. They are already targeted. In fact, they have targeted themselves, voluntarily. So here's the money, Twitter, take it. Help me help my subscribers get the information that they hav…
So you want something like this then? http://swapped.tumblr.com/post/22976646861/twitter-is-doing-...
Yes, exactly that.