Dylan Tweney, of Wired’s Epicenter blog, recent met with Denton for a demonstration of the tools we will be rolling out on Gawker Media sites. For this initial set of initiatives, he has written a good, if short, overview here: Gawker Media’s Newest Contributor: You.
This gets to the heart of what I presented to NYTech Meetup in early September.
- tkp
From $30+ million to this. No surprises here.
It’s only been two weeks (or so) since it was introduced, but the reception in Paris seems to be very strong. During this past weekend, while visiting Gabrielle and Brice for the last day of le Tour de France, I noticed an enormous amount of bike traffic on these funny looking bikes:
It was a great thing to see. We had our own struggles trying to use them (some glitches in the security systems) but once we did, the bikes were great, and the drop-off point was close to our destination.
This would be a great thing to have in NYC.
I thought things had gone quite well for Bolt (which would ultimately be good for me). Today I see this on Valleywag: bolt.com is now a member of the advertising hall of shame. And they have some (not-so-good/related) company.
Bolt (gofish too?) has taken the path of least resistance and has chosen to buy uniques in a most shady way. There were many schemes to acquire traffic that were offered up when I was there. Some were straightforward (widgets, new tools, viral programs, site acquisitions, etc.), others involved some less desirable techniques (things that involved email, traffic attribution), and others were just totally disagreeable (site popups via ads/spyware). This final category simply drove me insane. This trickery was meant to present an aura of success to initially unsavvy potential advertising partners (and ultimately investors). By initially, I simply mean until Bolt stuck its head out as a destination, no one was really looking at the details.
I guess the sale to gofish hasn’t changed much at Bolt. I clicked over to the research Nick refers to, and Bolt (with others) has settled nicely into using spyware products to inflate traffic. I remember having numerous arguments about this method of getting credit for eyes — It is the kind of last ditch effort a company makes when it lacks what is necessary to build a product or brand. What other reason would lead someone to adopt the logic that popping under a site window is the same as advertising? They knowingly partnered with a spyware company that uses deceptive practices to get their software installed on the computers of less-than-savvy users. Just ads indeed!
What were the arguments for this practice? We had them too many times to count. Ultimately they boil down to this one argument: “It is just advertising.” Given a need for unique eyes (to get more advertising $), it is an easy way to get eyeballs.
Bollox.
See it in action: this is a link to the bolt specific screenshots. And another site, Roo.TV, which has connections to Bolt.
This bullshit sucked in ‘99. It sucks more now.
With Imus out, Nike sticks their shoe in the door:
Opportunities are everywhere.
and it will soon be mine.
UDPDATE: It has arrived; now for the projects. Thinking the first will be an office dirigible, or dirigible swarm.
if you are:
a senior/lead java developer — 6+ years experience building/architecting high traffic, high availability sites; live or will move to NYC; 2+ years leading a development team
java developer — 4+ years experience building web applications
php developer — 4+ years experience building web applications
interface developer — CSS/JavaScript, etc.; 4+ years experience
… leave a comment with contact info. There are several positions that need to be filled. Not much detail attached to this list. That will be provided should you express interest.
But I am sure Henry James would have loved Jane Austen for her intellect too.
I know I am adding nothing to this, other than linking to it, but it is good to see institutions like the University of Maine resisting the RIAA. They may not be the first to do so, but I do hope many more will follow.
The picture stinks, but possibly, it captures the crowd as seen by Shane McGowan.
In that fuzzy darkness is Shane MacGowan and his wheelchair (he damaged knee ligaments while performing at the Orpheum in Boston on March 11). Picture that. The teeth; barely(not) legible speech, and band mates pushing him around stage in his wheelchair. It was awesome.
Considering stories of his having “6 months to live” have circulated on-and-off for many years, one would think he, in fact, only has 2 months to live. But you know he has the never-say-die liver. He’s going nowhere. It was a great show.
Sorry for the crappy picture.
-tkp