Published on July 5, 2008
in Ideas.
I had dinner last night with a doctor that said he was concerned that bed-side nurses are using WikiPedia to research treatments. His point was that there is often one source for recent research. Most likely the person that is doing the research is publishing journals, not contributing to WikiPedia. So, if WikiPedia has the information, it’s most likely paraphrased or another persons interpretation of the original source. And. The fear is valuable information is lost in the translation. In short, he was fine with WikiPedia for a number of things, just not as an information source where you have liability. I’m curious, has anyone been sued for using incorrect information from WikiPedia?
Yesterday, the Chronicle had an article in the business section about Yelp deleting some accounts and posts by users that appear to be swaping reviews with other local businesses. I scratch your back. You scratch mine type thing. It got me thinking at what point do services like Yelp become so influential that there value deteroriates since others are insented to provide skewed information. Also. What can Yelp do to ensure it remains a collection of unbiased reviews? Is deleting accounts and posts the answer? I think there must be a better way. Perhaps a warning on a review or a link to potentially biased reviews. Obvious spam is the only thing that should be deleted.
Published on July 3, 2008
in Ideas.
The best way to lower bounce rates is to engage and delight visitors. But to say that reach doesn’t matter is a mistake. Reach matters to advertisers. More uniques equals higher CPMs.
The best of both worlds is to do both. Big reach and low bounce rates, which really means getting users to view multiple pages. The best way I’ve seen to do that. Hands down. Photo galleries.
Published on June 30, 2008
in Ideas.
Scale can get you volume discounts when you’re buying. It can also help margins when you are selling. It can also make it possible to get into new markets. Microsoft took advantage of their scale until it was called a monopoly. Today, Google is pushing their scale in the ad market with premium content and pre-roll ads. Very interesting.
Published on June 25, 2008
in Ideas.
I was just talking about Gmail with an investor and how happy I am with it. His response was that it doesn’t have all the stuff an enterprise would want.
I think it’s close enough and the price is right.
Looks like they are getting more traction. I heard that Salesforce switched and I just read about another huge enterprise win.
Published on June 21, 2008
in Ideas.
I simply want a trusted place that my wife and I can post photos and videos to in a lossless format (no storage limitations) that we can trust to be in business for the next several years. Bonus features include some basic automated tagging, simple sharing capabilities. I’m pretty sure I can find this if I dig around. If you have a recommendation, please leave it in the comments.
The next thing I want is anytime I take a picture or a video for it to be added to my account automatically or batched up when I’m connected via wifi.
Finally, I want easy to use editing tools. IMovie is too hard.
Published on June 21, 2008
in Ideas.
There’s a little riff on SEO Black Hat about abandoning a shopping cart when they display a coupon code box and you don’t have one. I have to say, while I wouldn’t use the language he does, that. Yes. I totally do a search for the coupon code when I see that box. Then I always find an expired code. And. Abandon my shopping cart because I think I could be getting a better deal. You’re not alone.
Published on June 16, 2008
in Ideas.
If you ask Andy Sack about starting a company going after the online local space, he’ll tell you, don’t do it. If I were an entreprenuer going after the local space, I wouldn’t ask him if I should. You already know what he’ll say. Instead, I’d ask what worked. And. What didn’t.
I also disagree with Andy when he says it will be the big guys that get traction in the local space. I think it will be a little guy that has the patience to make it work. Sort of like Craig from Craigslist.
Published on June 15, 2008
in Ideas.
Does the word aggressive have a positive or negative connotation? Does it matter if it used like - They have an aggressive sales force. Or. She’s an aggressive player. My wife says more negative than positive. I say positive. Unless you intentionally make it negative by adding - Overly, or something else that implies excessiveness.
If someone described your daughter as aggressive would you be offended? Not me. I think it’s a compliment and I try to instill a degree of aggressiveness in my young daughters.
Published on June 12, 2008
in Ideas.
I wonder how much stress Jerry Yang is feeling. As a small company CEO, when things go poorly, I feel stress to resolve the issue. Sometimes I exercise. Sometimes I read. And sometimes, I just walk.
I wonder how Jerry deals with it.
Published on June 5, 2008
in Ideas.
Calacanis asked a question about how to buy traffic. Two years ago this was doable for the average person willing to put in the time. Today. It’s much harder. Especially if you are trying to arbitrage paid clicks from Google with AdSense because of the new quality score guidelines.
Now, it’s difficult to scale, but buying very tail keywords combined with semantic SEO techniques to drive a high quality score can still be done. It’s just very limited.
The semantic portion is understanding what phrases and context needs to be on a landing page for specific key words to increase the quality and drive down the click price. Again, tough to scale and arbitrage. In most cases you need a more valuable action to make it a profitable endeavor.
