Posts tagged good
Why Kickstarter Outfunding the NEA Isn’t a Good Thing
Mar 28th
The Internet had mixed reactions to last month’s news that Kickstarter was on track to outfund the National Endowment for the Arts. On the one hand, this was great news for artists and creative people who wanted to fund a seemingly obscure or perhaps controversial art project that their friends would probably get behind. Yet others weren’t so easily sold. Why was a crowd-funded platform beating out the National Endowment for the Arts, a government agency funded by Americans’ tax dollars? Something didn’t seem right.
The National Endowment for the Arts has not funded visual artists since 1993. But it once did fund controversial work, like that of Robert Mapplethorpe’s X Portfolio series, which featured images of homoeroticism, BDSM and classical nudes. That body of work was included in a traveling exhibition called “The Perfect Moment,” which was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. But not for long.
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It was only a matter of time before the NEA would stop funding individual visual artists all together. Take, for example, the 1993 case of the NEA Four, which includes performance artists Karen Finley, Tim Miller, John Fleck and Holly Hughes. In June 1990, their proposed NEA grants were vetoed by John Frohnmayer because of the artworks’ highly politicized subject matter. The NEA Four filed suit against the NEA, and Frohnmayer was forced to resign. Even though the artists won their court case in 1993 and were awarded the grant money, after all was said and done, the NEA stopped funding individual artists.
Today the NEA funds visual arts through grants and organizations that “serve the needs of and enhance opportunities for artists and their audience.” The NEA claims that it is committed to advancing the work of contemporary visual artists, but that’s not what individual visual artists had to say.
Cleveland’s SPACES Gallery, Recipient of NEA Grants
Ask anyone who has received an NEA grant, and they’ll tell you that there’s a lot of legwork involved. Christopher Lynn, the executive director of Cleveland’s SPACES Gallery, tells ReadWriteWeb that the gallery has an ongoing relationship with the NEA. It receives money for the SPACES World Artist Program, an artist residency that brings in local artists from around the world.
“The NEA seems to be on board with it because it deals with issues of cultural exchange and enrichment of the national and local landscape, in addition to bringing in international artists,” says Lynn.
Yet the process for getting an NEA is “long and arduous,” he says. “It requires budgets (last year’s and next year’s), images, information on previous artists to recap on where we have been, and proposed upcoming artists.” Even if you do receive an NEA, the organization expects the organization to pay upfront, so the entire grant functions more like a reimbursement process. “You get the money at the end of the grant period, rather than get the money upfront, which can be tricky if you don’t have the cash function.” This reverse-like funding happens because organizations or individuals have, in the past, abused the privilege of receiving money upfront.
Lynn says the best word to describe the NEA is “traditional.”
In a lot of ways, Kickstarter is a far easier route than applying for an NEA grant, or any grant, for that matter. And judging by the success artists have had with Kickstarter, it’s hard to rationalize not doing it. Except for that whole small government thing.
Artist Steve Lambert: Kickstarter Is a Short-Term Solution to a Long-Term Problem
Steve Lambert raised money using Kickstarter for a project not-so-ironically titled “Capitalism Works for Me.” This project, as he says, was “more ambitious than what a nonprofit could do,” and there was a limited timeline for the project. So he jumped on Kickstarter, and in only 30 days he was able to raise $16,000. Does this mean capitalism works? Or government is broken? Or neither at all? Lambert asks friends on Kickstarter to make capitalism work for him.
“There were 434 people who now are connected to the project, even if they only gave a dollar,” says Lambert of the Kickstarter fund. “Plus there’s this accountability to the public – it’s not just me being like, ‘Hey, this is great!’ The idea needs to be supported for it to move forward.”
Lambert only turned to Kickstarter after other avenues proved to not work quite as well. “I had tried to do different forms of the Capitalism Works for Me through other institutions and it didn’t work,” he says. “Some were like, ‘No, that’s not what we do,’ and others were willing to show but not put the money behind it. If you’re challenging institutions or capitalism or the government, it’s good to be able to go outside of it.”
Or, in other words, if you’re making work that’s controversial and perhaps not as family-friendly, you’ll probably have to find alternate means of funding. Take the controversy that Mapplethorpe caused, for example. “The federal government has not given money to individual artists for decades,” he says. “Other countries don’t do this.” When it comes to work like Mapplethorpe’s, for example, even if you don’t like it, “it has value,” says Lambert.
Kickstarter is a short-term solution to a long-term problem, to continued government cuts to the arts.
“We have billions of dollars going into war,” says Lambert. “We need to be having that conversation. Kickstarter fills a need; it should always be there. But within the nonprofits, I hear them say things like ‘That program got cut so we’re gonna do a crowdfunding thing.’ And it’s like whoa, whoa, what are we doing to fight the cuts?!”
Kickstarter is well aware of this problem, too. When ReadWriteWeb originally reported the news that Kickstarter was on track to outfund the National Endowment for the Arts, we also noted something that Kickstarter Co-Founder Yancey Strickler said: “But maybe it shouldn’t be that way,” Strickler said. “Maybe there’s a reason for the state to strongly support the arts.”
Queer Filmmaker Wendy Jo Carleton: The Closed World of NEA
Two years ago, Chicago-based queer filmmaker Wendy Jo Carleton needed to raise funds for her indie film about two girls in love, Jamie & Jessie Are Not Together. She turned to Kickstarter instead of a complicated, paperwork-heavy grant because, as she tells ReadWriteWeb, it just made more sense – especially considering the subject matter she was tackling.
“I haven’t applied for really big grants probably because they’re so daunting – the time and the paperwork, the content that you already have to have such a clear, concise idea expressed in written form, plus you need budgets,” says Carleton. “It took a lot of time to prepare for Kickstarter – it’s like your own storefront, and you figure out what you want your storefront to look like. And you can be a lot more creative.”
As opposed to the Internet, a broadcast-to-the-masses type of platform, the Kickstarter campaign acts as “its own broadcast without being too idiosyncratic,” she says.
The NEA isn’t exactly focused on connecting to the social-networked masses.
“I associate the NEA with access. You have to do a lot more legwork to understand what kind of language they want you to be speaking. It’s like this insider-y thing, and to me, I associate that to upper-middle class background and Ivy League people, and people who know people or they’ve lived in New York most of their lives and are already connected. That’s not my background. I’m a working-class background, and for me it’s empowering to know how someone wants you to dance if they’re going to be throwing money at you for the dance.”
Of course, Americans’ tax dollars fund the NEA grants. But that’s beside the point.
“It’s connected to federal funding, which is taxpayer money, and I smell some right-wing agenda in the comparison because the NEA and Kickstarter are not in the same playing field to compare.”
RainbowLightening: We Are an ADD Culture. Get Over It.
Akron, Ohio-based artist Chelsea Blackerby of artist collective RainbowLightening used Kickstarter to raise funds. But it’s not something that she was particularly thrilled about. Using Kickstarter, she was able to raise a quick $2,000 for her sculpture project Dreamscape Memory Cave, a collection of personal memories and stories gathered over one year. They line the walls of this sentimental space. With 48 backers, rainb0wLightning raised the money. But the Kickstarter platform seemed to be more of a burden than a success, at least in terms of community building.
“People are really busy, everyone is demanding their attention, and that’s our culture,” says Blackerby. “That’s kind of what our piece is about. We’re asking people to stop their ADD and really slow down and experience themselves.”
A project like this doesn’t really make sense on the Internet, the exact type of medium that the artist is trying to combat.
“Kickstarter does a good job of making you feel like you had a direct hand, and it’s unique in that way because it does take out the middle man,” says Blackerby. “But it’s kind of like throwing money at the RedCross or a philanthropic organization. You want your money to go somewhere good.”
Images via Shutterstock.com and VisitSteve.com.
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Google Charging for Maps API Access Is Good for Developers
Mar 23rd
As developers bail out left and right, Google has launched a new developer portal for the Google Maps API. It’s intended to “inspire the next wave of innovation on the Google Maps API, and to connect developers and decision makers with the tools and services that can make their products better.”
The new site includes interactive demos and showcases highlighting third-party sites and applications. Now that it costs money to access the Google Maps API, Google wants to give developers a little more motivation to get over that hurdle. Some will. Others are fleeing to open-source alternatives, and that’s a great thing for the ecosystem.
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“With the continuing evolution of the Google Maps API,” product marketing manager and Maps developer Carlos Cuesta writes, “it became clear that we needed more than just code documentation to convey what’s possible with the Google Maps API.”
Lately, that “continuing evolution” has involved charging for API access, which was mostly free for years. Now Google has to inspire a new class of Maps apps whose businesses aren’t dependent on free data.
The New York Times got a quote from Google spokesman Sean Carlson, who says that the pricing “is intended to encourage responsible use” of Maps data and “secure its long-term future.”
Google already charged major users of the API, but now smaller developers will have to pay as well. It’s not prohibitively expensive for everybody, but for businesses built on the free API access, this has forced some major changes.
In one of the most newsworthy departures so far, Foursquare switched to OpenStreetMap, starting with its Web views. We also reported on the decision by AllTrails, a big social network for outdoors enthusiasts, to partner with National Geographic Maps and start moving away from Google, a tough decision it had to make in the process of launching.
The pricing was “significantly higher than I think anyone anticipated,” AllTrails founder/CEO Russell Cook told ReadWriteWeb.
“Deep down I think the developer community knew that at some point the Google APIs they were using would stop being free,” Cook said, “but I don’t think they ever expected the price gouging. My personal opinion is that Google has every right to charge for the services they are providing, but their recent actions have been very short sighted.”
It’s unfortunate that these businesses made plans that included cheap access to Google Maps data and later had to change them. But Google Maps has to be sustainable for the platform to thrive, and so do the businesses built on it. Hopefully, these new resources for developers will help.
“Overall it’s healthy for the ecosystem,” John Musser of Programmable Web told ReadWriteWeb when Google announced the change. “Services need to be sustainable with business models that work for both sides.”
Meanwhile, open-source mapping projects like OpenStreetMap are still dwarfed by the popularity of Google Maps. But major adopters like Foursquare are changing that. They’re also helping to sustain other supporting open-source projects like Leaflet. There are even studios building gorgeous graphics for OpenStreetMaps. As the need for location services grows and smartphones proliferate, the options for maps are multiplying.
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Friday Humor: A Funny Video “She’s Too Good For Everyone”
Mar 23rd
@VinceBlackham tweeted a very funny video the other day and I thought I would share it with you. It is a video called “She’s Too Good For Everyone” by Break.com. It is a very catchy tune. My favorite line – “She’s the devil and Satan has perfectly toned abs and rocks a C cup.” Follow [...]
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Facebook Ads Rogues Gallery: The Good, the Bad & the Inexplicable!
Mar 20th
Facebook ads can be horrible, awesome and (sometimes) downright perplexing or creepy. From icky peccadilloes to obvious winners, this post shares eye-catching Facebook ads from the last few months, as well as the reasons why.
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Google Semantic Search: Bad for SEO, Good for You
Mar 15th
The Wall Street Journal reported today on some changes coming to Google search, but the article seems a bit confused about what they are. The lead item is that “[o]ver the next few months,” Google “will begin spitting out more than a list of blue Web links,” providing direct answers to questions instead. That’s not new at all.
What is new is that Google’s Amit Singhal and team are bringing semantic understanding to search queries. Instead of just parsing keywords in a query like a dictionary, Google will use machine intelligence to interpret the meaning of the query and use that to find the most pertinent results. There are no specific announcements from Google yet, but the implications of this PR messaging are profound.
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Outsmarting The Humans
This is bound to shake up the way today’s keyword-driven search engine optimization works. The essence of the SEO game is tailoring page titles, URLs, topic tags and body text to the words and phrases people use to search the Web. Google only has to match the keywords in the query to the keywords on the Web using a lexical database. That’s relatively easy, and it allows humans to game the system.
Semantic search would add much more intelligence on Google’s side of the transaction. The specific wording of the query won’t matter so much, because Google will be able to determine the intent behind it. It will determine the probabilities of various meanings of your words and phrases and decide on the fly what results make sense. The process that gets the user to her results will be much less subject to manipulation.
Google’s New Kind of Relevance
This doesn’t just have implications for SEO, though. Much of Google’s existing business – its search ads – are based on keywords. But Google is in the process of shifting to new kinds of relevance signals across the board.
The purpose of Google+ is to create a layer of people, places and things – and a network of their relationships – that is visible to Google search. In order to stay ahead of Facebook and Twitter’s interest graphs, Google wants to move toward those kinds of signals for ad relevance. Instead of showing you ads that just match the terms in your search, Google will have to match ads to your search based on your meaning, as well as your context, location, +1s, relationships and so on.
The Google+ identity layer also gives semantic search a leg up. With a more explicit understanding of the thing, place or person to which your search query refers, Google knows better what you mean. It doesn’t have to do as much statistical guesswork when you type in a name if you can explicitly identify the person through Google+.
But Is This Really New?
Google still has a semantic search experiment called Google Squared, and as Google Fellow Ben Gomes told us last month, the search team has been working for years to incorporate signals from semantic databases like Freebase. Still, when the results of these efforts eventually result in a change to the very way the Google.com search box understands queries, the Google experience will change dramatically.
With a more intelligent search engine, Google will be better for users. It’s not just the interpretation of queries that will improve; the quality of results will be better since they can’t be gamed with keywords. This will change Google’s ad business profoundly, but that change is inevitable. If Google doesn’t become the most relevant, intelligent search assistant, Apple’s Siri will.
Again, Google hasn’t announced any specifics about the semantic search changes. But recently, the company has been remarkably transparent about changes to search. This week, for the first time ever, Google posted unedited video of a search quality meeting. Let’s hope that trend continues.
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Why Video Games Are Good for Your Kids
Feb 29th
Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt of “The Modern Parent’s Guide to Kids and Video Games,” by Scott Steinberg, which is free to download at www.ParentsGuideBooks.com.
In addition to understanding the many real concerns that today’s parents have with video games, it’s also worth considering the benefits and positive aspects that contemporary interactive entertainment choices provide.
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“Nearly 60% of the almost 1700 ratings we assigned last year were E for Everyone, which means there’s a huge selection of games available that are appropriate for all ages.” – Patricia Vance
Certainly, many popular titles today are M-rated and intended for discerning adults, given the average age of today’s gaming audience. But the vast majority of games can be played by a broad range of ages and still manage to be fun and engaging without resorting to foul language or violence.
“Games can definitely be good for the family,” says the ESRB’s Patricia Vance. “There’s plenty of selection. Oftentimes I think parents feel that they’re not because video games in the media are portrayed as violent, and hardcore games tend to get the lion’s share of publicity. But parents also need to be comforted knowing that E for Everyone is by far largest category [of software]. Nearly 60% of the almost 1700 ratings we assigned last year were E for Everyone, which means there’s a huge selection of games available that are appropriate for all ages.”
In fact, most video games do have quite a few redeeming qualities – even those with violent content. All games can and do have benefits for players, and in a number of different and sometimes surprising ways.
Educational Benefits for Students
A recent study from the Education Development Center and the U.S. Congress-supported Ready To Learn (RTL) Initiative found that a curriculum that involved digital media such as video games could improve early literacy skills when coupled with strong parental and teacher involvement. Interestingly, the study focused on young children, and 4- and 5-year-olds who participated showed increases in letter recognition, sounds association with letters, and understanding basic concepts about stories and print.
The key for this study was having high-quality educational titles, along with parents and teachers who were equally invested in the subject matter. That way kids could discuss and examine the concepts that they were exposed to in the games. Also interesting is the value that video games are proven to have even for very young players. A study by the Education Department Center further found that low-income children are “better prepared for success in kindergarten when their preschool teachers incorporate educational video and games from the Ready to Learn Initiative.”
“The success of complex video games demonstrates that games can teach higher-order thinking skills such as strategic thinking, interpretative analysis, problem solving, plan formulation and execution, and adaptation to rapid change.” – Federation of American Scientists
Older children such as teens and tweens can benefit from gameplay as well. Even traditional games teach kids basic everyday skills, according to Ian Bogost, associate professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and founder of software maker Persuasive Games. “Look at World of Warcraft: You’ve got 11-year-olds who are learning to delegate responsibility, promote teamwork and steer groups of people toward a common goal.”
Games that are designed to help teach are having an impact on college-age pupils as well. Following a recent 3D virtual simulation of a US/Canadian border crossing, wherein students assumed the role of guards, Loyalist College in Ontario reported that the number of successful test scores increased from 56% to 95%.
Career Benefits
Future career choices for today’s tots will no doubt be influenced by technology in a way that is difficult for many parents to imagine too. Skills learned and honed playing home console and video games, as well as mobile gaming apps, will undoubtedly be very valuable to students in the workforce of 2025.
As mentioned earlier, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) has proclaimed that kids need more, not less, video game play. They argue that video games hold the potential to help address one of America’s most pressing problems – preparing students for an increasingly competitive global market.
“The success of complex video games demonstrates that games can teach higher-order thinking skills such as strategic thinking, interpretative analysis, problem solving, plan formulation and execution, and adaptation to rapid change,” the Federation announced in a 2010 report. “These are the skills U.S. employers increasingly seek in workers and new workforce entrants.”
Games are increasingly being used to educate and instruct workers around the globe by governments, trade bodies and the world’s largest corporations as well. From Cisco Systems’ The Cisco Mind Share Game, which facilitates network certification, to the US Department of Justice’s Incident Commander, in which emergency responders practice coordinating disaster relief efforts, the number of practical examples continues to grow. In fact, a recent study by the Entertainment Software Association found that 70% of major domestic employers have utilized interactive software and games for training purposes, and nearly eight out of 10 plan on doing so by 2013.
Going forward, in addition to polishing your resume and interview skills, who knows? You may even want to brush up on your button-mashing abilities.
Promoting Exercise
All parents know that kids need a healthy combination of physical and mental exercise. Happily, today’s motion-controlled games for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Kinect, Nintendo’s Wii and Wii U, and Sony’s PlayStation Move help kids get both kinds of workouts at the same time.
While many shy away from exercise because they see it as an activity that isn’t enjoyable, organizations like the American Heart Association now cite, and even recommend, video games as a fun and entertaining way to enjoy physical activity.
Better yet, people of all ages are finding them a more approachable way to stay physically fit. While many shy away from exercise because they see it as an activity that isn’t enjoyable, organizations like the American Heart Association now cite, and even recommend, video games as a fun and entertaining way to enjoy physical activity.
Upsides of active play are considerable too. A study reported in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine of 39 Boston middle-school children who played with six different interactive gaming systems found that the games “compared favorably with walking on a treadmill at three miles per hour, with four out of the six activities resulting in higher energy expenditure.”
Organizations supporting individuals of all ages and interests are additionally using active games to help get people up and moving. Nursing homes, cruise ships and even after-school programs all now employ active video games in some form to help stimulate both the mind and body.
The good news: People seem to be enjoying active play more than ever. Healthy diversions such as Wii Fit and Zumba Fitness continue to be some of the most popular and best-selling games year in and out.
Group & Social Play
Video games can also have some very important effects on family relationships, and deserve to be thought of as something that can – and should – be played together.
Many parents view video games as a solitary, sedentary, time-wasting activity, when the truth is that video games have in fact emerged as a viable option for family game time that can potentially offer great benefits to families who are willing to enjoy them together.
It’s always seemed obvious to families that activities like playing board games, make-believe, or even making music together could strengthen the family bond. But many parents view video games as a solitary, sedentary, time-wasting activity, when the truth is that video games have in fact emerged as a viable option for family game time that can potentially offer great benefits to families who are willing to enjoy them together. You won’t be alone if you do decide to take the plunge either. According to the ESA, 45% of parents play computer and video games with their children at least weekly, an increase from 36% in 2007.
Families that embrace playing video games as part of their everyday life are likely to find themselves enjoying a greater sense of cohesion and communication than families who still view video games as an idle, meaningless and solitary pursuit. As a result, it’s small wonder that so many in this day and age are putting away the cards and dice and turning to high-tech alternatives for modern family game nights.
Moving, thinking, cooperating, helping, learning, empathizing, growing, seeing the world from other perspectives… video games can help kids and families do all these things and more. So talk to your friends, do the research and seek out games that your family likes to play and that you as parents are comfortable with, then consider making play a part of your regular routine. Chances are, you won’t just have a great time – you’ll also make lasting memories and connections with your kids while doing so.
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Evernote: NoSQL? Not Now, Thanks! We’re Good
Feb 24th
Big services demand NoSQL, right? With nearly a billion notes and almost 2 billion resource files, Evernote should be ready to jump on the NoSQL and Big Data bandwagon, right? Not so fast, says Evernote’s CTO Dave Engberg. According to Engberg, some applications may benefit from modern key-value storage engines, but Evernote has good reasons for sticking with its MySQL setup for account metadata.
In a post yesterday on the Evernote Tech Blog, Engberg says that the ACID-compliance of MySQL’s default storage engine (InnoDB) is key to their synchronization model (PDF).
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ACID compliance, says Engberg, ensures that the Evernote client on your desktop or mobile device can trust the reply given by the Evernote server. Atomicity means that user notes are stored accurately on the server, with all changes completed. If an API call fails, no changes are committed at all, says Engberg. “This means that if we fail trying to store the fourth image in your Note, there isn’t a half-formed Note in your account and incorrect monthly upload allowance calculations to charge you for the broken upload.”
Consistency means that notebooks won’t be deleted with “dangling” notes. Durability means that when the server reports that a notebook has been created it really has been.
Engberg says Durability is the most important property. “If the client can’t assume that changes made on the server will be Durable, then the protocol would become much more complex and inefficient. Each synchronizing client would need to constantly double-check whether the state of each server object matched the local state. Maintaining absolute consistency for an account with 20k Notes, 40k Resources, and 10k Tags would be very expensive if changes couldn’t assume Durability.”
Scaling Evernote
The flip side, and why many services are looking to key-value data stores, is that scaling data sets can be pretty hairy. Engberg says that this is a problem Evernote has avoided by partitioning its data into 20 million data sets, “one per user.”
Evernote has published a digest of its architecture if you’re curious. It’s a detailed (if somewhat outdated, this was from May 2011) look at how Evernote’s service is structured. MySQL (running on top of Debian, in a Xen VM) holds user metadata, and file data is stored in the Linux file system.
Instead of big data, Evernote has “a lot of ‘medium data’ storage problems that partition neatly into a sharded architecture” says Engberg.
Evernote may be looking at newer tools for other projects that don’t require the same ACID compliance, though. Engberg notes that Evernote’s reporting and analytics system “has gradually outgrown its current MySQL platform” and is likely to be replaced. But for the user metadata, part of the core of Evernote’s service? “We’re relatively satisfied with sharded MySQL storage for Evernote user account metadata, even though that’s not going to win any style points from the cool kids.”
Discuss
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Forget $3B In Revenue: Things “Don’t Look Good” For Facebook
Feb 24th
Evidence is quickly mounting that Facebook’s initial public offering will not be the big boost the social media sector needs as Silicon Valley companies try to prove to Wall Street they can grow revenues.
On Thursday, PrivCo CEO Sam Hamadeh told VentureBeat that several people close to the company were saying Facebook was going to miss first-quarter revenue projections. Meanwhile, eMarketer released a report predicting Facebook’s advertising revenue growth will slow in 2013 and 2014. That follows reports earlier this week about retailers shutting down Facebook stores.
Oh yeah, and don’t forget about that class action lawsuit filed this week that once again brings Facebook’s ongoing privacy woes into focus.
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“Facebook is clearly choosing to increase its ad intrusiveness and frequency to pad its numbers short-term in preparation for its IPO and first quarter results post-IPO trading, at the cost of user experience and long-term growth.” – Financial data services company PrivCo
“We’ve confirmed with sources close to the company that Facebook is indeed behind its projections for ad revenue for the first quarter,” Hamadeh said. “It certainly doesn’t look good for Facebook frankly.”
In a blog post, PrivCo cited recently-leaked documents and noted that Facebook’s announcement this week that it was launching a new premium advertisement service suggest the company is scrambling to meet revenue goals. As we have previously noted, Facebook’s move to a publicly-traded company will mean it will need to react to shareholder pressure and may have to launch products sooner than expected to make up for revenue shortfalls.
“These are the types of actions ad-supported companies save for a Rainy Day,” Hamadeh said. “It should be a red flag for investors that Facebook apparently considers that Rainy Day to be now.”
The eMarketer report was slightly more upbeat, projecting ad revenue to grow will grow 60.5% to $5.04 billion this year. But that rate of growth is expected to drop off, falling to 32.8% next year and 13.7% in 2014.
Part of the problem is that Facebook is still heavily ad-dependent. eMarketer estimates that 85% of its 2011 revenues came from display advertisements. The company has failed to roll out other revenue generating products, as Google did ahead of its IPO in 2004, and the company still hasn’t developed a mobile platform that supports advertisements.
The bottom line for you, the end user? Expect more ads as Facebook tries to meet revenue projections.
“Facebook is clearly choosing to increase its ad intrusiveness and frequency to pad its numbers short-term in preparation for its IPO and first quarter results post-IPO trading, at the cost of user experience and long-term growth,” PrivCo said in its blog post.
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My 17-Point Checklist For Teaching Good Writing and Blogging
Feb 20th
Image Credit One important lesson from “The Checklist Manifesto” is the idea of creating checklists to guard against failures in complex situations. Investment manager Mohnish Pabrai studied his own investment failures as well as those of notable investors like Warren Buffett and ended up with a 70-point checklist, meant to keep himself from repeating the [...]
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SEO: A Force for Good
Feb 15th
Think about what the web would look like without SEOs working to help legitimate sites rank for the terms that they should rank for. The more optimized and targeted a website becomes, the greater the chance a potential customers will find it.
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