Free & Open Is Its Own Lock-in

A decade ago, one of the very first places I found that offering free websites gave everyone access to the same images directory. You could upload your own images, but then everyone else could use them as well. Goofy, questionable, but free. I’ve been hosting with Joyent for more than 3 years, purchased 3 different …

Web 2.Over: Google Buys FeedBurner

Consistent with my hypothesis that Google is a social gesture company, they bought FeedBurner (a company finally reaching its only exit strategy, Thank god). Four Predictions: Six Apart now pulls auto-FeedBurning from TypePad blogs due to conflict of interest. Google incorporates FeedBurners metrics into Google Analytics and sends the rest of FeedBurner to play with …

The Difference Between Yahoo & Google

From my perspective, sorting out the acquisitions of Yahoo and Google is pretty straight-forward. Yahoo (list of Yahoo acquisitions) has always been about building a directory. ‘Tags’ are just another way to create a directory. From that perspective, purchasing HotJobs (directory of jobs), Flickr (directory of photos), Upcoming (directory of events), del.icio.us (directory of web …

The Lack of Intention Economy

“Since the clicks will likely look legitimate, it comes down to intent – did the user click the ad just to click it, or did they have a genuine interest in the advertisement? It’s not so easy to tell…” Mark Cuban dissects click fraud. The quote above is from the comments following Mark’s post. Good …