Posts by: Byrne Hobart
Nerds are a small percentage of the population. But an astonishing percentage of top consumer web companies started out by targeting nerds. This makes sense if these companies are technology companies. But most aren’t—they’re media companies that use technology very well. Still, it’s a compelling list:
Google started out as the search engine for nerds….
HP’s Immaterial Move
HP is spinning off their hardware business and shutting down their WebOS products. It’s hard to interpret this in a way that matters to anyone not directly involved: for the web, Apple is still the macro situation. Everything else, including HP, is comparatively commoditized.
TechCrunch says that Apple beat them, but that’s…
PR guy Peter Shankman wrote up the epic tale of how he asked for a steak to be delivered to the airport, and got it. That’s great! And it perfectly illustrates what might be called the Iron Law of Irrelevant Anecdotes:
In a world with social networks whose follower counts have a power-law distribution, the…
2012 will be the first Presidential campaign in which social media is a proven force. And, simply because the search market has expanded so much, search will be a bigger factor, too. That’s a trend that will produce a few surprising winners in 2012, including:
Facebook’s selling stockholders: Facebook is very likely to IPO in…
Who Facebook Thinks Your Friends Are
A programmer has created a simple bookmarklet that reveals which users Facebook expects you to be searching for. This is notable in two respects: first, it’s a look into your Facebook preferences—not just who you’re looking for, but who you’d decide to be looking for given an ambiguous query. It’s also…
In AdWords, there’s a pretty simple rule: the winner is determined by the underlying economics, not by a superior AdWords strategy. In most parts of SEO, that’s true: if someone negotiates a better affiliate payout for the term “mortgage refinancing,” they can probably be the high bidder on a great domain name, and they can…
Google’s Intrinsically Boring Patent Deal
Google is buying Motorola Mobility for $12.5bn. There are three parts of this deal: the assets Google will immediately liquidate (low-margin phones, cash), the assets they’ll reluctantly liquidate (the set-top box business), and the assets they only bought in order to avoid being sued (the patents).
It’s unfortunate that Google’s…
Most keyword research tools offer a few data points:
A fairly bogus estimate of the number of people searching for the keyword. A completely bogus estimate of how difficult it is to rank for the keyword. A reasonably accurate estimate of how much it would cost to buy traffic on that keyword.
Cost per click…
AmericansElect.com got off to as good a start as any startup can hope for: they got written up in the New York Times. Their goal: run an online primary in order to nominate a credible third-party candidate who will make it onto the ballot in the 2012 election.
They’ve gotten a few things right:
Their initial…
Buddy Media Raises $54mm for Facebook Marketing
Buddy Media, provider of high-end Facebook pages to large brands, has raised another huge round to fund further expansion. Facebook seems eager to have companies raise money in order to expand on their platform. This, despite Facebook being ranked the worst API in a survey of developers.
Opt-In Privacy on…
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