After watching the Super Bowl ad for Bud Light “slapping” a few fun kids created this spoof:
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Archived Posts from this Category
November 30, 2006
I love “open-source” projects such as the Netflix Prize.
The Netflix Prize seeks to substantially improve the accuracy of predictions about how much someone is going to love a movie based on their movie preferences. Improve it enough and you win one (or more) Prizes.
They are doing something that more and more companies will find to be a very good (and daring) business decision. They are taking all of the super-secret data they have about what Netflix users rate movies and giving it away!
Many companies would consider this a dumb business decision because now competitors can take that information and use it in a similar to service their customers. The “secret” that many companies do not understand is that the data itself is not super-secret, it’s the recommendation-algorithm that really counts. This is similar to how everyone can find out what the chemical composition is of Coke, but the recipe for making it is kept secret (aka. the algorithm for how to make it.)
If things like this interest you, read the book Mavericks At Work or read the Maverick Manifesto [PDF].
June 11, 2006
I read over on the Scobleizer that (1) Robert Scoble was leaving Microsoft, probably a good move for him professionally to grow beyond what he had there, and (2) this little bit:
Yesterday I was talking with Amanda Congdon, one of the co-founders of Rocketboom. Her videoblog is now seeing about 300,000 viewers a day. That's, what, a year or so old? Did you know that advertisers are now paying her $85,000 per week? That's almost as much money as I made in an entire year of working at Microsoft.
Did I get that right Robert? Amanda is pulling in over $4.4 million per year in advertising dollars?! Where are the ads? I try to watch regularly, but have missed a few episodes since those end-of-show infomercials piece they started putting in each show. I just watched a few episodes and there is no advertising on the site or in the show. So what are the advertisers paying for?
Update 1: Holy shitskies, read Drew's comment about their advertising page. Seems they stand to make a boat load of cash. I wonder how they financed RB up until now.
Update 2: Here's the complete story.
May 19, 2006
I have received so many hits from my post on the Vonage IPO. If anyone wants to increase traffic to their web site just find out the latest IPOs and include their name in the posts.
I'm actually surprised that advertising sites have not picked up on this trend and started using future IPO names as key words in selling their banners.
May 6, 2006
It seems that video has killed the old way we live. Apple was on top of things when they beat the market with their iPod. Who would have guessed I would use my iPod for all my music and audio news needs?
Then blogs took off and people began using RSS readers to keep up to date on their news. Then video killed the text based blog with the vlog (video blog). Now you can use RSS to pull all your vlogs onto your iPod… but wait there's more.
YouTube took off as another viral marketing measure and made lots of money, causing NBC to get really upset and start their own free video online. Then there are sites like Reever that (after receiving $8.7m in second round VC funding) actually inserts ads into the video stream!
Soon video will be all the rage. You can already see it in all the YouTube additions to MySpace and in the fact that limitless bandwidth is increasing in popularity and accessibility.
April 24, 2006
I really, really hate Doggy Steps and their annoying advertising. This is the stupidest thing since late night TV programming. They have ads for them in the SF MUNI system and I just saw them on TV. I can't stand the fact that someone can sink so much money into selling an unnecessary product they they make money on it.
What can't we convince people they need to buy?
Life on the road 