dear david karp,
thanks for tumblr, a platform i have grown to love over the 6 years that i’ve been here.
i understand this is your project and i’ll understand if you sell it. but i wanted to point out, you left money on the table when it came to me.
i’d have paid a small fee to have a “no-ads” dashboard. you could have added all the ads you wanted ($$) and i’d have given you money ($$) to have them not show up for me. money in your pocket both ways.
i also would have paid a small fee for premium features ($$). all that time wasted on trying to get me to not use ‘missing e’ could have been put to better use asking me to pay a small fee ($$) for a better user experience within tumblr itself.
there are several other ways you missed making some solid dough on a tumblr fan such as myself, but i think the point is made.
you left money on the table with me. i hope you don’t do that with yahoo, or whomever you may sell to.
tumblr is a neat place. you did something really great in creating this software. however, we did something great in being the community that used it. you made tumblr worth something, and we’ve made it worth more.
good luck and thanks again.
respectfully,
notentirely
Cosigned.
I saw these all over town this weekend, on bus stops and the like—and while I intellectually appreciate they spent $100 million on this ad campaign, and what do I know from ad men, I do have a question:
Are you selling us special active-teen tampons? Because that’s the only conceivable product Y!ou can possibly be, especially given this lovely stock photo you chose. Yay. I’ll pick some up with my Teen Spirit Sparkling Salsa deodorant next time I’m out.
Yahoo still sucks everyone.
We Need To Talk About Facebook
Just to give a short outline of the problem. By using Facebook, activists do not just make their own communication, their opinion, their ‘likes’, etc. transparent and available for processing. Instead - and we consider this far more important - they expose structures and individuals who themselves have little or nothing to do with Facebook. Facebook’s capability to search the net for relationships, similarities etc. is difficult to comprehend for lay people. The chatter on Facebook reproduces political structures for the authorities and for companies. These can be searched, sorted and aggregated not just in order to obtain precise statements regarding social relations, key people, etc., but also in order to make predictions, from which regularities can be deduced. Next to mobile phones, Facebook is the most subtle, cheapest and best surveillance technology available.
The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley’s big talk on innovation
Silicon Valley loves to talk big about innovation; it’s just not as good at following through.
In fact, “innovation” is something of a magic word around here, shape-shifting to fit the speaker’s immediate needs. So long as semiconductors and coding are involved, people will staple it to anything from flying cars to the iFart app. Other times it’s just code for “jobs,” used to justify asking for government favors one day and scolding them for meddling in the free market the next.
“Lower our payroll taxes because … innovation.”
“Drop that antitrust inquiry because … innovation.”
Ten years from now, someone, some company, or some organization, takes an interest in you, wants to know if you’ve ever said anything they consider offensive, or threatening, or just includes a mention of a certain word or phrase they find interesting. A single search query within Google’s cloud – whether initiated by a publicly available search, or a federal subpoena, or anything in between – will instantly bring up documentation of every word you’ve ever spoken within earshot of a Google Glass device.
(via xkcd: App)
You Are Boring
Everything was going great until you showed up. You see me across the crowded room, make your way over, and start talking at me. And you don’t stop.
You are a Democrat, an outspoken atheist, and a foodie. You like to say “Science!” in a weird, self-congratulatory way. You wear jeans during the day, and fancy jeans at night. You listen to music featuring wispy lady vocals and electronic bloop-bloops.
You really like coffee, except for Starbucks, which is the worst. No wait—Coke is the worst! Unless it’s Mexican Coke, in which case it’s the best.
Pixar. Kitty cats. Uniqlo. Bourbon. Steel-cut oats. Comic books. Obama. Fancy burgers.
You listen to the same five podcasts and read the same seven blogs as all your pals. You stay up late on Twitter making hashtagged jokes about the event that everyone has decided will be the event about which everyone jokes today. You love to send withering @ messages to people like Rush Limbaugh—of course, those notes are not meant for their ostensible recipients, but for your friends, who will chuckle and retweet your savage wit.
You are boring. So, so boring.
Don’t take it too hard. We’re all boring. At best, we’re recovering bores. Each day offers a hundred ways for us to bore the crap out of the folks with whom we live, work, and drink. And on the internet, you’re able to bore thousands of people at once.
Let me use small words and type slowly because Spotify and these other nimrods are just.not.getting.it.
If I pay $X per day/month/year for your service
you do not ever show me an ad
that’s why I’m paying $X per day/month/year for your service
period.
“It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people.”
-Logan P. Smith
(Source: funnystuff4)
The shot heard ‘round the [television] world
And that’s why the fact that it comes from Netflix is such a big deal. Watching House of Cards is great for the content, but because of the delivery method. This is the first truly great television show in history not to require a cable subscription. Not only that, but the show is available instantly, on your time, wherever/whenever. That’s the shot heard ‘round the world. It’s Netflix not only taking on the networks, but taking on the cable companies. It’s disrupting an entire industry.
The war has started for the future of television and Netflix, not directly, is fighting the good fight. If we, the consumers, can purchase the rights to watch the best shows directly, why we would pay a middle-man (cable companies) to do the same thing for us, for a more expensive? That’s the vision of the future that Netflix is presenting and House of Cards verifies its legitimacy …
“The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us” was the big quote from Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos from an in-depth feature on the company in GQ.
There’s spam and then there’s spam.
(Source: tastefullyoffensive)
