I'm struggling to see the logic in this. I know Twitter have struggled to make music work previously. Not convinced that a hardware approach is the best way forwards. This may just be a straight investment, but even still - it feels odd.
I use Lastpass. It's reasonably light touch and easy to manage. With that said, Dashlane's new password changing feature is making me wonder if it's time to make a change...
There is something also mean-spirited about tracking users. Yeah, yeah, I've heard it's all anonymous, but I've been in the IT industry for a very long time, and I know for a fact they can identify the users with enough time. Because all of this is bought and sold behind the scenes.
I would be OK with ads that went straight to the site selling an item with no tracking other than click-thru stats but not using the IP address, not fingerprinting the browsers, etc.
It's sick that sites show one price to mobile users and another to desktop users. I've seen this by testing it myself. It's a sham. It's the seedy side of capitalism. Everyone should get the same price. Another reason to block ads, since allowing them means you're buying into the way they do business.
Nothing mean-spirited about blocking a very strong vector for malware, which we all know ad networks have become. I have a moral imperative to protect machines under my control, so we block all ads, disallow all tracking, use Disconnect, Ad Block Plus, and HTTPS Everywhere, along with other in-place tools to allow users a clean Internet experience. Let's not even mention how much bandwidth is saved by adblocking... That alone makes it worth it.
You are painting with a broad brush. My sites would be negatively affected by this plugin even though we sell our own ads (no network) and don't target them by fingerprint or IP.
It's also just kind of mean. By design it only messes with the sites that you yourself think are worth visiting.
> It's the seedy side of capitalism. Everyone should get the same price
This rant against price discrimination seems like a tangent. The behavior you're describing is something e-commerce sites sometimes do. It doesn't have much to do with ads and blocking ads won't make hotels.com show everyone the same price.
And car dealers sell the same car to two different people for two different prices. And Proctor & Gamble puts the same shampoo in an expensive bottle and a cheap bottle and sells them side by side.
I understand why you think this is unfair, but it just doesn't seem like that big a deal to me.
<Offtopic for others, but imp for forca - pls don't downvote>
Hi forca: With respect to your comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8304139) where you stated you needed some surgery and sought help with figuring out your options? I replied to it (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8334691) which you missed. I can help since I'm launching this very service.
As you don't have any contact on your profile so there was no way for me to reach you. I even contacted YC admin and they confirmed you haven't left an email in your profile :( Since then I've been tracking your comments page to maybe catch you live.
So let's talk? I can answer any/all of your queries and the ones I don't know the answer to I can figure out. Think of me as no-obligation, friendly discussion to clarify all your doubts. I hope you see this message.
Well yes, this is designed to actively disrupt (and not in the usual constructive sense) the ad-supported site model AFAICT. It'll do this by making the data useless, by getting sites thrown off ad-networks and (in less well monitored cases) by draining the coffers of the ad networks for ads never seen.
I like the idea of an ad-free 'net, but it's not really up to me to dictate to site owners what they can do, which this seems to be.
--edit--
Having read the comment parallel to mine I'd like to say I agree that there are two sides to this - it may be mean spirited to use this plugin, but it's not exactly friendly to attempt to track everyone, all the time.
Ad networks are only a subset of ad-supported sites. We sell our own ads directly to clients who we think will appeal to our audience. There's no network or third party tracking/targeting people.
Do you also like the idea of ad-free net that is controlled by megacorps, because only large entities will be able to monetize their content in ways that are not ad supported?
Go and visit them. If you look at any of the bigger marketplaces or on demand apps in the market at the moment, most of them started by getting a few people signed up on the demand side. They did that by physically going out and talking to them, demoing the product, explaining why it works, what the benefits are and frequently physically taking them through the signup process. If you do a bit of relationship building with your supply side providers, you'll be amazed at the results. Assuming your idea is good, has demand and is easy to use, those service providers you talk to will be some of your biggest advocates. They'll talk to their colleagues and friends in the industry and hopefully tell your story on your behalf. You effectively want to create advocates on the supply side. Also, that personal relationship will allow you to get invaluable feedback that you frequently wouldn't have thought of.
I've just invested in a marketplace in the Middle East. Our product is almost ready for beta. We've been out talking to the people who will be our service providers for the last month (and we probably won't launch for another month), showing them screenshots, talking to them about what they need and what would help them and generally gauging interesting and getting numbers signed up. We've had some amazing feedback and have introduced a few small features into the apps on the basis of the most common pieces of feedback.
Go out and talk to people. Hit the bricks. I guarantee you the results will be immeasurably better than direct mail, adwords or anything else in the early stages.
Good points, thank you. You are right, it is good to go and visit our clients in order to better understand and fulfill their needs. Is it appropriate to call those companies to introduce ourself?
Promoted tweets by location, targeted to people talking about specific games. FB ads, Adwords - targeted to places that people talk about games. Go on Twitter and football forums and tell people why they should use it. Be friendly. Talk to any local or tech media folks you know and see if they can help you promote it.
Getting people to the site won't be your biggest issue. Getting people to sign up and take part once they're there will be. There's no real call to action on the site. It's not particularly visually appealing. Could you recruit some friends/family to generate some activity and some buzz? Right now, there only appears to be one person posting. It needs to look busier than that for people to decide to go there rather than Twitter, IRC or wherever else they are chatting about whatever game is ongoing at that time.
agree with you about traffic, once you get a few people in the chats it works great, especially on the http://www.LiveBaseballChat.com pages. People tend to stay the entire game etc.....but getting them there seems to be the issue.
maybe remove the requirement to be registered before seeing the chats? I just clicked in to see the France/Honduras chat, but I can't see any activity. I'm much more likely to sign up and participate if I think I'm signing up for something that's more active.
and that brings us to the crux of the issue...... there was no one chatting in there.
we've built a great app, with gamification elements (eg check out the badges on my user profile http://www.LiveWorldCupChat.com/Dean.Collins ), we have the ability to email friends, send out facebook and twitter links etc.....and no one is using it......
We've had over 5,000 people sign up for the various http://www.LiveFanChat.com sites but just unsure how to get it to progress.
eg check out these logs of hits in the first 20 mins of the USA v Ghana game......but not a single new user
(18:00) lccbot: An anonymous user from pool-96-239-94-23.nycmny.fios.verizon.net has joined room 24959 where there are 5 or less logged in users.
(18:03) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 199.27.131.2
(18:03) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 199.27.131.2
(18:04) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 67.220.148.245
(18:04) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 67.220.148.245
(18:07) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: h216.hlfs.bf1.yahoo.com
(18:08) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 61.135.190.102
(18:08) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 50-193-26-28-static.hfc.comcastbusiness.net
(18:08) lccbot: An anonymous user from 50-193-26-28-static.hfc.comcastbusiness.net has joined room 24959 where there are 5 or less logged in users.
(18:08) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: c-50-174-130-157.hsd1.ca.comcast.net
(18:08) lccbot: An anonymous user from c-50-174-130-157.hsd1.ca.comcast.net has joined room 24959 where there are 5 or less logged in users.
(18:11) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: cpe-098-024-050-168.carolina.res.rr.com
(18:11) lccbot: An anonymous user from cpe-098-024-050-168.carolina.res.rr.com has joined room 24959 where there are 5 or less logged in users.
(18:15) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 173.252.100.113
(18:15) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 66.220.158.115
(18:16) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 168.161.204.15
(18:16) lccbot: An anonymous user from 168.161.204.15 has joined room 24959 where there are 5 or less logged in users.
(18:18) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: cpe-66-108-53-102.nyc.res.rr.com
(18:19) lccbot: An anonymous user from cpe-66-108-53-102.nyc.res.rr.com has joined room 24959 where there are 5 or less logged in users.
(18:21) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 162.210.161.38
(18:21) lccbot: An anonymous user from 162.210.161.38 has joined room 24959 where there are 5 or less logged in users.
(18:21) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 66.220.158.116
(18:22) lccbot: A new visitor has just hit the landing page from host: 209.133.77.166
