Link Roundup – stuff you MUST read
When I come across something interesting but don’t think I have the time to read it immediately, I drag the URL onto my desktop. Eventually my desktop is so cluttered I force myself to clean up. This usually happens when I have a little time spare, so I end up reading the pages at the same time. I know bookmarking the links would be more effective (or using Delicious or similar) but the truth is that I don’t really want to keep this stuff forever.. I just want to eventually force myself to read it and when that’s done I can delete it.
So, here’s my selection of the most interesting or amusing from the last couple of days
The Difference Between Total Users and Active Users
Nice insight – “focus on your active users in order to convert your inactive users”
My experience of the active vs. inactive user issue came from the work we did with the QQ instant messenger platform in South Africa when I was at MWEB. We found that even when promotions, competitions and ad campaigns were successful and we had a significant spike in new user registrations, this usually did not translate into an increase in the number of active users of the platform. It’s clear in hindsight that we should have been focussing on the product, not the promotion.
The Most Effective Video Ad Unit? All Of Them
Loads of testing to arrive at the most effective video-ad format.. I won’t spoil it, you’ll need to click on the link.
Working with News Publishers
Google finally says to the whiney tree-killers who won’t stop carrying on about how Google is helping everyone to steal their content online – “if you don’t want us to index your content, simply use a robots.txt find to exclude our crawlers”.
Behind the constraint I can almost hear the Google execs hissing through their teeth – “go on, we double-dog dare you really ask us to stop crawling your sites – YOU DON’T EXIST ON THE INTERNETS IF YOU’RE NOT IN GOOGLE!!!”
Twitter’s Biz Stone: ‘We got lucky – it doesn’t mean we’re geniuses’
This is great – an interview with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone just a couple of days before a hacker leaks 310 confidential company documents online. From the interview:
“Some of the cultural things we’ve got here that we’re fortunate to have are just a general level-headed, unassuming, humble, humorous, funny atmosphere. We like to have fun and stay humble.”
Stay humble… I love that… from the same guys who said: “If we had one billion users, that will be the pulse of the planet”
Coolest iPhone app – DSLR Remote Professional
Super cool iPhone app allows you to remotely control your Canon DSLR tethered to a computer. Even shows an image preview on the phone before firing the camera.
Big Brother: Amazon Remotely Deletes 1984 From Kindles
Mashable reports on the recent Kindle fiasco – after users bought books and downloaded them to their devices, the publishers of these books decided they no longer wanted to offer a Kindle version. Amazon proceeded to delete the books from the users devices and credit their accounts for the purchase. This case really underlines the difference between renting and owning our media.
Local sanitary ware not good enough for Zuma
Cobra Watertech employs close to 2000 South Africans. The current economic climate has hit them hard, and they have had to put staff on “short-time”, effectively cutting their monthly income by 21%. Zuma’s response? Import all R900 000 –worth of bathroom fittings rather than use a local supplier. Maybe it’s something special about the shower?
Once-Trendy Crocs Could Be on Their Last Legs
A couple of years back I heard that Crocs were a listed company.. at the time, I thought it was a rare opportunity to short a company with full weight and be guaranteed of making a pile of money when the fad died down and nobody wanted to wear the funny rubber shoes anymore.
I was right. From a high of more than $70 they dropped down as low as $1.
Currently a bit above $3. I see strong support at zero.
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Hi there
Thought you might enjoy this article: This shoe made great strides without the help of style leaders “Crocs went public, raising more than $200 million in the biggest stock offering in shoe history. But from 2007 to 2008 the company swung from a profit of $168.2 million to a loss of $185.1 million.”