Pictures don't lack demographic targeting. You can make a lot of demographic assumptions from the content inside of a picture.
Example: facial recognition says that this blob with eyes in the photo is a child. Flag may have signed up Babies R Us as an advertiser. Based on the notion that it's a baby on the front of the photo the back as should be for formula, college funds, or diapers.
The tricky part is building up the tooling to automate that process. But hey, most of that exists in the wild already.
If Antenna Gate served as a template for how they could respond, the Jobsian answer would be one of: "upgrade to a larger phone", "use iCloud", or "don't take so many photos".
The market problem is a very real reality. Popcorn is pretty simple, you need to invite you friends - but do you have to do that for every area to unlock that area?
We've been working on the same problem for a few months now but haven't quick cracked the market issue. Our app, racut, has a similar feature called Shout where you can say something and it appears over a 6 mile radius.
In addition to Shout you can also start a private conversation, or have a group conversation outside of the Shout stream.
From my own research of the space while working on near.im, it seems like the companies that have done the best are the ones who make agreements with events (i.e. a networking app for people at a conference.) This is great because it has a clear source of monetization and has the added bonus of having the conference advertise that the app exists so that people might actually use it.
Seems logical to partner with a physical event or space, because it helps to provide some of that social proof that people often crave to use something.
I think of it like a restaurant. You're probably going to eat at the restaurant that is busy, not the one that is empty.
"Instagram’s plan from the beginning has been to exploit that conceptual slippage between content and advertising in a powerful new way, because it is the social network with the greatest claim to a foundation of genuine emotion. Instagram has become what it is because people care about it and what they put on it in a way that isn’t true of Twitter or Facebook—and which is precisely why Facebook bought it."
Interesting statement, because while a picture is worth a thousands words, it's usually some lame brain comment in text that get's people the most worked up. For some reason text has this power. I can't remember the last time I got pissed off at a photograph. I'm sure naked pictures of your wife would constitute a scenario where you were to get pissed off.
Regardless, ads were a comin'. Will be interesting to see if it plays out differently than other networks. If you already follow American Airlines in your feed, why would AA pay extra to advertise to you?
The author asks whether legacy is better measured by tangible accomplishment or lasting influence?
IMO one large tangible accomplishment can lead to lasting notoriety. If you stack multiple accomplishments together, a lasting influence starts to build.
If Steve Jobs only built the Apple II, then that would be it. But he was able to continuously string together a series of accomplishments (even amongst some spectacular failures).
#1 People still install toolbars, that's crazy to me.
#2 Google has so many popular products (search, gmail, youtube, maps) that it makes sense that they're that big. It's equivalent to a person having a bank account with $1bil in it. Just leaving that money in the account and raking interest, you just continue to get bigger by being. In google's case, there isn't strong enough competition to stop them from "being" and gaining more share based on their prior efforts.
#3 Could a new US based search engine compete with Google? Or are they just that big that the task is a fool's errand?
#1 It is crazy and I see a toolbar on just about any average user computer. However, most people do not explicitly install them. They're being silently opted-in or gently coerced into it.
#2 and #3 Google is so influential that it's highly unlikely to happen on the current playfield. They either buy a potential competitor out or cripple their business. I can only see two opportunities for this: a) specialized niche search, b) search based on a new disruptive technology.
Take a look at DuckDuckGo (if you prefer independent entrepreneurial upstart) or Bing (if you prefer massive well funded corporate competitor) to see what getting in the ring with Google looks like.
Inflection points in technology open up opportunities for new competition once a mega company has won a space.
It's a fool's errand to try to beat Google at the game they've perfected and were built for. By the time you could very slowly wrest control of search from Google, the whole tech world will have changed and your point of competition will no longer matter. That's the foolishness of Bing, for example. It's great that companies still try to compete with them, but all they will accomplish is to keep making Google better (and that's a good thing for consumers); they won't 'beat' them however under any circumstances.
Google will be beat in search the same way Microsoft was in operating systems: a dramatic sea shift in technology (with Android now being by far the most important operating system going forward).
This is where Dr. Evil's colleagues snicker and he counters his demands with "100 BILLION Dollars", right?
Seems a bit much to have people set their own salary. What happens if you have an engineer who decides their worth $190k when in reality they're worth $100k at best?
I prefer the idea of providing other benefits like flexibility to work from anywhere and a sane vacation policy (take as much or as little as you want, but make sure your shit gets done).
I'm all for workplace policies that give a greater amount of discretion to employees as to how, when, and where to work. But "set your own salary" is a bit like "set your own hours". Your decision ends up being highly constrained by existing norms, and by the fear of being terminated if you fail to choose the answer intended by management.
Example: facial recognition says that this blob with eyes in the photo is a child. Flag may have signed up Babies R Us as an advertiser. Based on the notion that it's a baby on the front of the photo the back as should be for formula, college funds, or diapers.
The tricky part is building up the tooling to automate that process. But hey, most of that exists in the wild already.