I agree that Reddit is taking a naive view on Advertising. There is a huge amount of value to be added here, both to Reddit and the Community by an effective Advertising platform. I'll speak with examples:
r/gaming, a post about Borderlands2 with a sponsored ad that links to one-click checkout on Steam.
r/politics
A post about Romney's many lies featuring a donate to Obama link, or vice versa.
r/fitness
Featuring a sponsored Ad to a local crossfit gym that is having a free trial.
To pull this off they need much better Advertiser control, sentiment analysis of posts, and inclusion into a larger Ad Exchange (or offer Reddit inventory via an exchange model).
Adding some type of effect to show that the shirts are actively being bought (I imagine every few seconds half a shirt 'flash') would give the sale more of an active-feeling. Right now I don't feel strongly urged to make a decision right now, but rather that I could come back later.
Second comment: Rather than giving away the least popular shirt, you could apply some type of variable pricing depending on when a user purchased a shirt given its popularity?
My name is on the no fly list (well, mine and a million others). I get 'randomly' stopped by customs every time I re-enter the country through an airport. This doesn't happen at passport control but rather at customs. I've started leaving notes addressed "Dear TSA" in my luggage just to laugh at the expression on the agents face as they go through my dirty clothes.
The author states that in his time at Google he realizes it was always a company funded by ads, but that he did not have to personally feel the need for Ads in all products. That's a fair point. Where I lost him is his connection of Google+ with Ads.
I disagree that G+ is an Ads play. It's a play for staying relevant on the internet. When you think about it, Facebook is a closed system. They want CNN to post articles into the CNN FB stream. They want people to read those articles on the CNN page (yes, this currently links to outside FB... that will change). They want to do this so that you never have to leave FB, and in fact if you look at the user behavior of 13-17 year olds you will see disturbing trends that this is the case.
Facebook is a danger to a free and open internet by becoming the de-facto internet. I concede that this is a stretch, but it is within their power to do so and from my understanding is how their strategy is lined up.
TL;DR: G+ is only about Ads in the way that Google needs users to serve Ads to and there is a threat that all users of the internet only go to Facebook and nowhere else.
"When you think about it, Facebook is a closed system."
People say this all the time without any justification. As far as I know, all content within Facebook that has no privacy restrictions can be viewed without being a Facebook user. Facebook has an API that can be used to both read and write.
Facebook is stingy with phone numbers and email addresses, which is a significant failing in my opinion. Other than that, I can't imagine a more open social network that allows users to control who can see their content.
Most of my work is done in Ruby or Python and deployed via Heroku or EC2. I would look for someone who can either work in those frameworks, or can rewrite it in their language of choice.
Do you just need someone from time to time or full time?
Regardless, I'd recommend githire, if you want to find someone here provide more information and I'm sure you'll get dozens of emails (put your email address in your profile).
It would be great to have the ability to post-pay. I can imagine finishing the book and realizing that it was worth $20, and wanting to pay more. In this case if I come back to LeanPub there would be a list of books I selected to postpay, so after I finished reading them I could judge the true value and pay that (or add to what I have already paid).
Not sure how well that would work in practice but it resonates well with me. What hooked me was the title and the word free, the advantage with free is that I don't have to make up my mind on how much it is worth. My first reaction was that I could, since it was free, just grab it and see what it was.
But the instant I came to the site I felt guilty. I ended up paying the suggested price only because the suggested price was sensible (if the suggested price had been more I'd probably would have paid less) and because leanpub seems awesome (just found out about it). Since I know nothing about the book itself I didn't take that into account when buying, it could of course be worth much more.
EDIT: DRM-free and giving me multiple formats to choose from (and not forcing me to select one) is awesome and is one of the reasons I really wanted to buy it. Otherwise I would have had to strip the DRM first (I don't accept DRM on e-books that I buy, even if it makes me a criminal).
Combine it with other features (Write the author, discuss the book with author and readers, rate the book) and invite the reader on the last page of the book.
96% of revenue in the most recent quarter came from Advertising. If Google hadn't pioneered contextually relevant advertising it would likely be bankrupt today (as no VC would front the money it costs to run and maintain the datacenters powering search today).
To my knowledge complying with COPPA is a difficult and tedious process. Common sense does not apply, and in fact, in my understanding, can often put you in violation of the law (for example: stating that you are going to remove someones access for being underage , because then they can reasonably understand that lying is in their best interest).
r/gaming, a post about Borderlands2 with a sponsored ad that links to one-click checkout on Steam.
r/politics A post about Romney's many lies featuring a donate to Obama link, or vice versa.
r/fitness Featuring a sponsored Ad to a local crossfit gym that is having a free trial.
To pull this off they need much better Advertiser control, sentiment analysis of posts, and inclusion into a larger Ad Exchange (or offer Reddit inventory via an exchange model).