Disqus - Latest Comments for ManFmNantucket

Re: Factoring Time into SEO

gruvr music map — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 10:29:30 -0000

re gruvr - huh?

re links - the claim was that age increases link value, not "IF they gain prominence", which may happen, but more often they lose value as domains of 2d-level backlinks die off. Anyway, I'm asking what sources are being cited here, or is this just an intuition/opinion type of claim?

Re: Factoring Time into SEO

gruvr music map — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 10:08:52 -0000

Um, I'm curious what you cite as evidence for #3, "clickiness" - it's very similar to the notion that time-on-page, or stickiness, affects rankings. That stickiness affects rankings is debatable, as sites which provide quick,one-stop answers are often highly useful/relevant as sites where users stay & explore. Same should go for catchy titles which get clicks.

As for age of links, matt cutts has mentioned this in his videos, and he seems to imply that links decay in value with time, not increase.

Re: MA-Sen: Republicans Celebrate Coakley’s Gaffes in Worcester

gruvr music map — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:45:48 -0000

I must counter your observation about no Brown supporters having voted for Obama. This afternoon I visited Brown HQ in worcester with my son to see for ourselves what all the fuss was about. We posted a bunch of live videos about it. Basically, it seemed like plenty of the phone workers were Obama08 Indie voters, we met no "neocons" , few GOP loyalists, and only one 'tea party' guy.
Here's an example video clip http://qik.com/video/4478415 which shows hand-written sentiment from the brown supporters. Other clips show the hand-written signs (they ran completely out of lawn signs!) supporters made. See for yourself what these Brown supporters say about it.

BTW, we saw about 15 Brown lawn signs on the drive to worcester - and zero coakley signs.

Re: Spread Your Wings- Get More Retweet Action Today

gruvr music map — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:33:32 -0000

retweets would be SO much easier - and propagate so much faster - if twitter had a native RT button built in. A native RT function would put the "RT from" metadata below the actual post text, where it belongs - so you wouldn't have to think about making room for the 'retweet' text and extra handle, as you describe above. one-click viral propagation, and voila, easy to track metadata about propagation of any given message.
Wouldn't it be nice?

Re: Twitter: You Can’t Give Us a Feature Then Take it Away #fixreplies

gruvr music map — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:35:58 -0000

Twitter just responded to #fixreplies 'feedback'! http://bit.ly/Bzrnv

Re: Twitter: You Can’t Give Us a Feature Then Take it Away #fixreplies

gruvr music map — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:34:45 -0000

Twitter responds to #fixreplies 'feedback'! http://bit.ly/Bzrnv

Re: Twitter: You Can’t Give Us a Feature Then Take it Away #fixreplies

gruvr music map — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:26:24 -0000

yeah and the way we boosted #fixreplies into trending topics was all too easy - hashtag stuffing! http://twitter.com/ManFmNan... This too would be trivial to fix just count each word once per tweet when calculating which are the top keywords mentioned... #FIXHASHSPAM

Re: Yes, we've been acquired by Mashable!

gruvr music map — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 18:49:52 -0000

sounds blippin sweet, congrats!

Re: Photo of the day: Calorie Counts at Dunkin Donuts

gruvr music map — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:51:11 -0000

Boston is about to enact the same kind of nanny laws. It offends my sense of free will, and I would think that even people who don't want to lose weight (either because they are thin or they are happy being fat) would be downright offended by the presumption that everyone ought to watch their calories.

What seems more palatable is the 1-5 star 'health' ratings being introduced by some supermarket chains.

In MA, we now have mandatory health insurance. I realized the other day that when I was paying for this of my own free will, I was going for checkups more frequently.
Now, I avoid doctors out of a sense of resentment that I'm being forced to value health care. Go figure.

Re: Mashable on Tumblr - Twitter as the New Religion (No offence...

gruvr music map — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 13:57:29 -0000

but he IS @jesus_christ

Re: Search Advertising - Up, Down, Or Flat

gruvr music map — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:13:20 -0000

I think it's going to be a huge negative surprise. Bottom line is many ad-supported sites are way down on eCPM even on increased traffic. If eCPM from online ads is down for most sites, it has to be net down for GOOG despite increased spend from whomever.

Plus GOOG has shown many signs of panic/desperation:

a- aggressively contacting webmasters and asking them to implement more ads (eg adsense for search)
b- running remant inventory (eg no-revenue ads for youTube and other goog properties)
c- cost-cutting, layoffs, etc

Unfortunately their rev stream is not yet diversified to be immune to the worst part of web ads : their pyramid structure, as sites that sell ads often buy traffic with ads and the arb chain can swiftly collapse.

Since the cost cuts are in response to a change in market they will likely not show much effect yet on a trailing revenue report...

JMHO

Re: Not All Earnings News Is Bad

gruvr music map — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 11:09:26 -0000

someone should construct a market index that calculates ratio of positive to negative posts or tweets regarding the economy... I remember a distinct turning point where you started to hear negative blips amidst wholly optimistic news, over a year ago... early warning signs.

On another note, ANimal COllective to be interviewed on NPR today
http://www.npr.org/template...

Re: Selling Apple and Google Today

gruvr music map — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:23:29 -0000

true.

Now you *could* join The Dark Side and get short MUAHAHAH... just use a dang stoploss.

The thing about web ad revenues, as I recall painfully from '00, is they are chained together by arb - i.e. many sites which get adsense revenue get their traffic by buying adwords (or what have you)... so when $ starts to dry up for those sites, the entire pyramid comes down far and fast.

Another anecdotal observation: seems like lots of adsense ads I've seen in the past month are 'filler' ie promoting youtube or other google properties. They only run remnants like that if they have no other $ inventory. Interested whether others have noticed this also.

But hey, shorting isn't evil - it's hedging if you depend on things like adsense. Heck even farmers do it..

Re: Selling Apple and Google Today

gruvr music map — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:51:22 -0000

Bravo Fred! I hate to see people lose money but they do because taking a loss is one of the toughest things.
Personally my strategy is to set a trailing stoploss once a position is in the green and let it ride, but getting out simply because you're betting against the trend and the chart is perfectly rational.

I'm still short GOOG from $399 as a hedge against collapsing internet ad revenue, which I am sure you can observe by polling your portfolio of web companies. It's a lot like 2000 out there right now and I think GOOG is going to get a huge surprise in its next Q earnings.

Re: CTO of the Year (Scripting News)

gruvr music map — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 16:11:08 -0000

Werner + Winer = Winners!

Re: The Invention Of Air

gruvr music map — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 01:53:11 -0000

oooh! Is this about the un-discovery of Phlogiston?? I am always telling that story to illustrate how beliefs and paradigms shift to fit new facts, prior to which all facts supported the now invalidated belief system.

But that story comes from Kuhn's STructure of Scientific Revolutions, which is a classic but a bit tedious reading to recommend it. I would love a more recent look at the whole philosophy of science and maybe this is just the book. Wishlisted, thanks!

Re: The Global Discussion

gruvr music map — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:54:07 -0000

Another vote for Mechanical Turk - it's very well suited to this - work done in small amounts, by humans, and an API to control how it gets parcelled out and results collected. Works for me...

Re: Stock market swings wildly — plunges, then recovers, now down 4 percent

gruvr music map — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:25:10 -0000

I love these slides from Sequoia, especially the 'stuck pig' one - I'll forever have that image in my mind now when someone says 'squeals like a stuck pig' .

It also wouldnt surprise me given some of those graphs to see rampant high inflation return over the next few years...

Re: Amidst the cacophony of music start-ups, ReverbNation echoes

gruvr music map — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:34:57 -0000

I was fairly amazed when they announced they had registered 200K bands... according to several analyses there are not that many actively performing bands in the world!
RNation is a nice, useful site. One problem with these services, though, is they try to be a one-stop destination. This leaves artists in the unfortunate position of having to enter their basic data into multiple services, beginning with myspace (sine qua non for live music promotion). I wouldn't be surprised to see some kind of consolidation going on with this new funding where RN could buy up some of the smaller sites that already integrate and build on existing gig data, like tourfilter, gruvr, gigblastr, tourb.us, etc...

Re: What To Look For Next

gruvr music map — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:30:11 -0000

GOOG will announce on Oct 16th, here's a webcast link:

http://www.businesswire.com...

The way GOOG is moving down heading into a news cycle can indicate either apprehension about earnings, or that 'smart money' already knows something the public doesn't.
Investor relations will often compose a few positive-souding 'news releases' heading into earnings to shake out shorts as well. The absence of such IR activity could indicate confidence internally. The risk-averse individual will be covering any shorts a week in advance, and not holding GOOG long OR short over earnings.

Re: What To Look For Next

gruvr music map — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:07:04 -0000

sure, I can see how cashflow EBITDA matters more to an angel or VC ; they can envision taking an unprofitable co and via M&A scaling the infrastructure costs etc.

But when I read 'this is value territory' - for the stock investor in the street or institution, is still thinking of the traditional P/E ratio, yes? http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

From that point of view, GOOG is still 22 P/E vs historical average where 15 (avg) and below is 'value territory'. After the 99 bubble, investors returned to this definition of 'value', from what I recall, for a while. But financial memory is short.

GOOG is 60% institution owned, but it's regularly 'gapping down at open', e.g. opened at 330 today, a -10 drop overnight. This can mean institutions are selling overnight or at least not supporting it. Institutions (big blocks) don't seem to be supporting on the Level II trading view, either. Anyway the important thing is not to *lose* money, that's what stop-losses are for!

Re: CauseWired Quote Of The Day

gruvr music map — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:57:51 -0000

This is a really nice idea - I like the GIS and insect map project... I already made an 'angel' investment via Kiva.org though - I assume you know about Kiva: http://gruvr.com/news/

There's P2P philanthropy but also P2P micro-investing - think about Prosper.com - you can find lots of good credit risks and small businesses to invest in there. Kiva and Prosper.com seem like safer places to keep cash than banks right now, although the model is investment and not pure philanthropy - it helps people become self-reliant.

once my Kiva investment is paid back, I'll come back and look at putting it into one of these projects.

Re: What To Look For Next

gruvr music map — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:36:26 -0000

count me confused too - I'd appreciate a primer on it.

From my recollection, what counted for value was multiples of earnings, not just cash flow, which sounds like bubblespeak ca 1999. Cant companies be profitable - or lose money - with pos cash flow?

As for Google, they are so reliant on web advertising income that they are at huge risk right now. My sites have seen steady pageviews but a distinct dropoff in eCPM over the past month.

I can well remember in 2000, how rapidly the bottom dropped out of online ad dollars. I had a site back then that was earning just fine and suddenly my advertisers all stopped sending checks, because nobody was sending THEM checks.

Disclosure: short GOOG @399 http://twitter.com/ManFmNan...

Conundrum: trying to teach HS-age son and kids about stock market.
Need better tools; is CoVestor appropriate?

Re: What To Look For Next

gruvr music map — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:42:02 -0000

... that was a bit ramblesome...

Look. IMHO the root of the problem is 'EZ credit' and printing money from thin air, in misguided attempts to 'stimulate the economy'. And how are they trying to 'solve' this problem? More EZ credit....

Re: What To Look For Next

gruvr music map — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:37:34 -0000

Until there is some regulation that ties our currency to a value, this long term trend will continue.
In other words, the source of the asset inflation and eventual credit crunch cycle is artificial manipulation of
the money supply and credit rates by the fed, who is not answerable to anyone.

Suze, here's an example of the kind of thing I think of as 'printing' money - creating it by magic

http://www.nytimes.com/2008...

Read about halfway down:

The Treasury will provide money to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to support the new program, the Fed said. Fed officials would not say how much but believed it would be substantial. The money would not come from the $700 billion package...

They will just 'provide money' - 'massive' amounts - think about it... from where?
The truth is, they can 'provide money' not backed by anything - the fed and treasury don't answer to anyone,
never have. I'm not sure whether it's better or worse to for it to be 'backed by' debt, really. Either way, we
hand our children mountains of debt or vastly inflated prices and weak dollars...

Note how the media just pases this info along without much remark... are they being obliging or conspiring or just
ignorant? This happens regularly in smaller but unknown amounts, since they stopped publishing the M3 stat.

PS I hope you got stopped out of $GOOG

http://www.nytimes.com/2008...