Disqus - Latest Comments for csun

Re: Twitter takes down lists temporarily as site buckles

csun — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:58:55 -0000

I don't love or hate Twitter, but in their defense the problem they are addressing is much harder than a normal website. Every time someone updates their status, followers have to be notified via SMS, desktop client, or a webpage. That can mean a huge number of notifications if Ashton Kutcher updates his status (4 Million followers). Just imagine how many millions of notifications are being sent every second since people are constantly updating their statuses.

It would be fun if Kutcher, Oprah, CNN and other popular Twitter users tried an experiment and each tweeted many messages at the exact same time. I'm sure that would cause havoc on Twitter's infrastructure.

Re: Facebook makes up 6 percent of U.S. Internet visits, leaving Twitter behind, says Hitwise

chad818 — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:16:15 -0000

I couldn't agree more. I really don't even see the basis for such a comparison. Again, Facebook is a "come one - come all" social medium whereas Twitter is more targeted. It would likely be a mistake for Twitter to give up its niche in pursuit of Facebook.

Re: Are social gaming offers scamming users? A detailed analysis of Techcrunch’s Scamville article

andrew_null — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:36:52 -0000

Fair enough, and I agree that TC loves to sensationalize stuff :-)

Re: Are social gaming offers scamming users? A detailed analysis of Techcrunch’s Scamville article

csun — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:52:10 -0000

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy your reading your blog. I wasn't trying to criticize your points. Your thoughts on the user experience problems are valid. I know some offers are shady and they make users upset that they've been duped. I was only criticizing Arrington who likes to stir the pot and sensationalize it. For him to play a few Facebook apps, look at few offers and then refer to Zynga and offer networks as "bad guys" and "unethical" is ridiculous.

Re: Are social gaming offers scamming users? A detailed analysis of Techcrunch’s Scamville article

andrew_null — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:25:46 -0000

have you used offers before? If not, try them, because you'll learn something: They are awful.

I am both defending the offers industry in that I think there is some value there, but at the same time, offers are terrible. I think the link you sent me is full of denials, and doesn't take responsibility for any part of the obvious user experience problems.

Re: Are social gaming offers scamming users? A detailed analysis of Techcrunch’s Scamville article

csun — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:43:48 -0000

A lot of people know Mike Arrington loves drama and picking fights. Perhaps Mike's ulterior motive was to start a flame war so people would go to TechCrunch and read about it. It's not beneath him to do something outlandish for attention and pageviews. After all, he released Twitter's internal documents.

I feel the people who work in the industry know the most. Can a blogger really know more about offers than people who work on this stuff everyday? No.

Offerpal's blog has a post with their side of the story. Certainly, they are biased since offers are their business model. But rather than using personal opinions and assumptions, they provide data to back up their beliefs.
http://myofferpal.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/virt...

Re: Facebook makes up 6 percent of U.S. Internet visits, leaving Twitter behind, says Hitwise

csun — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:17:49 -0000

I understand your points. I probably got too excited when I saw the headline with "[left] in the dust" and thought it was a slight towards Twitter. And I just wanted to stick up for them, cause they've done a great job.

Re: Facebook makes up 6 percent of U.S. Internet visits, leaving Twitter behind, says Hitwise

sacadas — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:46:50 -0000

You're totally right. We often compare the two because they're so ubiquitous.

But the thing is -- as a blog that's always on the look out for new technologies gaining traction, we should be aware of other companies on the rise. In 2005, MySpace had at least 60 million users to Facebook's 8 million, and then you know the story from there. They have also always been pretty different from each other too...

So maybe the news here is that Facebook and Twitter are more complementary, and less competitive than we think. And that's a story too.

Re: Facebook makes up 6 percent of U.S. Internet visits, leaving Twitter behind, says Hitwise

csun — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:14:12 -0000

When people think of social media, Twitter and Facebook are the first to come to mind. But comparing the two is comparing apples and oranges.

Twitter is way simpler than Facebook. Its a text-only communication tool. Facebook has profile pages, photos, networks, marketplace, events calendar, almost 100,000 applications.

Comparing any website to Facebook would only lead to the conclusion that Facebook leaves others in the dust.

Re: Now you can use Google Voice without switching phone numbers

csun — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:00:28 -0000

After yesterday's announcement, I setup Google Voice (GV) to handle the voicemail for my iPhone. The automated transcription of voicemail is kind of cool, but far from perfect. Many words are way off, when transcribed. You can still hear the actual voicemail if you want.

I had to sacrifice voicemails from showing up in my iPhone. Now when someone leaves a voicemail, I get a text message sent to my iPhone. This is bad for those who don't have a good text plan. I don't text much, so I'm ok with it. GV provides the option to go back to letting the iPhone handle my voicemails. So for now, I'll give GV a try and see how it goes.

Re: Investor Carl Icahn leaves Yahoo board, apparently satisfied

csun — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 22:18:14 -0000

Nice title for the article. Maybe you should have put a funny quote in the picture.

Re: Zynga’s FarmVille gamers donate to Haiti’s poor via virtual goods

csun — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:57:39 -0000

The fact that Zynga is donating money to poor children is noble. There's no point in arguing about the percentage. Giving from the heart is what matters.

Re: The making of Zynga’s Cafe World, the fastest growing social game in history

csun — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:20:04 -0000

Nice article. In the article, you pose the question "How does Zynga do it?" Cross promotion and virality are two key factors that you've mentioned.

One other factor, and it's very significant, is advertising. Zynga is buying users.
They're spending millions of dollars on advertising. The ads appear on the right side of Facebook pages. The ads are probably targeted so not everyone will see them.

Re: YouTube now serves more than 1 billion money-losing views per day

csun — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:03:27 -0000

Nice article. For a long time, I agreed that YouTube was a mistake for Google. I believed that YouTube may never break even.

But now, they are trying things like partnering with Time Warner to show high quality content. And that will bring high quality advertisers. And of course, they're still trying different forms of advertising in the videos or on the webpages.

I now think that YouTube will eventually break even and be profitable. Would Google have it any other way? Outsiders can never really know how much money YouTube is making or losing. So I think the estimated $1.5 million loss per day is probably an upper bound.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg: The evolution of a remarkable CEO

csun — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:12:47 -0000

Great article. Mark Zuckerberg has done an outstanding job of growing the company, hiring the right people, growing Facebook's user base, and building the Facebook Platform for developers.

Re: Age (and ARPPU) ain’t nothing but a number: Data on how age impacts social gaming monetization

csun — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:33:38 -0000

Thanks for sharing these stats and the commentary.

Re: http://venturebeat.com/2009/09/07/125415/

anthonyha — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 03:21:34 -0000

These are all good points. I think my argument in that section got a bit muddled.

Re: http://venturebeat.com/2009/09/07/125415/

csun — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:54:02 -0000

>> "The cloud isn’t just about infrastructure delivered remotely, but software, too — in other words, web applications."

I respectfully disagree. If the "cloud" is about enterprise web applications, then why has the term only become popular recently? Companies have used external web applications since the 1990's. Why weren't those applications referred to as "cloud computing" then? For example, online HR and payroll services have been used by large companies for many years. And what about Webex, PayPal, and job websites? Again, they are web applications used by companies, but nobody seems to call them "cloud computing".

"Cloud computing" has become a buzzword because of infrastructure services provided by companies like Amazon and Google. It has not become a buzzword because of enterprise applications. I think part of confusion comes from the fact that many applications are built using "cloud computing" under the hood. For example, Salesforce.com provides a cloud infrastructure for developers. But it just so happens, that most (or all?) of those applications happen to be used by companies. And mistakenly, people assume the applications are the "cloud". They are not.

In my opinion, the best way to understand "cloud computing" is to BUILD something that uses it. Cloud computing is really an on-demand tool. It's like electricity. Electricity by itself is not a refrigerator, microwave, or TV. But it's an essential part of making those appliances run.

Re: Cisco video: Cloud computing is powered by angels?

csun — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:53:49 -0000

I like the Gartner definition of cloud computing that you mentioned.
And as far as examples, I would tell people to look at Amazon Web Services.
I consider them the inventors of the cloud computing industry.

Re: OpSource lands $4M for cloud operations

csun — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 20:52:34 -0000

>> Cloud computing means never having to buy servers or maintain them again.

That's a nice simple definition. I like it and agree with it.

Some bloggers mistakenly believe Cloud computing means enterprise web applications (like Google Docs). And when I hear journalists/bloggers misuse terminology, I'm disappointed. I really feel the best journalists/bloggers should have experience in the area which they are covering. A good financial journalist should have worked on Wall Street. A good political journalist should have had some job in D.C.. And it would be great if there were more tech writers who have technical backgrounds.

Re: Thing Labs releases peek at Twitter client Brizzly

sacadas — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:27:01 -0000

"Another feature is that they allow users to write descriptions about the "Trending Topics". So if you want to know why "District 9" is popular, you can see a user generated explanation."

That feature seems super-useful if they can stop spam.

Re: Thing Labs releases peek at Twitter client Brizzly

csun — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 13:34:53 -0000

I got invited to use Brizzly's service and so far I think its decent.
The UI seems the same as the Twitter website,
except that images and videos are shown inline.

Another feature is that they allow users to write descriptions
about the "Trending Topics". So if you want to know why
"District 9" is popular, you can see a user generated explanation.

The page renders kind of slowly (sometimes 5 seconds)
but that's probably cause they have to call the Twitter API
and wait for data to come back.

Re: Microsoft and Yahoo turn on the buzzword firehose

anthonyha — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 02:57:53 -0000

I agree that scale and innovation are important, but my main point is that they're such vague terms that it's hard to know exactly what Ballmer and Bartz mean when they repeat them. For starters, I haven't seen anything in the details of this deal that has much to do with actual product innovation.

Re: Microsoft and Yahoo turn on the buzzword firehose

Anthony Wang — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:33:17 -0000

don't forget choice. and value

Re: Microsoft and Yahoo unite on search, in revolt against Google dominance

csun — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:13:11 -0000

>> "With Yang now out of the company..."

Jerry Yang is still with Yahoo. He's still an employee, just not CEO.
Just keeping you guys honest.