Disqus - Latest Comments for yo_daniel

Re: User Onboarding | A frequently-updated compendium of web app first-run experiences

yo_daniel — Thu, 28 Jun 2018 11:57:39 -0000

Er, not massively. I mean there's the Facebook comment plugin but that's nasty in itself.
Disqus has lots of good functionality, but they also have a tendency to suddenly start running ads in your install without really warning you. And like any free product, they subsist by selling the user data they gather so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: User Onboarding | A frequently-updated compendium of web app first-run experiences

yo_daniel — Thu, 28 Jun 2018 11:48:16 -0000

Man, signing in to Disqus is not an A1 experience. At least I don't have to tick box 3 before I can hit submit, though.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c...

Re: Does the music industry’s definition of ‘catalogue’ need an upgrade?

yo_daniel — Sat, 09 Dec 2017 18:16:37 -0000

Catalogue is profitable precisely because it doesn't spend as much on marketing, though. Usually because frontline did all the hard yards on the record previously.
M&P % on frontline artists at Sony was regularly 30-40% when I was there (vs a target of around 18-19% to be profitable).
Catalogue used to have M&P around 10-14% and prop the company up from Jan-Sept.

Re: Google Home review: Hands-on with the Amazon Echo rival

yo_daniel — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 05:06:09 -0000

Agreed. Assume they'll update it when the info does arrive and by then they'll have the SEO ranking to take advantage of it. Makes sense as an approach in some ways but sucks for anyone who actually wants the info.

Re: Apple Music exclusives: An insider’s view

yo_daniel — Tue, 23 Aug 2016 17:48:22 -0000

"Those complaining about exclusives are not participating which means refusing to pay $10 a month for music, so why are we letting them get airtime?"

Or... they are paying exactly that but for a different service. Probably a better one than Apple Music. Which is why it can be annoying for them.

This is a massively bad opinion piece.

"The problem with Spotify is they don't pay the artists" (most artists unrecouped anyway because of MAJOR LABELS INVESTING IN THEM but whatever).

"The problem with Tidal is they do pay artists [sort of] but do nothing for fans". I mean yeah ok that's true but it's Tidal ffs. No points for pointing that out.

"I have no horse in this race". Riiiiiight. Of course not.

Re: 🏆 The secret of how Leicester City, Juventus and Barcelona became champions

yo_daniel — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 13:21:25 -0000

This correlation is looking more and more causal as time goes by...

Re: Premier League websites and UX: the good and the (very) bad

yo_daniel — Thu, 11 Aug 2016 17:06:58 -0000

Sadly Ticketmaster and the rest *are* most of the club ticket sites, under different urls. Couple of decent exceptions.

Certainly 'some good ecommerce/ SEO knowledge' would help. Few clubs or sports orgs are run as efficient digital businesses; the internet has never significantly hit their revenues (unlike music, publishing, airlines, hotels, high street retail etc) so they've never been forced to get good at it. Consequently most are a little flabby in that area, so far.

Re: Premier League websites and UX: the good and the (very) bad

yo_daniel — Thu, 11 Aug 2016 06:41:59 -0000

This is generally well observed, and the failings described at definitely common and definitely fails.

The thing I'd say about tickets and merch is that they are usually run on (and sometimes by) 3rd party providers, and not technically integrated in the main site.

All clubs would prefer to have a single sign on and an integrated experience- it's not something they're unaware of. But the integration options offered by most of the mainstream providers - in ticketing in particular - are weak, and those companies are rarely motivated to improve the user experience.
Most tickets get sold despite the poor user journey, and in reality these are not big revenue deals for the providers. Once you take out season tickets, away fans and complimentary tickets from each match, a club is often only going on sale with 3,000-5,000 tickets.

That kind of volume, 19 times a season, is small-fry compared to music or theatre venues which have hundreds of events per year.

Re: Spotify must break its ‘everything free’ rule – for better or worse

yo_daniel — Tue, 10 May 2016 11:15:12 -0000

"People like their favourite streaming service. They love their favourite artist."

Not sure I agree with this- certainly there are fanatic fans for every artist, but the majority of listeners enjoy rather than love them.
I probably like Spotify more than most of the artists I listen to, but I am indeed a miserable old sod.

Re: London Underground: Do standing-only escalators work on the Tube?

yo_daniel — Fri, 18 Mar 2016 18:21:57 -0000

Well it won't be trialled in most stations because most stations don't meet the criteria where it's beneficial.
But for the ones that do, that's exactly the time when it should be run, on account of having been proven to be effective at reducing congestion at the foot of the stairs, which has a knock-on improvement in the corridors, and on the platforms, which makes things better for everyone.
And even if you are worried about losing the option to speed up your personal journey by a few seconds, they've said they'd keep one escalator in the old stand/walk combination.
So there is literally nothing to complain about.

Re: Inside Facebook’s Ambitious Plan to Connect the Whole World

yo_daniel — Mon, 01 Feb 2016 04:53:24 -0000

I really hope no-one on a Basics connection is reading this, given the 2800px, 2.9mb header photo for the article.

Re: Done deal: Tottenham complete attacker transfer

yo_daniel — Mon, 01 Feb 2016 04:10:04 -0000

I thought you were meant to be better than this kind of clickbait NewsNow headline?

Re: Facebook has a 'view' problem, which is good news for YouTube - Digiday

yo_daniel — Wed, 16 Dec 2015 12:24:24 -0000

Don't think so- there was a time when that was true, but for the account types I'm most familiar with (music and sport sectors) it's <10% via embeds.
The % can be significantly higher on specific videos, particularly at launch, if a big 3rd party picks it up - but over time the lion's share of the views revert to being on a YT watch page.

Re: A Gary Neville Sized Void

yo_daniel — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 05:48:46 -0000

Rein in the nose a little and Robbie Savage makes for an attractive lady there.
Spot on regarding the narrative being defined purely by the result; either way I'm pleased that Newcastle got a win before coming to WHL next week. It may just encourage them to not be quite as defensive.

I thought Pochettino was meant to be a late-season dipper? If he's also a mid-season dipper, and given our slow start this year, are we basically saying that we've already got about 70% of our points for the season?

Re: Facebook update lets you chat with businesses in real time

yo_daniel — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 05:02:37 -0000

Would it really hurt to link to the actual documentation on the developer portal?

Surely this isn't just a re-printed press release.

It's here, if anyone else is interested: https://developers.facebook...

Re: Spurs have unsettled more than just Berahino and Wanyama

yo_daniel — Wed, 02 Sep 2015 18:43:06 -0000

"the fact that Tottenham’s top two transfer targets are extremely unsettled at their clubs can’t be a coincidence."
- Of course it can. Spurs have made plenty of signings this summer where this didn't happen. And there were plenty of 'unsettled' players that Tottenham had no connection to (Sterling, Otamendi, De Gea).

"Especially considering that players subjected to similar speculation such as John Stones are more than capable to continue performing at a high level for their club."
- Right, so Spurs say nothing public about Berahino or Wanyama and this is apparently so unsettling that the players can't possibly play football matches.
And Chelsea tap up John Stones very publicly, to the obvious (and equally public) annoyance of Everton, but that's ok and means he can keep playing? Not just that Everton have zero decent alternatives at centre-back (unlike WBA who have tons of strikers because they clearly planned to sell Berahino!).

No-one outside of the clubs knows what the proposed deals were; Jeremy Peace posting details on WBA's website and social channels at every step (clearly not appreciated by Pulis) suggests that he had far more of an agenda than Tottenham did, but again, that's just my conjecture and worth the same as yours... very little.

Re: An important question for an unnamed Universal Music executive

yo_daniel — Tue, 18 Aug 2015 15:01:27 -0000

I really don't think that use of ad blockers is incompatible with a holding moral outlook around fair compensation of creators.

Partly because I do both of those things.
But also because they're a necessary solution to a usability problem. The Guardian (for example) is a particularly unpleasant experience without an ad blocker in place.
A portion of music piracy in the early 2000s- before decent legal alternatives were offered- was similarly a response to the usability issue of not being able to buy single tracks. That didn't make it right or fair, but it was a genuine audience need that the business wasn't meeting.

Buzzfeed don't have this problem because they've built a native advertising environment which is immune to ad blockers.
The Economist, FT et al don't have it because they've got subscription models.
Banner ads are fundamentally a poor format. Trying to discourage blockers is as much of a losing battle as trying to prevent the unbundling of the album turned out to be.
The answer has to be in finding less shitty ways of monetising traffic.

As an aside: since most web traffic is now mobile, and mobile browser ad blockers are currently much less common than desktop, it can't be a really huge-scale problem yet. But that will come.

Re: Barcelona and Real Madrid broadcast rights close to moving to BT Sport from Sky Sports

yo_daniel — Sun, 02 Aug 2015 06:34:47 -0000

Except, he didn't seem to be pushing Sky's agenda in particular, just decrying La Liga's poor process which has ultimately served them very poorly.
Their inability to confirm KO times more than 3 weeks in advance makes La Liga a pain for any broadcaster; imagine you're Fox Sports Asia; you've got the Premier League and Bundesliga, both massively well organised with schedules confirmed long in advance, and at times when people in Asia might reasonably be awake. Easy to manage. And then La Liga, where you'll always have to be making late adjustments, and many of the games start at 2am local time.

He wasn't talking about the quality of the league, but the quality of its administration, and the impact that has on its appeal to broadcasters.

Re: Google loves Spotify, which is hurting Apple, which is in a war for global domination against… Google. And people say music’s lost its value.

yo_daniel — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 09:30:47 -0000

Pretty sure the majors still pay well at the top end [*cough* check wikileaks *cough*].
And I imagine there are plenty of entry-level Spotify employees who'd smile wryly and wistfully at your assertion.

Anyway, I definitely feel like Spotify have the moral upper hand in this fight. Google & Apple are more or less equally brilliant & frightening in their powers.

Re: Why did the new Chelsea kit campaign get so much attention?

yo_daniel — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 05:40:49 -0000

Very nice. Reasonable amount of post-production spend, but worth it.
Surprised they're still using Annotations and not InfoCards for the call to action on the YouTube video though, that's a bit behind the times.

Re: Vlad Chiriches poised to leave Tottenham Hotspur

yo_daniel — Tue, 21 Jul 2015 18:38:00 -0000

At least they put the player name in the headline, unlike most of the rest of the clickbait nonsense. I liked "Spurs to do deal on 35 goals in 87 appearances striker" recently, which when translated meant "Spurs attempting to offload Adebayor on Aston Villa".
You're right that all of the other stuff is total nonsense though. As if Soldado would be available while Kane is our only other striker. As if swap deals ever happen. Etc etc.

Re: Telefónica take La Liga rights in landmark deal - Sports Broadcast news - Soccer Europe - SportsPro Media

yo_daniel — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 09:46:41 -0000

"The LFP have yet to announce the precise start date for the new season"

And there you have one of the reasons why La Liga goes for significantly less than the Premier League.

Re: Apple Music will pay more to music biz than Spotify… eventually

yo_daniel — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 04:32:27 -0000

Devices ≠ users though. I mean, I know this is all pretty speculative anyway, but there must be plenty of duplication via phone + tablet, or work + personal phone.

Re: Google, Amazon and Pandora join forces to fight music industry over royalty rates

yo_daniel — Tue, 05 May 2015 15:30:57 -0000

Ha, so it doesn't... It must have seemed so obvious to me that I didn't bother to qualify it!
"Those guys" are Google, Amazon, Pandora.

Re: Google, Amazon and Pandora join forces to fight music industry over royalty rates

yo_daniel — Thu, 30 Apr 2015 09:06:27 -0000

Seriously, fuck those guys. You can be pretty sure you're fighting for good if that's the opposition.