Hacker News: jaredmck

New comment by jaredmck in "Tell HN: Winners of Apply HN for YC Fellowship 3"

jaredmck — Thu, 05 May 2016 18:54:04 +0000

Tell me about a time you hacked a system.

New comment by jaredmck in "Chinese Buy One-Third of Vancouver Homes: National Bank Estimate"

jaredmck — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 16:22:22 +0000

What neighborhoods in Chicago are becoming more dense like this? I don't recall seeing this being too common.

New comment by jaredmck in "How quitting my corporate job for my startup dream f*cked my life up"

jaredmck — Tue, 22 Mar 2016 15:30:36 +0000

You keep saying Bezos used to work at McKinsey, but I don't see that info anywhere else? He used to work at the trading firm D.E. Shaw, and Amazon seems to operate in a very un-McKinsey way in many ways (i.e. they don't use PowerPoint), so this is confusing...

New comment by jaredmck in "Google AdWords Switching to 4 Ads on Top, None on Sidebar"

jaredmck — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 16:23:22 +0000

Google has consistently operated as "do as I say, not as I do". They've rolled out these 4 ads above the fold off and on, in addition to Product Ads, and Hotel/Insurance comparison ads. Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.

Blekko acquired by IBM Watson

jaredmck — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 19:15:25 +0000

Article URL: http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2015/03/better-way-tap-big-data-gusher.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9278436

Points: 8

# Comments: 0

New comment by jaredmck in "Well-intentioned websites get caught in Google’s algorithmic penalty box"

jaredmck — Fri, 06 Mar 2015 19:59:14 +0000

I would agree - however, it seems like Google is in a position where their algorithm doesn't necessarily have to be good, just good enough. And good enough basically means they don't torch any high-profile sites that would begin to make the public question whether or not Google is still the best search engine. Unfortunately, this means that many smaller businesses might get thrown out with the bathwater :(

New comment by jaredmck in "Apple's original business plan"

jaredmck — Tue, 03 Feb 2015 00:16:46 +0000

He didn't? Steve Jobs attended Reed College (and according to his biography, it was the only college he applied to)

New comment by jaredmck in "King of Clickbait"

jaredmck — Mon, 29 Dec 2014 19:57:57 +0000

The media certainly is not glorifying this enterprise. I read the New Yorker article as a massive, massive indictment of Spartz's business model.

New comment by jaredmck in "We Got Accepted into Techstars and Turned Them Down"

jaredmck — Fri, 03 Oct 2014 00:22:02 +0000

I think it's safe to say that's the answer - SpotHero is doing quite well and just raised a $4.5M series A, GiveForward as mentioned has crowdfunded a good amount of money for people's medical bills, and FeeFighters sold to groupon relatively early on. None of these are "breakout successes" to the tune of a 100M valuation, however.

New comment by jaredmck in "Google Reports Better-Than-Seen Revenue Growth"

jaredmck — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 23:34:06 +0000

Ask.com & AOL are large chunks of change for the "google search network" syndication partners. This is probably most of the $3B+ in traffic buying.

New comment by jaredmck in "It's Different for Girls"

jaredmck — Sun, 04 May 2014 08:59:15 +0000

I think the usage of girls here is likely intentional and is a very important and much better word choice than "women" IMO - it shows the power differential common in many of these situations.

New comment by jaredmck in "What's happening to Valleywag?"

jaredmck — Fri, 02 May 2014 01:32:40 +0000

I wouldn't say this drop in unique linking domains says a whole lot about the fall of valleywag - what domains dropped off, and at what rate? Is it just because of a certain story thread acquiring huge waves of links across other gawker networks or other blogs responding to topics and linking in the course of discussion?

My guess would be that gawker pushed some of their partners/syndicates toward other more profitable Gawker properties once VW got rolling and it was clear how much traffic/revenue they could expect from the current valleywag style & audience.

Were other gawker properties launched at the time of this drop?

New comment by jaredmck in "What every founder fears"

jaredmck — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 21:43:40 +0000

Or it's possible that they want you to believe this?

I find it strange that both of the Preston-Werners posted blog posts directly after the github post came out. Usually I'd think lawyers would not encourage this...

New comment by jaredmck in "Uber Experiments With A Courier Service In New York City"

jaredmck — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 21:39:55 +0000

This should be interesting - especially with all the delivery startups which were created following uber's success.

New comment by jaredmck in "Things I Wish Every Search Box Did"

jaredmck — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 17:20:36 +0000

I'd never heard of Algolia before, but their demos seem very impressive.

New comment by jaredmck in "The SEO Dominance of RetailMeNot"

jaredmck — Sat, 05 Apr 2014 20:56:28 +0000

Probably a good time to mention that Google Ventures invested in RetailMeNot.

I think keeping these kind of coupon codes as a %rev affiliate model rather than CPC ads makes it easier to justify the high level of spending (much of which is cannabilizing other marketing channels) - if it was more directly comparable to adwords & Product Listing Ads CPC-based costs, I think more large brands would move faster to cut the wasteful spending going on in these programs.

Right now many rationalize it as "4% of revenue is a great acq cost" - but it's not a true acquisition cost as you already acquired many of these customers and if the affiliate sites didn't exist, 99% of these sales would still happen.

If you're a pure SEO built company, are you really betting it all on SEO? Without it you'd have no company, and if it weren't risky, there would be no opportunity left.

New comment by jaredmck in "Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads"

jaredmck — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 20:55:56 +0000

Your adwords rep will hide the complexities if you like - be prepared to bleed money all over the place though - in many simple, complex and esoteric ways.

Most of those "no price listed" tools run somewhere between 5-15% of ad spend. Many times with high minimums. I see no reason to choose one from scratch.

Either learn adwords (really learn it, practice, test, do it right) or hire someone who knows what they're doing (and beware of all those who think they do but don't...)

Google is super optimized to get into your wallet so either play ball or stay the hell out of the path of the greatest money machine ever created as it rakes in cash all the way til it can't monopolize more.

New comment by jaredmck in "A Lot of Top Journalists Don't Look at Traffic Numbers"

jaredmck — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 02:32:15 +0000

What are the first principles of journalism? What is journalism?

For all the words journalists spend on this topic, I've never seen anything which makes a whole lot of sense to regular non-journalist people, often the crux of the journalist side is some vague statement like "journalism is key for democracy". Is it? What part of it is?

Then maybe we can find ways to make a new journalism model which works without paying for the paper it's printed on and getting some nice local classified ads with your bundle.

New comment by jaredmck in "Wu-Tang Clan Offered $5M for New Album Only Available as One Copy"

jaredmck — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 02:19:34 +0000

This story is just another piece of the wu's marketing genius. Could it be true? Sure, so they may as well have you think about it - argue the truth, etc. Mystery shrouds the shaolin sword.

Wu-Tang are one of the few music acts to really get that it's about entertainment.

New comment by jaredmck in "FiveThirtyEight’s NCAA Tournament Predictions"

jaredmck — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 22:36:14 +0000

They don't have as high a percentage of winning the final round - 15/24 vs 14/26