I told you so #8833920

January 19, 2009

The headline today on SAI read, “Holy Crap, Search Advertising Actually Shrank in Q4. The article then goes on to talk about why everyone is so surprised.

The proposition is that Search is an advertisers wettest, dirtiest, fantasy due to being able to track ROI so effectively and immediately. Given that, in tough times, all the digital cattle assumed that advertisers would shift dollars into the more certain waters of Search Advertising.

I’m not arguing that instant, trackable, accurate information on the effectiveness of advertising isn’t the greatest thing that ever happened to it… it certainly is awesome.

The assumption though, is that when those instant, trackable results come back on the search campaigns .. that they’ll be positive.

Did not one of you assholes ever think it might just not work? Perhaps that’s why advertisers cut search marketing when times got tough, because that was the only type of advertising that they were absolutely certain they were losing money on.

Wake … no, grow the fuck up.

1 Comment | business, internet, the problem | Permalink
Posted by c007km

MItB Review: Filtrbox (they asked for it).

January 9, 2009

Filtrbox MItB Rating: IE/SoS (Initial Excitement / Same ol’ Shit)

Someone from a company called Filtrbox commented on my firing of the Internet, inviting me to try their service of which he (patrick!) said “more advanced aggregation, filtering and noise control than Google Alerts.”

Awesome. I will try.

I was initially very excited when I clicked over. Filtrbox has avoided some of the most glaring missteps in Internet (aside from the whole, let’s drop the vowel out of the word to be Xtra cool and copyrightable, I just now realized this site wasn’t called FLIRTbox). The site is clean, simple, and not muddied up with a bunch of functionality and options that no one will ever use. Also, their business model is subscription based, as in, they provide a service that someone wants, and said someone is willing to pay for it to be done right. Excellent, that is real-world business, not, um, the other kind that only exists on the Internet, and has no real possibility of profit, ever… we’ll call it … Twitter.

The signup was delightfully simple. I typed my first name and a password and the rest was taken care of by my simple auto-fill. There was no email-verification to deal with, and I was instantly able to log in. Lovely, so far this site is logical and realistic.

Once inside, everything remains simple. There’s a little “getting started” video that I can’t get to play, but oh well, who watches those anyway? Fascists, that’s who. I got right to the meat of it … I want to get news on one of my projects that has a frightfully common name, and was the main “noise” generator motivation behind my firing of Google Alerts. I tried the search cleanly at first, and here’s where it falls apart…

Clean search: 0/30 applicable
Clean search + three specifics: 0/30 applicable

Now, they give you a tag cloud where you can drag and drop the tags that don’t apply into the exclusion field. This is a great idea, especially since I can see the biggest miscues first, and take care of them. Okay, here we go…

+ 1 exclusion: 0/30
+ 2 exclusions: 0/30
+ 3 exclusions: 0/30
+ 4 exclusions: 0/30

Okay, so at this point, not only has Filtrbox not done a better job of filtering out the noise, it’s also not even found a single article or blog post on the thing I’m actually looking for, which, at least Google did on a daily basis.

Perhaps I’m being to hard on Filtrbox, let’s try another project with a very unique name…

Clean Search: 2/30

Okay, so FiltrBox can actually find articles on my projects, but that one Google was hitting with %100 accuracy anyway.

So, great idea guys, but so is my idea about the jumbo jets that run on sexual magnetism. So far, neither has actually worked, but testing continues. Maybe you should actually do Flirtbox … it has all sorts of delightful connotations.

1 Comment | business, internet, review, website | Permalink
Posted by c007km

Sony has a dumb idea, world shocked.

January 8, 2009

I was just invited to Sony’s first Online Trade Show.

Participants interested in HD production can visit “product booths,” and view “technology demonstrations.” They can interact with other HD production professionals, and “network” and download white papers and information on products.

Sony calls this revolutionary event a “Virtual Trade Expo.”

The rest of the world calls it “a website.”

2 Comments | business, internet, retarded | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by c007km

I just fired the Internet.

January 8, 2009

Google Alerts is now Google false alarms. It’s gotten to the point where about %70 of my daily emails were from Google Alerts, alerting me to things that have nothing to do with what I’m interested in. Obviously, depending on what you’d like to be alerted of, and the rarity of the terms, it used to be fairly accurate and filtered.

Google also, however, has their affiliate program, which allows any jackass to insert AdWords ads onto their website about small towns in New Guinea. Said jackass inserts billions of random terms into their metadata to increase their AdWords referral income, and all of a sudden I’m getting more junk-alert than red-alert.

So, suck it Google Alerts, you’ve killed yourself. I’m out.

2 Comments | business, internet, the problem | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by c007km

What about this guy? #984

January 7, 2009

#984 – The guy who owns americanapparel.com.

What about this guy?

Now, it appears that he’s reduced his website to simply an American Flag, USA-shaped, redirect link to americanapparel.net, but his company is the source for silkscreened patriotic apparel and/or coffee mugs. Why? I’m assuming the same reason why there are so many I heart NY shirts; fatties in Alabama can’t get enough of them and you have to pay to make Tasmanian Devil sweatshirts.

I was giving this guy some time to come to his senses and sell his URL to the wealthiest douchbag alive but apparently he’d rather sit on his little redirect site, but it’s been almost a decade now.

Most likely, homeboy has a poor understanding of mathematics, and some silly backwater lawyer advised him to ask American Apparel for some ridiculous amount of money, like a Gagillion dollars. So, while American Apparel’s lawyers are trying to figure out just what a “gagillion” is, they’ve probably come back to this guy with more money than he’s ever seen … like, conservatively, a half million dollars.

So this guy continues, for all these years, making zero dollars, while American Apparel suffers the pains of dot-net.

Dov, while probably a rapist, isn’t an idiot. At this point, he’s probably just waiting until this guy keels over from too much ‘shine and America and forgets to renew his registration.

so “what about this guy,” who owns americanapparel.com for the last ten years and won’t lower his quote to more money than he’ll ever see from owning the URL himself?

1 Comment | business, internet, retarded | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by c007km