Mental notes to myself

I was trying not to write about facebook but it came to a point that it’s a good example for my post.

Classic web advertising for banners (in some cases text links) are still paid by impressions. Like the banners on the left column of Facebook pages, everytime user changes a page, an ad is shown, and the advertiser is charged per 1000 impressions. Everybody knows that there is nothing interesting with this.

Facebook, some weeks ago has changed their photo gallery to an ajax photo gallery.
Everytime you see a photo and start browsing to the other photos, without refreshing the page, an Ajax call was done and new photo was shown on the very same page. There was no refresh, therefore the rest of the page -as well as the banner on the left- were not changed.

Facebook recently switched back to their old way. One photo is 1 page view again. I wondered why? It was really obvious. They’ve lost major page views with just this change. On the old system, people were rapidly viewing photos spending (in most cases) no more than 15 seconds per photo. For an album of 20 photos, it was an easily generated 20 page views for them. New system, slowed down the page views but now the users were spending more time on the same page with the same banner. Still with the old metric, 1 page view for 20 photos.
Read more…

I realized a new presentation of “Ads by Google” thing on the adsense advertisments
Looks really nice

It’s a surprising news that eBay is banning Google checkout.
Are they too scared to compete with Google.
Checkout the accepted payments list on eBay.

Payment Services permitted on eBay: Allpay.net, Bidpay, Canadian Tire Money, cash2india, CertaPay, Checkfree.com, hyperwallet,com, Moneybookers.com, Ozpay.biz, Paymate.com.au, Propay.com, XOOM

Payment Services not permitted on eBay: AlertPay.com, anypay.com, AuctionChex.com, AuctionPix.com, BillPay.ie, ecount.com, cardserviceinternational.com, CCAvenue, ecount, e-gold, eHotPay.com, ePassporte.com, EuroGiro, FastCash.com, Google Checkout, gcash, GearPay, Goldmoney.com, graphcard.com, greenzap.com, ikobo.com, Liberty Dollars, Moneygram.com, neteller.com, Netpay.com, Nochex.com, paychest.com, payingfast.com, Payko.com, paypay, Postepay, Qchex.com, rupay.com, scripophily.com, sendmoneyorder.com, stamps, Stormpay, wmtransfer.com, xcoin.com

I’ve found this interesting article on why the web2.0 applications fail (or will fail)

1. Focus on social instead of personal.
2. They solve too many problems, or try to.
3. They’re about making someone other than the user happy.
4. They sell it the wrong way.
5. Not in it for the long haul.
6. They show too much of what’s going on, and get gamed.
7. They don’t have an underlying business strategy of improving people’s lives.

nicely pointed out by Joshua Porter
Read more…

It’s a big surprise for me to see Google Adsense is not working on IE7.
It’s because IE7 is blocking third party javascripts. It’s really a matter of Microsoft to decide to block Google.
Maybe Google Adsense will re-write the Adsense code to show it as a local javascript not to loose their 2 billion share in the pay per click scene.
And this will affect other ad programs like chitika, clicksor or else.
Say goodbye to your javascript ads if this feature on IE7 becomes official.
However it’s only in Micro$oft’s hand to do an exception for certain javascripts to run cross domain, but I don’t guess they will do that favour to Google any soon.

It seems the guys at Google backing up Firefox very well.
I’ve just seen the new option in Google Adsense for new Firefox banners.

So go ahead and download then install…
Paysback $1.00 to the publisher.

Publishers seem to like the PSP environment. It’s a bold desicion for marketting I believe.

here is a novel for PSP

Finally longhorn gets it’s product name : Vista…

more here: betaNews

Looks like we got an early look and possibly a name for the new Netflix movie download service. I’m wondering if the “Netflix Player” is a TiVo or possibly a new device.

from Hacking NetFlix

A new website is coming up.

It seems like a nice idea derived from Flickr.
Flickr has a nice idea to organize photos. You can organize them as sets.

Howabout a photo site for your travel photos that you create sets out of it… It’ll surely create a community around it. I hope they market it well.
Here are some screenshots.