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About Ed KohlerI'm a web strategist currently working within the real estate industry creating large scale web marketing platforms for use by real estate agents and brokers. Previous to this, I ran a web marketing consulting firm that offered SEO and pay per click services to small businesses. I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota and travel continuously throughout the United States and Canada for work. I have given at least 100 public presentations over the past few years. |
Re: Switch to opt-in
The easy way to avoid over-delivery without having any negative impact on small businesses would be to switch to an opt-in system. That way, people who really plan to use the books would receive them and the rest of us wouldn't have to waste our time and tax dollars cleaning up the yellow pages industry's litter.
It's more than the query
Using Google Analytics or pretty much any stats program or log file analyzer, a motivated web analyst can tie the query to the IP address, geolocation, browser type, computer OS, etc. It does narrow things down quite a bit when the query volume is narrow. For advertising purposes, people don't need that level of specificity, but the tools definitely provide for it.
Execution gets a nod
One scene where execution gets a nod in the film was when Zuckerberg tears into his CFO for freezing the bank account. He explains that Facebook never goes down, which is one of the factors that is contributing to its success.
(untitled comment) (as Ed)
I think many of these pieces are riffing off PR pitches where the story is finished before it's started. The "journalist" gets a fresh quote or two that support the reworked press release, and done.
Try running this search on Google if you want to see how common this type of story is:
site:nytimes.com "small but growing trend"
It's certainly not limited to technology. Fashion, dining, travel, etc., all suffer from similar press release regurgitation reporting.
Craigslist Should Offer Law Enforcement Training
I wonder if Craigslist has ever considered offering law enforcement training on how to effectively use the site to track illegal activity in their cities?
(untitled comment)
Mike, this is an excellent post that PR people and the people they represent should take very seriously. They're losing in the court of public opinion if they take conversations offline rather than responding with authentic, rational arguments to the points raised by reasonable bloggers like yourself.