So, as I am no longer part of any of that stuff. I wonder …
What’s preventing Microsoft from just trying to steal the good people from Yahoo and not buy the rest?
I mean, i don’t even think its that hard. You find yourself one good person, they will recommend others, and you just steamroll from there. It seems to me this would allow them to not only remove all the excess baggage of the useless people, but more importantly, have opportunity to target some of the really great people who has left in the past year.
Hm…This Yahoo stuff reminds me of something…
http://valleywag.com/378098/now-ballmer-and-murdoch-versus-yang-schmidt-and-falco
Ah yes.
It reminds me of a game of Diplomacy.
Right down to the taking over of people (Microsoft-Yahoo). Teaming up (Yahoo-Google, Yahoo-AOL, Yahoo-FIM, Microsoft-FIM). Even the amateur tactics (see Balmer and Yang letters). Only thing left is the backstabbing.
P.S. In case you are wondering which is Yahoo, that would be Austria. They are position right in the middle of everything, and can’t possibly win. The only thing they can do is try to team up with their neighbors before they are completely conquered by someone.
Just read the most recent Seth Godin post
Essentially, he says that Firefox users are a different breed than IE users, and as such should be treated differently. These people are the ones who went out of their way to download a different browser. He likens them to people who went to college.
I can’t help but first think what this means for internet advertising.
The Firefox users, while being a key demographic for many advertisers, are also the ones least likely to click on ads. They are the ones most likely to have extensions which block ads. Essentially, these are the users who in the current context of internet advertising are worth the least to a publisher. If you are going to “treat them differently” as Seth suggests, should it be treating them better or worse?
Now the hard part. How do you fix this? It is a big problem, as Advertisers right now are very much into hard metrics, its one of the big upsides to advertising on the internet in general. In fact, if I was an advertiser right now, I’d try and target these people at low cost, knowing I’m throwing out brand awareness while paying out very little for these users (who are some of my most coveted demographic). The long term solution, ironically, may come from the out-of-favor CPM. Sales needs to convince advertisers that if they are looking at branding, low CTR does not make a campaign fail. The metrics do not explain the true value.