chaz

Navbars are a great way to get a sense of the company's priorities, generally influenced by the biggest money makers.

Amazon's navbar in 2004: https://web.archive.org/web/20041102060756/http://www.amazon.... Books, clothing, electronics, toys/games, music, phones. Today, it's streaming video, streaming music, ["streamed"] ebooks, Kindles, apps ... and then (separated by a horizontal bar) Books / Audible (still plugging digital goods!), music/movies/games, electronics, home, etc.

Agreed. I live in NYC, and every corner has been completely mapped, and it's a level playing field for almost every mapping tool that's out there. Google isn't competing on completeness of maps, but rather on transportation data. Subway schedules, route changes/delays, traffic, and construction data all matter a lot more to me than actual geolocation. And in NYC, streetview is enormously helpful.

In many parts of the world, basic mapping data is incomplete, and one tool will have fresher data than the other for cherry picked examles. In another 10 years, we can imagine that mapping will all be relatively similar, and integration is what we'll compare against.

Interesting dataset, though I do have some quibbles. For example, registered users aren't the same as monthly unique visitors, which is how CNET is best measured. And ecommerce like Zappos have completely different metrics. One thing I would like to see is the user numbers normalized against web users at the time, which helps put late 90s acquisitions in better perspective.

> I need $20B to buy ITER, $19B to buy WhatsApp, and $11B to buy the LHC

No, you could say that it would cost you $20B to build a copy of ITER -- very different. You can't buy ITER for what was paid to build it. Or maybe you can. We have no idea because the valuation is unknown. The project is so risky, we're spreading the cost around 35 countries. If we thought it was more of a sure thing, every country would be trying to build their own. Many companies, too.

One is a cost, the other is a valuation -- two completely different things. A ditch can cost a million dollars to dig, but have a ~$0 valuation.

Stopping for 30 seconds to come up with subpar copy is usually worth it vs using some sort of placeholder that you need to come back and fix later. When I know the copy is awful and that I need to come back and replace it, I put in a comment that says

  # COPY_REQUIRED

As long as I'm consistent about the tag that I use, I can easily search my project for my tags and fix before launch.

Similarly, I do a fair amount of presentations, and I always put in huge red letters a note to update the metrics, provide a source, etc. It's hard to miss when doing a final flip-through.

I have found the Pomodoro Technique (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique) to be helpful. I can't do it for a whole day, but a short sprint to grind through something is a near, achievable goal. For extended, head-banging frustrations, it's helpful to step away, think about it without the distraction of the screen, and coming back at it with fresh eyes. The time AFK is not to be underestimated: http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html

> If you feel like working, then work. If you don't, then don't work

I know this is HN, but please don't over-parse the headline. Telling your boss or customers that you just don't feel like working today is a luxury that almost no one has.

No. The switching cost is getting all of your contacts to install a different app and use it regularly.

WA has had issues with delayed messages, too. Not so helpful to get those, "I'm running 15 minutes late" messages 3 hours later.

100/s = 8.6M per day. That seems unrealistically high, even for the most viral of apps. WhatsApp is currently at 1M per day. Either Telegram means requests of some sort or they're getting DDoS'd.

Edit: looks like it might be a spike because WhatsApp is currently down: https://twitter.com/wa_status/status/437319926605680640

MIT doesn't do legacy admissions: http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/just-to-be-clear-we-don...

Nothing wrong with that -- it's just paying an acquisition cost. PayPal paid out millions: $10 for new registrations, and $10 to the referring user back in 1999 (?). By incentivizing customers to add payment info, it takes the friction out of future opportunities.

WeChat would tell you otherwise. They launched a taxi-cab hailing service in January. In the first month, 21 million cabs were hailed. http://www.techinasia.com/wechat-21-million-taxi-rides-booke...

This is why messaging is a threat to Google and Facebook -- it's an entire ecosystem that sidesteps their channel.

This is known as customer personas, and is a hugely valuable tool for figuring out how your product is going to meet the needs of various customers in different situations. It can help sketch out their needs, concerns, pricing, risks, etc. It can also help you prioritize feedback and suggest ways to market to them, including anticipating their concerns and what to say to address them.

You can also propose new ideas and use your personas to help understand how each person would react to them. How many of your cust personas would use your new proposed feature? Is there a persona that would actually dislike your change? How do would you address their concerns?

Equally important is to build out the personas that are not your customers. They may have a lower price, higher support/acq costs, or features you can't/won't build. Some customers can be active detractors, distract you from your real customers, and may never be completely pleased with what you do. ID these customers fast, find a way to deal with them (even suggest a competitor), and move on.

Drag the email to the tab you want it to go to. It will ask you if you want Gmail to do this for future messages from the same sender.

This may be true, but there's still a lot of value to being written up in TC because it can drive other coverage. Other tech news read TC for stories and look into who they cover, so it can provide a multiplicative effect for mentions. Also, it there's a specific site that you want to be covered by, you can go to them with a link of existing coverage. It's still a brand name in tech, though not as unique as it once was.

Curation. Art and design products meant that you could actually "shop" on the site (until risks forced them to require better disclosure), and interest in one type of project would lead to discovery of other similar projects. The homepage also allows for staff to pick projects that better represent the types of projects that might be successful. Indiegogo and Crowdtilt, among others, are more willing to accept anything.

https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store

> FB buying WhatsApp will have almost zero impact in day-to-day lives.

I was only responding in the context of parent's PR comment, re: scale of press worthiness of the day. Tech sites have been covering WhatsApp/FB non-stop for the past 24 hrs.

As for impact on the world, this is just a call for developers. I'm encouraged by the ambition, but it's too hard to judge if this will be successful. FB/WhatsApp will almost immediately affect 400M users (+1M more per day).

PR works better when you don't compete with competitors for attention. You either beat them to the headlines, or you wait a couple of days to find a clearing. This announcement is interesting, but not nearly the scale of WhatsApp/FB.

An exception might be if you have a very similar announcement. Doing so would get you included in the same articles as your competitor.

Actually, this is what acquihires are great at. An interesting article recently about eBay's turnaround and how CEO John Donahoe started acquiring startups to drive innovation with talent they can't simply hire or grow internally. http://www.businessinsider.com/explaining-ebays-turnaround-2...

> But beyond the tactics, Donahoe realized there was a deeper issue bedeviling eBay. It had stopped innovating. [...] eBay also had a problem attracting and retaining innovative, entrepreneurial people into its executive ranks ...

> Andreessen’s second theory of innovation is that the people who are the very best at it are the people who create successful technology companies — founders. They are the people who have a proven ability to develop a concept and bring it to fruition.

> For this reason, Andreessen believes that tech companies should be run by their founders.

> The problem for eBay is that its founder, Pierre Omidyar, had no interest in running it. And Donahoe, a talented manager, had the wisdom to know he was not the kind of visionary who could found an innovative tech company.

> So he decided he was going to have to go after the next best thing. He was going to have to build a team of founders, or founder-types, and give them the run of the place.

Just 50 employees. http://blog.whatsapp.com/index.php/2013/12/400-million-stori...

I found this article helpful for ELI5: "9 questions about Ukraine you were too embarrassed to ask" http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/01/30...

King booked $1.9B in 2013 revenue in 2013, with $568M in profit and 665 employees. Supercell (which sold 51% to Softbank for $1.5B in 2013) booked $892M, with $464M EBITDA and 138 employees. Zynga booked $873M in revenue with 2,000 employees, with a $37M loss.

A lot of negativity here, but I think it could be interesting an interesting business. I wouldn't begrudge anyone who has a massive hit like Candy Crush and seeing how far the ride can go.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/02/18/king-digital-in-ipo-f...

Chrome -> Settings -> Search Engine. I see Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, and AOL on my US Nexus 5.

People usually use the same username, too, so using the LinkedIn username on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krnaveen. There's this tweet from November:

  I started to earn money on 4co.in short links. It’s easy -
  make the short links and earn the biggest money. http://4co.in

I thought I read a comment here that thought that there was a cultural difference as well. The author mentioned that a couple of distant friends in some countries who would Like every one of his posts, no matter what it was about.

Regardless, the need to drive up page fans is probably over, as the value of a fan/Like was always questionable. Target your actual customer base and pay for clicks that matter. Facebook seems to still be a great place for performance-based display advertising.

I downvoted you because you've repeatedly complained about the same thing on several stories for a while now. Pinch zoom gets disabled to remove the 300ms delay on mobile-friendly pages, and that's seems to be what most people want.

If you always want pinch zoom, I would suggest using Chrome -- there's an accessibility option that overrides the page's request to disable pinch zoom .

As long as businesses keep buying Office for desktop, does that matter? Is there a mobile platform that is displacing Office or Outlook/Exchange that they're failing to compete with? http://www.tannerhelland.com/4993/microsoft-money-updated-20...

Compound words can cause the same consumer confusion, which is why I don't see it as any different from one word. You'll definitely get a call from corporate counsel if you launch a truck called the F-151, a burger named the Huge Mac, or an energy drink named Blue Bull. Naming things is hard.