Comments for Rodinhood's Blog

Comment on Why Facebook deserves to be a real Country… by Ashish Z.

Ashish Z. — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:58:34 +0000

Interesting thought. But from what I can tell, a majority of people on Facebook are there for entertainment, playing games, gossip, etc. I mean the gossip that used to travel around the world between housewives, maid servants, neighbors, etc is now all available on Facebook. I don’t know if the millions of Facebook users are interested in governing a country.

Besides, the way I see it, there is a good reason that democratic governments operate by having a set of elected representatives representing different groups of people. These elected representatives are supposed to be the voices of the people they represent (of course, whether they actually do so is a different matter). And if/when democracy works as it is supposed to, there would be a natural selection process for the representatives based on their past performance and/or their projected future potential.

Also, by keeping the number of representatives a small set, you keep the decision-making process fairly manageable. But if you were to poll the entire population of a country to make any government-related decision, well.. even the survey results might just provide the fuel to start new racial clashes for no good reason!!!

Just my personal opinion.

Comment on Why do you ‘buy’ irritation? by Abhilash

Abhilash — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 04:32:24 +0000

Since the ads bother me so much, I have resorted to downloading the “already aired in the US” episodes of my favourite programs to my laptop, and watching them without ads.

TV is so much nicer without ads. I am even thinking of getting rid of cable.

Comment on Why Facebook deserves to be a real Country… by Abhilash

Abhilash — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 04:25:14 +0000

The only problem I see with that is that a consensus on most decisions may be driven by emotion and not practicality. Even more is the danger of most people really thinking short term and not long term.

I mean, how many people really care about what kind of life their children’s children will live in. Your current life and times are difficult enough.

Comment on Why do you ‘buy’ irritation? by Srikrishnan

Srikrishnan — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:48:28 +0000

I have a tatasky + and I enjoy watching movies and skipping through ads. But I still fear the day
when this becomes mainstream, and a lot of content goes away just because the advertisers found
that they don’t have the same level of engagement with the audiences anymore.
Who will subsidise the content? Surely we aren’t going to pay for it all?
US has over 40% penetration of DVR/PVR services with digital cable subs and there still is advertising
on TV. Some studies show you notice the ads better when you are fwding/skipping through them
and hence might watch it if it interests you!

Comment on Guess who fooled the Ad Agencies? by Astin

Astin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:24:50 +0000

Yes, I am also agree with your points and keeping desired for future too that you always continue posting like it in future too.

Comment on You cant buy Advertising to sell Advertising.. by Sagar Shetty

Sagar Shetty — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 11:11:04 +0000

Hi Alok,

got to this through a friend who passed it on saying it makes an interesting read, it surely does make an interesting read but not necessarily an entirely true one.

Yes of course those times are gone when you would buy in bulk on newspapers and resell them, but mind you those business models still do exist in the outdoor business where they buy in bulk and resell.

anyways the point that i disagree with is that you cant buy ads to increase your own ad revenue, with the changing landscape and buying capabilities where you buy only performance that changes the whole ball game, going back to your example of buying ads for dressupmodels.com if you change those to clicks like you would on Google it works perfectly for Desmond both in terms of sales and in terms of ad revenue.

also i believe you do not necessarily have to sell things via Google, we have seen perfect examples of sites both who have inventory sold out and who have too little inventory running SEM campaigns to increase their traffic to sell more ads

Just my POV

Cheers

Comment on You cant buy Advertising to sell Advertising.. by Jassim

Jassim — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 11:01:27 +0000

Its a question of sustainability…most websites are working on an arbitrage model where they drive paid traffic and then skim off profits from a higher eCPM they manage to monetize their own traffic …

Comment on You cant buy Advertising to sell Advertising.. by Rohit Shirke

Rohit Shirke — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 05:54:05 +0000

Very well put sir

Comment on You cant buy Advertising to sell Advertising.. by Madhav Shivpuri

Madhav Shivpuri — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:57:41 +0000

Alok,

Very nice post. You have nailed the problem of ad-based revenue generation model because many e-businesses are started with the revenues in mind and hoping that these tiny drops add up to an ocean one day (infinitely into the future). The dream is that when the ‘one day’ comes about, they need not have to spend on advertising because the traffic is expected to have multiplied many times in the few months of the website’s existence and every dime will be pure revenue.

So, like the saying goes- what is life without dreams?

Comment on Why have all become Farmers (Farmville) and Hit Men (Mafia Wars)? by Buzzin Networks

Buzzin Networks — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:54:31 +0000

[...] and that made front page news in all major dailies.(that’s a bit much!). However our very own Rodinhood has lots to say about the space. (Side note: Rodinhood is Alok Kejriwal of of c2w and g2w fame. I met him way back [...]