Show HN: BigOofN – job board from the perspective of software engineers - <AUTHOR> https://www.bigoofn.com/ <comment><USER2> For those that got confused like me, it's "Big O of N", not "Big Oof N"

<comment><USER3> Big Oof on the title.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Will fix today, as you can tell we are super early stage. Trying to collect feedback and keep improving.

<comment><USER4> Copyright 2018?

<comment><AUTHOR> Will get to that too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "FANG"

"Unicorn"

"Incubators"

"Corporate"

Ah yes, the four company types. And that's all the company types there are.

\---

I think that

"Famous"

"Late"

"Mid"

"Early"

"Seed"

would be better categories. You could use Crunchbase or something similar to categorize by what round they are in.

That still excludes bootstrapped companies but are much more sane categories in my opinion.

<comment><USER6> Seems like two different filters are needed: one for size and one for stage. Excluding established/bootstrapped companies is silly unless the purpose of the site is to only list jobs at startups.

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't plan on excluding any established companies, the filters will be expanded and you will see more categories soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For any non-American here: the website is made for US

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, yes, for now. Canada will be added in couple of weeks, followed by countries in western Europe.

<comment><USER8> A checkbox for "VISA" or "INTERN" (like the who is hiring threads) could be really valuable. I like the UI, but what's the source for the 'total funding'?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, you can filter for Interns by title. Few postings explicitly mention whether they sponsor visa or definitely don't, so its tricky to determine, we would add it in our things we would like to do list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> On mobile the homepages animated "an individual contributor role." text overflows with the button placement.

Also when typing in a filter for the location name, the site stutters. This is probably because the JS is trying to filter the whole list on each keypress. You could implement a slight delay before starting a search. I've previously implemented something similar by restarting a timer (clearTimeout + setTimeout) each keypress. Once the setTimeout actually executes (in my case after 200 ms) OR the user hits the enter key, the state is updated and the filter search is performed using the current value of the text input. I've found this to be a great solution for responsiveness.

<comment><USER10> Lodash.js has a great `_.throttle()` that I use all the time to buffer keypress/state management.

<comment><USER9> throttle uses debounce, which uses a timer + setTimeout and clearTimeout :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I do like the simplicity of the design, and the filters by type of company.

But I also feel that we're at maximum capacity for aggregated job boards. We see a new one posted on here every week. So even though I like this better than many of the others I've seen, the job board market has exploded to the point of absurdity, so I'm not sure what to make of them all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, do agree there are too many job boards now. Our goal is to collect data which would be useful from the perspective of engineers: team size, stock option value, etc. We are still in very early stage in the process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ok. First off I love the name. Fantastic.

Also. I love the clean and simple design.

If there is one tweak I would make I would add a simple badge to the company name like you see here for the 'Developers' tag:

[https://www.webase.com/website-gallery](https://www.webase.com/website- gallery)

All the best!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! We got lucky with the name :). Will check into adding a badge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Useful! I am not looking for a job, but on the other hand I like being updated on what is out there (with respect to my interests). Which means I will not go through the jobs now, but if I could define my filter/interests and then subscribe to get an email with job roles that are best fit, every week or 2 weeks or month, that would be interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, majority of the engineers are in the state you are in. We have on our roadmap a feature similar to what you are describing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The location search bar is particularly frustrating on my phone. Perhaps exacerbated since the site's under load? But it's appears to be kicking off an ajax request per keydown and not updating the input text until that request is completed. Very frustrating as I suck at typing on this danged phone and the feedback delay aggravates that.

<comment><AUTHOR> We added a delay after each key press in the location filter, it should be easier to use now, please try when you get a chance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> First off, congrats on a successful reception on HN. Now, the site layout on mobile needs some love. I would suggest setting up google analytics, and getting some numbers on what percentage of users are hitting this from which device size, and allocate your time accordingly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Agreed, the numbers for mobile are significant. Our focus so far was mostly on data collection and cleanup, hence we stayed on building web only. Will spend resources on mobile soon, once couple more features are released on the web.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Love the design and simplicity of it! Are you using any APIs? I ask because if you can add info on the date it was posted that could be useful information to display as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Not using any APIs, we read from Career pages. Once our processes are more established, we should know when the posting went live, we will start publishing the date soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been running job boards for 8+ years. Monetization is the biggest problem.

How do you plan to monetize?

</comment><comment><USER18> May want to update that giant "copyright 2018" on the front page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Giant indeed! Will be fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Room for improvement: Golang is missing. Update the copyright statement.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, will fix them in today's release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Where are you finding these jobs? Are you scraping something?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, career pages of early stage to public companies, with focus on software engineering roles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Love the UI. Where are you pulling these jobs from?

<comment><AUTHOR> Read from Career pages of all companies, big and small, from Universities as well and soon from government sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's nice, where do you get your jobs from?

<comment><AUTHOR> All read from Careers pages. We will have a About Us page up this week, will explain how we get the positions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Good service

</comment><comment><USER24> big oof? sounds like a place for disgruntled engineers to criticize their company.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is the stock market so high? - <AUTHOR> It hit 21,000 today and I don't see any direct results from this. Is it inflated? <comment><USER3> One feature of the Dow Jones Industrial Average is that when a company is doing poorly, it is removed from the average and replaced by one that is doing well. [1] If AIG, Honeywell, Eastman Kodak, Sears Roebuck, etc. were still in the basket, the average would look different.

If a person could just swap out losing stocks for winners without realizing losses, everyone's investment could be above average too.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_components_of_the_D...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_components_of_the_Dow_Jones_Industrial_Average)

<comment><USER4> This is the case of most market cap indices. There is no problem with that unless the history is revised. You could replicate the same performance in your own stock account. (Not sure what you mean by "without realising losses"?)

<comment><USER3> Dow Jones 'performance' is based on a price-weighted average. If a $2 per share stock goes to $1, $200 per share stock going to $201 offsets the loss.

If $400 were allocated equally among the two stocks, an actual investor would lose 25% ($100) while the Dow showed no movement.

<comment><USER4> Yes, so you should not allocate the $400 equally across the shares to match the performance of the index. You should buy an equal number of shares of each stock. It may not be a greatly constructed index by modern standards but to my understanding you can in theory get the same performance yourself.

<comment><USER3> Buying an equal number of shares does not track the DJIA either. Apple closed at 126.6 the day it replaced ATT. ATT closed at 33.48.

<comment><USER4> I struggle to see why that is a problem? You will need to rebalance the portfolio, yes.

<comment><USER3> The DJIA replaced each share of ATT with a share of Apple on a ledger. Without additional investment or buying and selling other assets, there's no way to replicate that in a portfolio due to the difference in share price. Essentially, the DJIA pumped in an ~300% increase in equity value on the ATT shares...or divided among thirty companies a 10% profit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Planet money ran a typically excellent episode on why the Dow is a terrible mechanism for measuring the health of the economy. About the only redeeming feature it had was the length of time it has been running allowing it to be used to compare the state of the economy going back > 100 years.

[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/01/04/508261371/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/01/04/508261371/episode-443-dont- believe-the-hype)

</comment><comment><USER6> Much has been made of inequality recently. If a rich person makes N times as much a poor person but doesn't consume N times as much, they'll tend to park their excess income in financial assets. So if money's trickling up to the rich faster than new investment opportunities arise, then the rich people will have more money to bid against each other for assets like stocks. It's easier than ever to trade stocks and there's more and more information about it, meaning more and more people are investing in businesses. The US trade deficit means there's more foreign capital inflow, which is propping up asset values as well, not just stocks but real estate too.

I suspect QE might play some role in stock market prices too, the Fed's been printing an awful lot of money (although a lot of it's been used to shore up bank balance sheets rather than being used to buy stocks). Also, interest rates have been low for a long time. Meaning money that used to buy bonds is buying stocks instead, which pushes up the price of stocks. And now that the Fed's thinking about raising rates, there may be something of a rush to get out of bonds before it happens.

</comment><comment><USER7> My bearish instincts (not strongly founded in anything, I'm not a full time trader):

All the money printed in QE needs to be parked somewhere. There aren't that many ways to invest money now, and the stock market offers some protection against the dollar crashing (not as good as gold, but gold does not yield divideds).

</comment><comment><USER8> One likely possibility is mention of this presidential administration changing US corporate taxation to something more focused on capital flow across borders. It's in some ways similar to a VAT- a lower possible rate, but closing loopholes that strand revenues overseas, and eliminating almost every incentive for corporations to domicile offshore or adjust the books so that US taxes are avoided.

One aftereffect of this policy, which has its fans on both sides of the aisle, is the prospect of not so much a stronger dollar, but far weaker currencies for countries that derive their survival on multinational corporations taking advantage of the current US corporate tax system.

As a result, you can still either invest in stock in XYZ in, say, Honduras, or, own stock in the US fortune 500. As many look to the future, the better, safer bet is looking more like the latter than it used to.

</comment><comment><USER9> There are more buyers than sellers lately

</comment><comment><USER10> 2 things I can think of - investors (= people who buy stocks on the market) are enthusiastic about the recent changes in the government from an economy stand point.

Then the state of the current economy after the previous government. The FED feels confident enough about the recovery since 2008 and will raise its rate significantly. This alone will create an inflation. The US dollar will raise, mortgage rates will raise, etc.

People are bull for sure because they think short terms. They've been holding a lot these last 2 years since people were affraid of an eventual collapse of the market (bubble). Which never happened. BTW - Warren Buffet is %100 bull. That tells you something. I personally believe that the next year or so will be bull for sure unless someone crazy decides to attack North Korea or Iran :)

</comment><comment><USER11> The market broke out both from promises of massive spending from Trump, and from expected interest rate increases that drives the dollar higher - <USER2> foreign money into the US (plus foreign economies are not doing well).

It's not cheap but not at bubble levels either. It doesn't mean it won't get cheaper or will grow to bubble levels. There is a probability for everything.

</comment><comment><USER12> The NASDAQ is over 5,000 now, but it was 5,000 17 years ago in the year 2000. Think about what has changed between now and then. Google barely existed, Facebook didn't exist, Amazon was an online bookstore. Apple was struggling and the iPhone and iPod did not exist. Now these are the largest companies in the world. We got people working on self driving cars and going to Mars. These companies are making real money now. If anything, stocks should be higher.

</comment><comment><USER13> p/e ratios were on the high end of normal and the low end of bubbly before election day.

The rise in prices since then is consistent with increases that could be seen in earnings due to tax cut and other fiscal stimulus.

There has always been the kind of rich person who gets the hot for Republicans, and that kind of person could be buying stocks. That kind of person though is not a paragon of good judgement. (Ex. They though Jeb Bush was a viable candidate.)

<comment><USER10> The largest buyers (movers) on the stock market are large corporates and financial institutes not individuals ;)</comment></comment>


Memolane: Millions of your Web Memories in one Timeline [Pre-Invites Available] - <AUTHOR> http://techsplurge.com/2412/memolane-millions-web-memories-timeline-invites/ Memolane captures your thousands of memories in tweets, facebook posts, photos etc & helps you re-discover them by creating a beautiful timeline of your memories. <comment><USER2> Nice idea, interesting interface. Was able to grab a beta account. So I've imported a few of my accounts from other services, now what? Their "create story" functionality will be the killer, unique thing, if it gets traction, I can definitely see this being a good way to get things organized after the fact. There is definitely the capability to get things organized, if you're that kind of OCD on your timeline, in this kind of product.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be using it a lot because it's just another place all my social media data is effectively locked up and _managed by another party_. Getting things organized is a lot of work to not have complete control over it. Facebook, for example, is already effectively a log of everything I've posted anywhere. Admittedly, there's not a really good solution to having your own control of all your social media data right now, but there are a lot of projects out there trying to tackle that.

(And of course, Twitter's API is down, so my twitter stream isn't being pulled in right now.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for the kind words about Memolane. Really appreciate the great suggestions on how to make Memolane experience even better. We are still at a very early stage and with the many features we plan to add, we surely have our hands full for the foreseeable future.

@thwarted - We hope that Memolane is more than a log, but rather a destination to relive great memories and yes as its your content, we also wants to ensure that you can control it. Twitter api is always a pain ;-) @Zazi - great input on how to prioritize memo's, surely an important feature for the social media active super users. @deviatore - we will be adding features to control your memos.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sweet idea. Glad I was able to grab one of the 500 invites, I usually lose out on these kinds of things so thanks!

Although there might be similar ideas such as Dipity and Allofme as mentioned in the link, this has the best UI/UX in my opinion. Love their minimalism and the fact they use Tumblr as their blogging platform (for some reason I love when companies/startups use things I use on a daily bases).

</comment><comment><USER5> Extremely cool, thanks for the heads up!

</comment><comment><USER6> _Great_ name!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It is a startup from Springweekend 2010. Demo Video Must Watch - <http://vimeo.com/16474788>

Example Timeline (of Scobleizer) - <http://beta.memolane.com/scobleizer>

It has not yet opened to the public, but I've got hold of 500 Invites, so you can get the invite code by visiting the blog

<comment><USER7> Thanks Deviatore. Used your invite code to get an account.

I was a little skeptical about the idea, but when I saw my own timeline after they pulled information from my social accounts, I must say that I was impressed. Actually seeing your timeline laid out in an easily accessible manner is a powerful (and more than a little nostalgic) experience.

One thing though is that they put the same emphasis to all my posts/tweets/facebook events etc. And there is a lot of 'junk' in my timeline. I wish they had some way of figuring out what is important to me and have display emphasis on the important nodes (mirror the way I think). Pretty neat in it's current beta stage nonetheless.

<comment><USER8> I agree. Implementing some sort of "most commented" or "most interacted with" sorting algorithm would really emphasize the most important items and cut through the "junk".

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree to you both. This is what they must improve in their future updates. My timeline has photos that have been posted by others on facebook and have tagged me. I dont want them to show up in my time line.

But I'm sure the memolane team will come up with a solution soon :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thanks deviatore! Techsplurge Rocks!!!</comment>


Image Ad Blending Works Really, Really Well - <AUTHOR> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/11/23/image-ad-blending-works-really-really-well/ <comment><USER2> _Is This Evil Or Just Evil Genius?

Once upon a time I was an engineer totally scornful of effective marketing, but I have gradually gotten over it. After thinking it over, this is aggressive but within my comfort envelope. The ad is honest about being an ad, makes a straightforward commercial proposition ("Sign up for a free trial") to an audience that I think will respond well to that, and is pretty true by the standards of marketing copy. It is designed to catch clicks only from people interested in signing up for a free trial of Bingo Card Creator, and sends them straight to a landing page where they can do just that.

I wish there was a way to dynamically generate the image such that I could provide a more exact star valuation, but in the context of a sponsored placement, "Rated 5 starts by lots" is both non-specific and true. Lots of people have used BCC, and when I ask for star ratings in internal surveys I get something like 4.8 on a volume of hundreds or thousands. I think this compares favorably with "9 out of 10 dentists agree" and other pretty banal marketing copy._

Your ad is obviously designed to deceive the user into thinking that it is an organic listing. Evil.

<comment><USER3> It says "sponsored placement", which is true because the website put the ad right in the middle of the organic results.

<comment><USER2> It doesn't matter what it says, it matters what users perceive it to be. It's obviously meant to deceive the users while providing the author (not very) plausible deniability of the deception.

<comment><USER4> How do you think this compares to google's ads at the top of search requests? That is the comparison this article is making.

<comment><USER2> Those are deceptive as well

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me of those newspaper ads that are crafted to look exactly like a newspaper article (columns of copy, headline, etc) but only set out with an " _Advertisement_ " in very small print at the top of their enclosing box. I usually can pick them out because the font isn't a perfect match, but once in a while I don't notice until like a third of the way through the "article" when I'm going, "wtf? What was the editor thinking?"

And that's the real problem here, and the reason I complain to the editor about those newspaper ads: when they are made to look like a regular article (or in this case, organic results), then they implicitly carry the imprimatur of editorial approval. Someone at this newspaper (/website) has vetted this factually, edited it, and I can put the same trust in this item that I put in any other thing I read here (which might not be 100% but is often reasonably high for edited content on a paper/site I'm familiar with).

Ads that are faking their way in violate this assumption and this trust. As a user of that site I'd be annoyed; as an editor of that site I would be _furious_.

<comment><USER6> I think they're a UGC site: there isn't a formal editing process., regular users just upload stuff which interests them. The publisher pre-approved the ad.

<comment><USER5> Even if the content is user-generated, there is still curation by other users, analogous to editing, that this is short-circuiting. I didn't realise the site publisher had pre-approval, or I wouldn't have said "as an editor of that site I would be _furious_ ", I'd've said "as an editor of that side I would _never_ approve something like that."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm going to come out in defense of patio11 here. Not because the ad isn't deceptive - it undoubtedly is. But because he fell into the dark side of a grey area and it's worth discussing HOW good people end up there.

From a rationalist perspecive, the ad is justified. He is effectively capturing the majority of the market possible through adwords. So what's next? It makes sense to take your know-how in one market and apply it to another. The problem is that the other markets are filled with sharks. Sharks that will stop at nothing to generate leads for scammy, high-value businesses (for- profit ed, weight loss, etc)

As a moralist, one would turn their nose up at these shark-filled waters at the start. If scammy people advertise through it, why should I?

Personally, I think it's really important to dive in deep to the grey area. Not because you can make more money, but to better understand the inner- workings of the "dark" side of the business. Most of the successful players there use a slathering of evil techniques combined with a wealth of direct marketing experience that whitehat marketers use every day.

It's important to test -everything-, learn as much as you can from empirical data, and then move forward with both your knowledge and moral compass in mind.

I often say I have the full Zynga playbook at my disposal and the judgement to know when not to use it.

<comment><USER6> I'm curious as to why you'd draw a distinction between AdWords and scam filled advertising. Google's bread is buttered by credit cards, diet pills, and degrees. Search any relevant keyword if you don't believe me. Most of the advertisers I share pages with on the AdWords Content Network are also not pages you'd want your mother going to. The economics of Internet advertising heavily favor scams.

Would it be better for the world and users if a site about teaching activities had off-topic ads inviting people to sign up for weightloss pills (snake oil with a rebill scam) or software which actually makes teaching activities?

<comment><USER7> Let me clarify - I would much rather a teaching activities site be filled with BCC ads over weight loss ads. That doesn't justify the use of deceptive advertising beyond exploration.

This is the -exact same- line of thinking that goes on at social games companies with viral game features. Good people say: "20% of users respond to this request, it must be interesting to people. Send more!" This is completely oblivious to the negative value you're imposing upon those other 80%. Just because your negative value is LESS negative than a rebill scam doesn't make it positive.

There are potential customers on sites outside of Adwords network. You've proven that. Now capture them in a way that doesn't trick people into clicking on your ad.

<comment><USER8> So, just so we can be as specific and absolute as possible: you also think that every Google SERP is dishonest. Because the whole premise of Patrick's post is, "here's how Google's ads work; I wonder what would happen if I crafted my ads to fit into pages the same way Google's do?"

<comment><USER9> Do you automatically sanction Google's deeds? I think, they are clearly doing evil in this case.

<comment><USER8> Do you remember what Google's ad strategy was a reaction to?

<comment><USER9> I never knew. How can that justify that they deceive many users?

<comment><USER8> Google's Adwords strategy was a reaction to competitors who _literally sold placement in search results_.

<comment><USER9> From my point of view, this is an explanation not a justification.

More or less deceiving visitors is not ennobled because everybody else does it.

<comment><USER8> When Google announced Adwords, it was with fanfare about how _above-board_ their program was, and they were widely praised for it.

<comment><USER10> That would have been for the original version - which just had links down the right hand side, not the blended ones at the top.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Warning: This type of behaviour may be illegal.

For the US see the FTC guidance:

[http://www.scribd.com/doc/20635261/FTC-Guides-Concerning- the...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/20635261/FTC-Guides-Concerning-the-Use-of- Endorsements-and-Testimonials-in-Advertising)

(the FTC has bought prosecutions on this topic recently)

It's also illegal in the UK and presumably a lot of Europe.

You can't make an ad look like an legitimate endorsement, it's as simple as that. In this case the small "sponsored placement" text could easily be taken to be about the following ad which looks like an ad.

<comment><USER12> What about when some site is raving about a product, and pointing users to the product's website using an affiliate link. No disclosure at all. Is that also illegal? Because I think it would be great if it was.

<comment><USER13> Why should that be illegal? We already have laws in place for fraud. The situation you've described could be perfectly innocent.

<comment><USER12> Well, what's the difference between making an ad look like a legitimate endorsement, and endorsing a product even though you're financially benefiting because of the affiliate link?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think where the ad "crosses the line" here is the faux star rating; the other (unpaid) listings have been user rated/ranked and Patrick's ad is misusing the trust that users of the site potentially put into the ratings.

I think that if the stars were removed, or, say, greyed out with the "Rated by lots" on top that would be absolutely fine.

<comment><USER15> Agreed, though it depends on how the other ratings are established.

Communication is ultimately about the semantic information conveyed and not the specific words used. If you _intend_ to convey the wrong information, even by using technically correct words, that still counts as lying to me.

Since the other items say "rated by 1" I'm inclined to believe it's a small community that self rates the items. Hence, patio11's co-opting of the styling conveys the information "lots of members of this small community rated BCC 5 stars" rather than "lots of some random group of people rated BCC 5 stars".

I agree that graying out the stars would make it more honest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Patrick is falling into what, I call, the marketing trap. I like some of Patrick's advice, but I wouldn't follow this... ever.

Patrick has a nice little niche business but that's all it is, a niche. Niches, by definition are really small, focused and low in demand.

In a niche, the stream of new customers eventually dries up and the temptation is to move further and further over to the marketing dark side to keep the ship afloat.

Deceptive marketing tactics work, but they shouldn't be necessary. If that's where this is headed, then just go full darkside into scamming and call it a day.

Grey and black hat techniques are a bad as crappy products, terrible service, bad systems and stolen ideas. If you wouldn't think of using any of those, then don't use scammy marketing.

If you find yourself pursuing deceptive tricks, it's a sign _your niche is not big enough_ and your product is _not high enough in demand_.

This is the most common trap analytic/scientific minded business owners fall into.

Many people on HN have voiced concerns that the current crop of startups are increasingly using deceptive practices to boost their businesses.

A well planned business should not have to do this.

It's one thing to decide to be purposefully evil, but rationalizing it as necessary is amoral and possibly illegal.

<comment><USER17> And you are falling into the "if I build it they will come" trap.

He definitely has a niche business. Many of us do. For most of us, our niche is tech. Patrick's niche is education.

In the tech/startup niche, often the extent of marketing that is required is posting to HN and getting featured by TechCrunch. Trying to expand our niche outside of this is probably a bad sign, and most likely ineffective. I hold this thread as a prime example of how much we hate advertising.

The education niche is quite different. You don't reach them by getting coverage for raising a round of financing or writing a blog post on SEO that casually mentions your cloud based retro encabulator. This "deceptive" marketing may be an effective way to raise interest in different segments of his target market.

Traditional online advertising is increasingly ineffective because of all the bad ads in that form. Would we be so quick to ignore all ad-like content if we hadn't been tempered with the aversion therapy of flash horrors, scams, and weightloss/white teeth/work at home? The end result is even advertising that might serve a useful purpose can't exist in that environment, so, like bacteria after the invention of penicillin, it has to adapt and change and find a new way to continue. If only "good" ads make the jump, then I think we're better off as a whole. If bad ads make the jump, we'll soon get pretty good at filtering them out as well. Honestly, if scam ads can blend seamlessly into a page, what does that say about the _actual_ content?

<comment><USER16> Firstly, I was not saying businesses do not have to do marketing. All businesses have to (or should) do significant marketing/pr/advertising to reach their market.

However, there's a massive difference between good marketing and deceptive/illegal marketing.

Apple does great marketing. Grifters, scammers and spammers do deceptive marketing.

Second, education is not a niche. Education is a sector, one of the largest in the world. Primary school teachers are a market, and bingo cards is a niche.

Technology is a sector, Web developers are a market and version control is a niche.

Boxing yourself into a niche that's too small with a product that's not particularly attractive makes marketing much more difficult than it needs to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Look, I'm normally pretty easy going, but it's just like to say it's people like YOU that are ruining the internet. I really wish all the SEO-cretins would just go find something else to do with their time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I disagree. I would rather ads blend in and disappear than be flashing in my face. If I click on something that sounds interesting and it turns out to be an ad, then they did a good job with it, because clearly it's something I'm interested in. If I'm not interested in it, the back button is easy to get to.

<comment><USER18> The issue I take is when they're blatantly trying to makes ads look like legitimate content.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand, but when you say "ruining the internet", I would prefer deceptive ads that blend in than those that make my eyes bleed, which is often the case with banner ads.

<comment><USER18> The difference is I can't adblock text.

<comment><USER19> If the inability to block an ad is the primary determinant of "ruining" the internet you probably need to re-evaluate your sense of entitlement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Another trick that works: break your website.

When I ran a somewhat large music site(100K uniques/day), we'd make significantly more money from adsense when our streaming server went down.

Why? Because when hitting the play button on the player didn't work, people start clicking on the ads.

<comment><USER21> Sadly, also effective are having an ugly site and not fully solving the problems of your audience.

<comment><USER22> Reminds me of a company I worked for back in the dot-com boom days. MostChoice.com planned on being some sort of meta insurance company, but that failed and the hundreds of pages of content they'd generated about insurance and financial planning, etc. stayed on the web. I would check on them over the years (to laugh at the fact my code still existed) and it seems they made more money as a static site just on AdSense clicks than they did with the original business idea. Insurance clicks are very nice.

It looks like they've redesigned the site now and taken down much of what I wrote. Too bad. I was a sophomore in high school and it was exciting to me to have my financial planning calculators out there on the internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Have you thought about trying the yellow background as well based on your comment about how some people think it's the best result?

I have to admit I'm split on the ad. On one hand, I feel that it's deceptive, because I expect ads to look like ads. When they start to blend too much, I feel it's "cheating". Similar in a way to how I feel when a crafted-to-become- viral video ends up being an ad for something.

On the other hand, I'm thinking "why not?". The site allowed you to have such an ad and people are looking for a product similar to yours, so…

It's definitely skirting the line…

</comment><comment><USER24> I watched that Mixergy video too, and was inspired to try something similar :)

BSA is great, but if you need more inventory, you can get this strategy working on Google AdWords, too. You just need to create a new ad group, and use "managed placements" to specify the sites you want to target.

Since you probably don't want 100 ad groups, you have to get a bit more generic with your ads, but there are plenty of ways to do that and still get the "this is useful information, not some off-topic ad" effect.

Here's another tip: Once you have an ad that exceeds about 0.2% CTR, you'll often get much lower cost-per-click by switching the campaign to CPM bidding.

For example, if you're bidding $1 CPM, and getting a 2% CTR, your effective CPC is only $0.05! In CPC mode, you'd often have to bid $0.30 CPC just to show up.

<comment><USER25> Wow, that's a very valuable insight! Do you need a %0.2 CTR in order to switch to CPM (e.g.: is it disabled before that?) or is it that your bids will not be as good if you don't have at least that high a CTR?

Every time I experiment with adwords, something in their policies seems to drive me off (last time it was that I couldn't use the terms "iPhone" or "iPad" in the ad, even though we have a legal license from Apple to use them.

This time, the costs seem really high the ads don't seem to run often, and I'm getting outbid even on terms where no ads show up when I do searches.

Between google having a mysterious cut, and taking on the roll of "optimizing" the experience, they make it very opaque for people who aren't add placement pros to use their service... and very hard to make it cost effective, which means, we don't use it. A real shame.

CPM might make adwords viable again...we still have the incentive to produce a good add to get more clicks for our Mille.

<comment><USER22> If your ads aren't showing up for certain word choices, you might want to rethink the type of words you're using to ensure that Google knows your content is appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Irony of ironies... all the images on his page are blocked by adblock.

<comment><USER27> Apparently, an URL like

[http://images2.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/ad- blending/...](http://images2.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/ad- blending/blended-ad-example.png)

is blocked by the rule

-images/ad-

This is a false positive and a surprisingly broad rule.

<comment><USER28> It is a broad rule and I gave on the article because I could not see any of the image. I was about to white list the site when I realized that using Ad Block Plus and NoScript for years has resulted in me experiencing a significantly different Internet.

So much of SEO simply does not apply to people like me.

But in fact I do spend a lot of money on-line, but the I spend on content. Even if it's a funny shirt from a web comic, something trivial and designed to have shallow commercial appeal, it is still content.

So there's things that are hard to distinguish from content, and then there's things that are real content which you can buy.

And NoScript and Ad block have never kept me from the latter.

I think I'll skip the white listing.

<comment><USER29> I actually don't use adblock and the like (although I do actively block flash) for that reason: as someone developing for the web, I don't want to experience a different internet. I want to see it as my users do.

Also, if a site is covered in ads, I click away. If I kept reading the site the person reading the analytics of the site would think I approve of what they're doing. I'm not going to get into an arms race with my content providers. I'd rather find and support better content providers.

I suppose it's similar to the GNU 'don't use non-free software even if you pirate it' stance although I'm by no means dogmatic about it.

<comment><USER30> I use adblock for one reason: Youtube started playing audio ads without user interaction, on tabs that had been open fo quite some time. Every other site is collateral damage, I'm afraid; it's not worth my effort to figure out how to switch chrome adblock from a whitelist to a blacklist model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> In related news, AdBlock Works Really, Really Well.

</comment><comment><USER32> Love the fake 5 stars. All that's missing is mimicking the scammy copy those ads always have: "See this weird trick a mom learned about bingo cards"

</comment><comment><USER33> I think the most jarring part of this ad is something that isn't patio11's fault: it's juxtaposed against an ad that completely stands out as an ad, which makes the 'blending' that much more 'blendy'. Without that other ad in the adjoining slot, I think the visual difference between patio11's ad and regular site content would be more stark, putting it at about the same shade of moral gray as a Google search ad.

<comment><USER34> Oh. I had assumed that the blatant ad was a fake, tacked on by patio11 for just that reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> There is a clear distinction between what Google is doing and what Patrick is doing. Respect diminished.

<comment><USER4> What is it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> As a user, I really, really dislike this sort of deceptive advertising. I'd like to explain why.

The defense I've seen so far starts by "Well, Google does that too, so by your definition they're also evil." Here's the first problem with that defense: appeal to authority. Do you really expect anyone to say, "Oh, Google does it too? Shucks, then, I retract what I said, because we all know Google isn't evil."

Second, there are significant differences between how Google "blends" their ads and Patrick's example. The background color distinguishes the ad from the rest of the search results. You might argue that some users have crappy screens or poor vision, but the fact is that the background color _is_ different. The intent was to distinguish the ad clearly. In Patrick's example, there is no such intent.

Another thing that has been downplayed is the "Ad - Why this ad?" text. On its own, it probably would have been less noticeable. But when you spot the different background, you automatically look for other differences. The "Why this ad" text is one of those differences and it's prominent not by virtue of its size, but position: it's separated from the rest of the information in the ad.

But really, it's not just about the background and the "Ad - Why this ad?" text. It's also about the fact that Google always puts this stuff as the first result, whereas in Patrick's example the ad was snuck into the results.

The fake rating is another problem. People try to defend it by saying "It's not fake, it was based on real data." Nobody said the data was fake. The rating is fake, because for every other result the rating was computed by the site, based on the data the site has, while here it was supplied by the advertiser. By the way, if I'm wrong about this, if it is also generated by the site, please let me know.

Finally, I'm perfectly happy to adapt to the way Google presents their ads: they're sort of my "doorway" to the rest of the Internet. I'm not as happy to have to research and adapt to every site's unique way of "blending" ads. But this is really a minor point for me. The most important point remains the fact that Google has made at least some effort to distinguish their ads from the content, whereas in Patrick's example the effort was invested in doing the opposite.

</comment><comment><USER37> He is comparing to Google, but I think there is a huge difference. It's not an Ad blended like a content. It's an Ad faked in a content style. He is copying the exact same style, the same kind of content (title, description, category, photo, rating) and not even mentioning it. There is no way to find out if it's an ad or a real post.

</comment><comment><USER38> Is this just a ruse to get us all to disable AdBlock for his site? :)

<comment><USER39> I had to do exactly that just to see what he was talking about. (I didn't click any ads)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I thought about where exactly patio11 crossed the line into evil territory, and I realized that there is no line.

All ads are deceptive, because they are all trying to steal your attention by showing up when you are looking for something else. That we've developed the ability to ignore most of them doesn't change the basic principle. But the degree of deception can certainly vary.

By running ads, you are pawning off the user value of your site. The more effective the ads, the more value they are losing. It's a zero-sum game.

<comment><USER6> Ads are clearly not a zero-sum game, any more than links offsite are a zero- sum game. Transfers in attention are like transfers in money. It is _entirely_ possible for both sides of "I give you money, you give me a banana" to end up better off. Similarly, if you're looking at a list of ways to teach kids subtraction, "I give you thirty seconds, you show me subtraction bingo" leaves both sides better off.

<comment><USER40> But with advertising, the attention transfer is _involuntary_. The user is always trying to spend their attention on something else, and they aren't getting what they pay for. If attention is currency then advertising is clearly bait-and-switch fraud.

<comment><USER41> The user is exchanging some portion of their attention to receive whatever service the publisher is providing.

If you want to watch this football game, you give some portion of your attention to our advertisers. If you want to view whatever the regular content is on the site patio11 advertised on, you give some of your attention to patio11.

There's nothing involuntary about it. If you don't like ads, don't watch TV shows, or view websites that show ads. The only part that's different from a normal transaction is that you aren't very strongly forced to give up the attention the publisher is asking from you. You can get up during TV ads, run an ad blocker, or develop ad blindness on sites. This extra ability of yours doesn't change the face that you agreed to possibly give up some of your attention to an advertiser to use whatever service you're using.

<comment><USER40> But we don't agree in advance to give up our attention in exchange for things. Nor do advertisers feel obliged, per se, to give us something in return for looking at ads. It is simply assumed that we don't own our attention, and it is up for grabs to anyone who can get their hands on it.

We expect to see ads in many situations, but only due to past experience, not because we ever made a deal with anybody.

And the most effective ads, the ones that advertisers strive to create, are those that are the most unexpected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Tactics like this are utterly immoral. I hope browser plugins like adblocker become massively mainstream and people start to learn to actively oppose this kind of rubbish. People that spend their "careers" advertising; contribute FUCK ALL to humanity.

</comment><comment><USER43> This is the kind of attitude that's bad for the Internet overall. Take someone like me, I probably spend more online than most 'casual' users. Yet I use noscript and adblock, so I don't see any ads or SEO crap. I spend money wisely on sites that deserve it by providing good content. The SEO people lose out on the bigger share of the pie, and instead they all go 'dark side' over trying to get as much of the tiny slice as they can.

<comment><USER44> You don't know what "SEO" means, do you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> No it doesn't. It's an awful, deceptive move.

You know why? It's because Google makes it easy to spot the sponsored link if you spend more than half a second on it before clicking. A yellow background and text that says 'Sponsored Link' is way less deceiving than the lack of a 'like' button.

The devil is in the details. And the significant amount of justification you do in your post shows that you're trying to convince yourself as much as us that it's OK.

</comment><comment><USER46> Scammy. This could fool me if I were in a rush and adblock didn't filter it.

Since it works, I'd consider using it (in venues where users aren't as likely to be outraged+vindicitive about being tricked, or even notice being tricked).

Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER47> I always appreciate Patrick's willingness to share information, but won't be using this deceptive tactic. Sad to see it voted to the top of HN.

</comment><comment><USER48> Ads that look like content work well.

FB's sponsored stories, Twitter's sponsored tweets, Adwords, brand sponsored content on demand media's properties -- it's all the same shit.

Let's not jump on our high horse here.

</comment><comment><USER49> No wrong done here in my opinion.

The content of your post has brought up a topic I have been thinking about recently, which is intensely devoted sponsorship advertising. For example, if you (Patrick) want to write this piece about your positive experience with BuySellAds, then you could write the entire blog post with heavy mention of the product that YOU TRULY LIKE AND PROMOTE.

The trust factor will go a long way in helping you. I have watched "This Week In Startups" on Youtube and noticed they use a similar approach. They stop the broadcast so that Mark Suster could talk about how X product has helped him.

Most of that is off-topic, but your blog post got me thinking...which it is supposed to do, right? :)

</comment><comment><USER50> How else can you pull this off unless you design to image to be as close to organic results as possible ? But I wonder what happens if the site owner decides to change the styles, the image would then foolishly look fake.

The rating stars however are a different story and are definitely in the dark gray area (say at #333). The "rated by lots" will make users draw a comparison with the other unpaid listings without realizing it is fake, atleast in the sense the other stars arent fake.

</comment><comment><USER51> It's actually kinda crazy that I looked at this image

[http://images2.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/ad- blending/...](http://images2.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/ad- blending/blended-ad-example.png)

for about thirty seconds and literally did not see the ad, at all. I am now impressed/scared of my mind's ability to completely disregard probably unimportant information.

<comment><USER52> Its funny that there is an almost exact same thing in audio processing called masking, where a loud signal will hide a quieter signal similar in frequency.

Maybe this is the visual processing equivalent?

<comment><USER53> It's "search satisfaction", I think. People expect to look for (and dismiss) the obvious stuff.

This is similar to the notion that having the TSA check for liquids at airports is dangerous, because when they find a bottle of shampoo, they stop looking for other stuff.

<comment><USER52> Are you kidding me? I knew the TSA was security theatre, but holy crap, Batman.

The terrorists not only have won, but they have all the cheat codes!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> cool-RR Images don't load in this post.

<comment><USER6> I am available for consulting in adjusting your Adblock regexp at my usual day rate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Do you have any solutions for dealing with slight browser rendering differences? E.g. antialiasing on one browser but not another, slight font size / padding differences, etc. What browser are you "targeting" with the image?

</comment><comment><USER55> My vote is evil, not evil genius.

There's a million ways of tricking customers, and a million ways to rationalize it. But if you have ethics you won't go down that path.

If you care about money more than your character, then by all means though.

</comment><comment><USER56> So why does image blending for ads work better than contrasting ads, but contrasting (usually red) sign up buttons convert better than blending buttons?

</comment><comment><USER57> I think a fairly important point is that BuySellAds requires the site owner to approve the advertiser. So in effect, the person providing content on the site has agreed that Bingo Card Creator is not so reprehensible that they cannot accept money for what is then essentially a paid/guest listing on their site.

OTOH were this Google adwords instead, and there was no human approval, I have to say it would be pretty sketchy.

</comment><comment><USER58> Funny. I didn't realize that I had Adblock Plus installed until the I noticed the images in the blog post were missing.

(Apparently, Chrome syncing will actually install Adblock for you when you switch computers(!), but will leave the default lists set. I had it on without any lists, and just blocked the egregious stuff... except now I suddenly blocked everything.)

</comment><comment><USER59> Random note: AdBlock blocked the images in the blog post. Screenshots of ads.

</comment><comment><USER60> Definitely a darker shade of grey IMHO. Reminds me of the SourceForge ads shown on the download pages that have a big green "download" button. The ads usually display before the actual download button appears, and more than once I have accidentally clicked on it.

I end up angry and remembering NOT to deal with whoever was responsible for the ad.

However the difference I see to patio11's tactic is that in his case, people are searching for something educationally related and he gives them something related. That's different than me expecting to download a Java library and getting an anti-virus software page. So, still deception and therefore dark- grey, but not as blatant of deception as the ads on SourceForge.

</comment><comment><USER61> just try looking at the subtle colouring on a slightly tilted laptop display. It just looks white!

</comment><comment><USER62> I don't understand who still sees ads. It's apparently a huge majority of Internet users, but I don't understand where they come from.

I often set up computers for family and friends and installing AdBlock is one of the first things I do.

Who is computer-savvy enough to buy and install their own computer, and yet not computer-savvy enough to get AdBlock?

Or do (most) people actually like ads?

<comment><USER6> _I don't understand who still sees ads. It's apparently a huge majority of Internet users, but I don't understand where they come from._

This is like that quote for "How could X have won the election? I don't know anybody who voted for him."

If you learn one thing from me, learn that male twenty-something techies _are not the golden normative standard for all forms of behavior_. Some people actually do like ads, a lot. (Even twenty-something techies love some ads. I watch more Old Spice commercials than I watch actual TV!) Most people just don't care enough one way or the other to change the channel.

I encourage everyone to see how real people actually use these devices which we're trying to convince real people to use.

<comment><USER62> > males, twenty-something, techies, etc.

My parents are 80 years old. That includes my mother, who is not male (or else I was lied to about EVERYTHING!) They are not techies by a very long shot.

I installed Adblock for them on Firefox and Chrome.

Sometimes they use IE by accident; inevitably they complain to me that the blocking of ads is broken or inconsistent because they just saw ads all over the place.

You're right to say that I'm basing my observation on people I know, but you're wrong to assume they're all male, young and tech-oriented, or that I lend them my own preferences.

For example, I'm not on Facebook and will hopefully never be (if that's possible, which is not certain); but everyone I know is on Facebook and they even kind of like it.

But the opposite is true for ads.

It would be interesting to look at statistics for Adblock. I really don't see why it should be a "male" thing...?

\- - -

Edit: I'm actually a little more annoyed by your answer than I should, because it tries to make me look stupid, without actually saying "I think you're stupid". I was raised by Jesuits and know one when I see one.

There are hundreds of situations where you don't personally know people who are of one opinion, but where you're aware they exist because they make themselves heard. I don't think I've ever met a vegetarian but I'm very much aware of their existence.

But ads? Who ever speaks publicly in favor of ads (who isn't, like yourself, an advertiser)???

<comment><USER6> _But ads? Who ever speaks publicly in favor of ads (who isn't, like yourself, an advertiser)???_

Have you ever had the after-the-Superbowl conversation? Or, take a look at the Youtube stats / comments / etc for e.g. Real Men of Genius or Old Spice Guy or Angry Birds or whatever. Or, watch HN when a new Google Doodle comes out. Or, talk to people who read trade press. Or, talk to people who read fashion magazines or bridal magazines or other things where every page is paid for. Or Steve Jobs keynotes. Or...

People _love to buy things_ and they _love to be sold things_ , at least some of the time.

<comment><USER62> > _Have you ever had the after-the-Superbowl conversation?_

I'm not American and don't live in America, so no, I've never watched the Superbowl or talked about it, or its ads, afterwards. Over here when there are very popular sporting events (the World cup every four years, or maybe tennis every year) people talk about what happened during the game, not about the ads.

But fashion magazines, yes, point taken. But as you say, there's nothing but ads in them; people buy them just for that. Ads are not interfering with other content in fashion magazines.

Anyway -- in my experience, once people know about AdBlock they can't do without it. Therefore I'm wondering what's going to happen when everyone knows about it (which will happen eventually).

What you're saying is that many people actually like ads; you may very well be right.

<comment><USER63> Given that I have met many people who enjoy discussing Super Bowl Ads, it's not a hypothetical. Many people enjoy some subset of ads. Many also love the movie trailers that play before movies.

I don't have adblock installed, because I want things that I spend time reading online to make some money, and because I've learned about a number of great services when I've taken the time to look at the banner ads on technical sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> If you want to see the ad 'in real life' you can find it here:

[http://busyteacher.org/classroom_activities-vocabulary- works...](http://busyteacher.org/classroom_activities-vocabulary-worksheets/)

</comment><comment><USER65> <PickyMode> Head link looks slightly bolder, and a couple of pixels to the left of where it should be.

Stars are 1/4th-1/5th of a star to the left.

Text seems slightly lighter.

Have to admire the concept!

</comment><comment><USER66> Typically, when a site pulls that kind of thing, I cease to use the site. I'm not interested in buying anything, and by distracting my eyes from legitimate content with your "get a foot in the door" ads, you earn a big red X from me.

<comment><USER19> The site owner is probably grateful for that mindset. Development time, servers, bandwidth, these things all cost money. Neither your page view nor your "screw your costs where's the free shit?" attitude pay the bills.

<comment><USER66> Bah. I pay for the Economist, and I've paid for LWN in the past. I think a subscription model for premium content is more respectable than deceptive advertising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> So let me get this straight. Critics of this tactic want to get rich doing their own startup, while using the very techniques they just renounced to generate traffic and conversions? Seems a bit hypocritical to me. Wake up folks - business success can be 'seedy' sometimes. As long as your product creates more value than customers are charged, then it's a win-win for everyone.

What if these so-called 'seedy' techniques represented the difference between success and failure for your own startup? I'll bet your position on the white/grey/black hat continuum would shift quite promptly.

Well done Patrick, and thanks for sharing the details about another valuable marketing tactic that people can try.

<comment><USER68> If you want to do naughty things then by all means do them. There's not much harm done when people are slightly deceived into clicking onto a legitimate product. Big deal really.

Just for the love of god don't lie to yourself about it or try to rationalize it.</comment></comment>


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