The Advertising Bubble - <AUTHOR> http://idlewords.com/2015/11/the_advertising_bubble.htm <comment><USER3> I agree with this article but I think it should be noted that advertising is much more powerful/effective today than it ever was before. Modern advertising is capable of messing with people's lives in extreme ways.

Advertising is not about selling individual products - It's about selling a lifestyle. Any media which encourages you to 'upgrade' your lifestyle should be considered advertising.

I myself have fallen victim to advertising. I used to live in a big-ish town where the cost of living was low. Advertising (in my case; the promise of a higher salary and access to a wider range of consumer goods and services) convinced me to move to a bigger city where the cost of living is ridiculously high.

So I am working harder and longer, I am able to save less money and I have a lower standard of living overall (in spite of a higher salary).

This lifestyle was advertised to me and I bought it. Much of the value I lost (in terms of quality of life) went into the pockets of advertisers (in the form of cash).

<comment><USER4> But the hilarious part is that by your definition , HackerNews is an advertisement.

Because that's what it's doing. Selling a particular lifestyle.

<comment><USER5> There are two kinds of ADS in my book:

One kind is an appeal to the person in some general fashion. The usual forms apply. There isn't much of a value add, beyond the appeal. "Ours is 2x better", or "You will feel GREAT!", etc...

The other kind is a value add, in that something of value is given in return for a bit of mindshare or implied consideration. This is HN, and a lot of other content marketing type approaches. Some use forums for discussion, others blogs, still others white papers, and or maybe things like apps, or data one can make use of.

In my own personal thoughts, I refer to this as, "give 'em a cookie. Who doesn't like a free cookie?" And when they take the cookie, they will often give you that little bit of consideration, or a contact address, opinion, something.

Musicians do this by dropping free to play and sometimes free to download tracks. "Here's your cookie, I'm selling more in the store."

I'm generally OK with value added type advertising. I like my free cookie, same as most people. The non-value added ADS are often trading on shock value, or their ability to interrupt you, or some other inane thing. Noise.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunate double meaning on the word 'cookie.'

<comment><USER5> Indeed. For my own use and thoughts, it's a non-issue. I don't often use that means to express the idea to others, because of it.

Figured the crowd here would sort it easy enough.

For me personally, I tend to map things to simple concepts in that way. Makes a lot of stuff easier, and it often highlights the common where it might not be obvious too. Just FYI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not convinced that targeted advertising even works. I see the advertising targeted at myself, it's pretty obvious why I get those ads. For example, I bought a kitchen sink faucet on line. For months afterwards, I received constant ads for the exact same faucet - as if I had multiple kitchens.

I've tried running context sensitive ads on my own site. I happen to believe that appropriate advertising is something users want - for example, I buy hot rod magazines specifically to get the ads for parts and other cool stuff for my car.

The context sensitive ads Google servers are just not interesting, and they happen to be one of a small handful of ads repeated over and over. There's no way I can tell Google "display ads in these categories".

I tried running context sensitive ads from Amazon. I wanted ads for programming books in various categories I'd select. What I'd get is ads for the latest Batman movie, over and over, I finally removed them. I don't know how Amazon decided that visitors to a programming site wanted to look at Batman ads.

There is a way to put an Amazon ad on the site for a specific product. But those get stale after a while. Again, I want to be able to list categories of the kinds of ads that would be appropriate for a particular page, but I can't. Ideally, I'd like to specify a list of categories for a context sensitive ad, like "programming books", and have Amazon scrape the page for keywords and then display programming books that are related to those keywords.

<comment><USER8> > I'm not convinced that targeted advertising even works.

Yes, your intuition derived from a single anomalous data point (yourself) is _definitely_ more accurate than the companies which have seen demonstrable success from targeted advertising.

If you wanted to argue that brand advertising doesn't work, I might agree. Brand advertisers tend not to have high standards of data analysis.

Your publisher experience seems to actually be a case of wanting the former (targeted advertising) but getting the latter (brand advertisers), which can be a real problem because brand advertisers often overspend and undertarget.

<comment><USER9> I'll weigh in on morgante's side here.

What WB discusses is a common misconception. Just because it doesn't appear to work for yourself, doesn't mean that targeting is not worthwhile. It's not really designed for an improved user experience, but to provide an advantage to those running the ad campaigns.

The crucial thing that people forget, is that that targeting only has to be a little bit better than random to be worth doing (from the ad operations perspective). Given a large number of ads shown every day, with nominal cost, we've only got to push a fraction of those toward users with a slightly better propensity to interact to increase the interaction rate, and get paid more from the advertiser (presuming a model where the advertiser pays us based upon interactions that we generate).

One of the reasons that it is profitable is that the amount we might get paid for an interaction could 50p, £1 or even £10 depending upon the client and media. The cost of showing that ad is a few pence per thousand! So, we can get it wrong many many times, and still show a statistically significant improvement in interaction rates and make a huge dent in profitability for ourselves.

I discuss all of this in Chapter 5 of Algorithms of the Intelligent Web. 2nd Ed. [https://www.manning.com/books/algorithms-of-the- intelligent-...](https://www.manning.com/books/algorithms-of-the-intelligent- web-second-edition)

<comment><USER10> Targeted ad talking about targeted ads, so meta.

<comment><USER11> To complete the circle, dgmdoug should post an analysis of the funnel from HN post to book purchase as proof that targeted ads do work.

<comment><USER9> I missed a trick it seems. Should have posted a link where I could track conversions. :-/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This reminds me a lot of PG's essay on how Yahoo was a beneficiary of its own advertising bubble that it created in the 90s:

> By 1998, Yahoo was the beneficiary of a de facto Ponzi scheme. Investors > were excited about the Internet. One reason they were excited was Yahoo's > revenue growth. So they invested in new Internet startups. The startups then > used the money to buy ads on Yahoo to get traffic. Which caused yet more > revenue growth for Yahoo, and further convinced investors the Internet was > worth investing in.

[http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html)

<comment><USER13> YC was one of the best things to come out of Yahoo... Imagine, if Yahoo had not bought out PG and company this whole thing would have never happened. Yay for the bubble, and apparently even Ponzi schemes can have beneficial side effects.

<comment><USER14> Which "whole thing" are you referring to? YC has been good, but I doubt it has created the industry. The money wanted to flow in, and it would have, YC or no.

<comment><USER13> This whole thing: Ycombinator, the 100's of start-ups that it has funded, the network of alumni it has created, the very website you are writing this on and the community that goes with it..

And sure, that money would have flowed in but the track record of YC to date is one that I think would not have been duplicated without the unique elements that YC has managed to bring to the table. They literally hacked the start-up world and that's nothing to swipe under the table.

A ton of wanna-be competitors has come and gone (some are still there) but none of those have done nearly as well as YC. Whether or not it will continue for ever is unknowable but for now the results are quite amazing and not to be compared with what 'the industry' managed to achieve in the same timeframe. No other group has managed to create this number of start-ups, no other group has managed to change the dynamic between founders and funders this dramatically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> At first glance, it seems very logical. Why do you need a middle man, these companies will all die out. The problem with this argument is that he doesn't realize advertising is 600B globally. Each of the small boxes there is 1b-40b depending the bucket (from tag management to mobile (100b)). When you realize that there's only 15 companies serving a 1 billion dollar market, you realize that it's not that small.

Granted. There will be companies that will die in the ecosystem, but the logic is poor. It's like saying why do you need a CRM system, it's just a tool standing between the sales person and the customer.

<comment><USER16> The HN community has an outspoken minority that believes: a) ads do not make money, b) ads do not work, and c) ads (targeting) are morally wrong. My sense is that the silent majority recognizes just how massive the advertising business is (its demand generation, nothing more complicated) and how important it can be to all types of businesses across every sector of the economy.

Global advertising spend (est. 2015): $592B

Global digital ad spend (est. 2015): $170B

Global VC investment (est. 2014): >$48B

[1] [http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Advertisers-Will-Spend- Near...](http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Advertisers-Will-Spend- Nearly-600-Billion-Worldwide-2015/1011691)

[2] [http://www.pwc.com/us/en/press-releases/2015/annual- venture-...](http://www.pwc.com/us/en/press-releases/2015/annual-venture- capital-investment-tops-48-billion.html)

<comment><USER17> But isn't artifical demand generation exactly the problem? We already have growing problems with overconsumption, yet we're still told to keep buying more? The only thing your numbers show is that marketing is great at selling its own services, which should not be surprising.

Then (for me at least) there's the problem that almost all TV advertising is targeted at the more vulnerable groups in society: they invariably equate spending with a superficial emotional quality. I can't even remember the last time I've seen an ad that contained factual information.

And since consumer money can only be spent once, it's a zero sum game to me. I'd rather have people spending money on things they really need, instead of trying to fill an emotional hole created by advertising.

<comment><USER16> You are conflating the role of advertising in general vs specific kinds of advertising and consumption that you view as a waste. Our entire industry (tech) relies on advertising to boost awareness of our products. Is it overconsumption that I saw an ad yesterday for Load Impact & subsequently tested & paid for their (very cool!) service?

Overconsumption can be true on an individual level (person X did not need to buy Y). On an aggregate, consumption is "the economy" and advertising is the primary way of informing potential buyers about an offering.

<comment><USER13> > Is it overconsumption that I saw an ad yesterday for Load Impact & > subsequently tested & paid for their (very cool!) service?

I don't know, but I do consider your comment to be an excellent example of an advertisement masquerading as content. (see: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10573590](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10573590) )

<comment><USER16> Masquerading? As long as its relevant and engaging, _it is content._

<comment><USER13> If you should in the future ever wonder why people dislike advertising or marketing please go back and re-read this comment. I understand that right now you are not in a frame of mind to take that input but imo everything that is wrong with the advertising industry besides the tracking aspects is present in these 11 words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is this article a joke?

Suppose for the sake of the argument that instead of drawing an arrow from the consumer to ad tech, I drew an arrow to... any other market.

Couldn't I make exactly the same argument?

People pay a "consumption tax" to fund every part of the products they buy.

That money flows into the pockets of myriad companies with intricate supplier/client links.

Investors pour money into that market and create new companies hoping to make money back on their investment.

That happens when their investment manages to get market share by "cannibalizing" competitors.

Some investors lose their shirt. Some companies go bust.

My question is: so what?

It seems like there's little more in the article, not to mention the complete absence of any numbers to back the claims that are made or give a sense of scale.

So my conclusion is that what the author really wants to talk about is how these bad companies own private data, yadda yadda. Nothing new here.

So I guess the author is just doing this to push his own ad-free product.

Inception.

<comment><USER19> The difference of course being that the transportation market isn't being economically upheld by venture capitalists in hopes of one day cashing in on increased transportation revenue.

<comment><USER18> First, numbers would be required to see exactly how the market is "economically upheld" by VCs.

Second, I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but your example seems poorly chosen. Uber and Lyft live off of venture capital. Even absent Uber/Lyft, the transportation market was/still is one of the most cartelised around.

Third, you could certainly find satisfactory counter-examples where the money "ends up" (money keeps flowing, btw, that's why simplistic diagrams aren't very interesting) in the hands of a larger pool of companies. But if the point of the article is to tell us that social networks is a highly concentrated industry, that's hardly an upvote-worthy revelation.

Judging by the language used in the article, it is apparent that the author has a beef with advertising.

I'm glad he can have a lifestyle business sustained by earned advertising he gets with mentions on Hacker News, but it seems a little disingenuous to pretend that can work for all businesses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There are good points here and the flow diagrams certainly apply to _startups_ in the Adtech space. And particularly those targeting other startups.

But these startups are trying to take market from the incumbent Google, and increasingly Facbeook. These established businesses have paid back their investment and are now cash cows for their owners. The flows for Adsense for example will be in balance between cash in from advertisers, and cash out to publishers and Google shareholders. I've been in all three of those positions, often simultaneously, and been happy with the outcome.

When the VC tide goes out Adtech startups will be running up the beach trying to cover their white bits. But with less loss-making competition it could be very good for Adsense and Facebook.

As an aside, I see a future where digital advertising is equally split between Google for transactional (buy something today) adverts, and Facebook for brand awareness and engagement. I think Facebook today is in the same position that Google was when it was only selling ads against its search result pages. When Facebook launches adverts beyond its own property then the cash is really going to start flowing.

<comment><USER21> I think the theory the article puts forward is that the cost of advertising has been bid up by venture-backed advertising companies.

If this is true, all advertising companies will suffer; a drop in the price of advertising probably won't sink the big players, sure, but it will probably cause them to cut some of their fat.

<comment><USER13> > I think the theory the article puts forward is that the cost of advertising > has been bid up by venture-backed advertising companies.

I don't think that's the path the money takes. The path the money takes is that _maybe_ some venture backed companies _buy_ advertising to advertise their products. If that capital dries up then that particular segment will diminish but it will certainly not cause the industry to implode (though it definitely has challenges to deal with all its own).

<comment><USER21> I don't see how what you wrote conflicts with what I wrote. "bid up" and "buy" are synonyms in this context.

If you take buyers out of the market the price for whatever it is they buy is going to come down. If the buyers who are taken out were the least price- sensitive buyers, (the theory being that people who aren't venture-backed generally have to spend what they earn) prices are going to come down a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The central problem I observe, orthogonal to the one outlined in this post, is this: there has been, for many years, a symbiotic relationship between publishers and advertisers. The publishers are the host organism; they draw life-giving cash money from the advertisers. The advertisers are the symbiote, and they consume nourishing eyeballs secreted by the publisher. Print, TV and radio publishers increasingly used the money to subsidise their consumer offerings, which increased the yield of eyeballs. Everybody wins!

The trouble with the New Era of internet-enabled everything is simply that the bottom has fallen out of ad revenue. _There is not enough money_ for this old relationship to continue. Advertisers on the web are parasitic, not symbiotic. They get plenty of eyeballs; the publishers get chump change.

This is an unsolved problem - analogous, say, to the streaming/Spotify problem. How many billions of people would have to lay out $10/mo on Spotify to keep the major labels in the junket-hopping, coke-hoovering manner to which they had long become accustomed? It's not going to happen. The reckoning, to my mind, starts not with the 1,876 marketing startups, but with the dying revenue models of mainstream publishing, broadcasting etc.

After that, well, you can be neither a symbiote nor a parasite without a healthy host, with a ready supply of tasty eyeballs.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think one reason why there is so much negativity towards advertising in these comments is because user acquisition via buying online ads is fairly expensive, and unless you have very good conversion/monetization, these purchased users will come at a loss.

So, this makes it pretty tough for small startups or 1 person projects to acquire users via ads, since they need to do it on the cheap, which isn't really possible. It's one of the few startup related expenses that has gotten _more_ expensive over time, rather than less.

And why has it gotten more expensive? I believe it _is_ because there is a bubble in this space, but not what the original article is claiming. The bubble is from the boat loads of investment capital in online startups. They take their 100m round and have no issue paying $5 per user, losing money with every one.

Companies that _need_ to be revenue positive (or just don't want to waste money) can't compete with the high ad prices that this creates, which I think leads to a lot of hostility towards the whole space.

I believe another reason for the negativity is all the fraud related to online ads. It's hard to _not_ be negative when there are so many accounts coming out about just how much of the paid advertising traffic isn't even real.

<comment><USER24> It has nothing to do with how much ads cost. Modern ads are not helpful to society. They exploit human psychology for profit. They slow down the web. They collect vast amounts of personal information. They divert resources which could be used to actually improve the world.

I understand that ads are a necessary evil for some businesses, but scroll to the bottom of a news article sometime. Is this really what we want our world to look like?

<comment><USER25> I came from a B2B agency background before my consumer startup gained a little bit of traction. I was, philosophically, anti-ads / push marketing for the most part. Then the curtain was pulled back for me on how startup acquisition machines really work. Two points here: 1) the flooding of VC money and subsequent aggressive push for "high growth" essentially funnel cash into online ads. 2) A bit more to your point of ads not being helpful to society, what about the many thousands of users I've acquired through ads who have stayed with my subscription service and have reaped the benefits of what my startup does (not gonna use this space to self promote the actual company)? These are not high-churn users, they are not bots (well, most anyway), and I've personally spoken to many of them who have expressed the happiness we bring them each week.

There's a lot of cool shit out there I may not find out about directly from friends or organically through social media (which is a horrible discovery engine anyway). This begs the question: If the ad is relevant to me, why is it "bad"? Now, I can absolutely get on board with an argument against poorly targeted ads or bulky designs that clog up space/speed or simply an overall surplus of them everywhere you go online. But that doesn't mean ads cannot be useful to society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's not a bubble, the advertising industry has always followed this cycle:

The post war television boom in America begat many new Madison Avenue ad agencies in the 50s who reached a high point in the 60s and the 70s, but then by the 80s and 90s were consolidated via mergers and acquisitions.

Even the great Ogilvy & Mather was swallowed by up WPP in 1989. In fact one of the David Ogilvy's greatest regrets was taking the company public which allowed the take over years later.

<comment><USER27> Isn't it a bubble, when a lot of startups provide free services that are supported by online ads? Wouldn't a crash in the online ads market have a resonance cascade through all of those startups?

<comment><USER26> There already was a crash of ad banner rates in 2008, in fact that killed many small publishers. You'd have a real bubble if there was a ton of moneys still being pumped into AdTech, but that hasn't been the case for a year now. And you're now seeing mergers and acquisitions take place. A good example of this on a bigger level would be Verizon buying up AOL for their ad business.

Although something to realize is that there are winners in that business. Most people don't think of Facebook as an ad company, but they really do get mobile advertising and from the looks of things they'll keep growing. And that's not just Facebook but other properties like Instagram which will snag more and more ad dollars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What advertisers need to do is create advertisements that people want to see, rather than trying to force people or trick them into watching it.

For example, consider the TV show "Detroit Muscle". Ostensibly, it's about customizing and hot rodding your car. But it's actually a product placement show. I enjoy watching it, because various products are worked into the car project, and they show you what the products are good for and how to use them. For example, I'm likely to buy a welder that was featured on the show.

<comment><USER28> Did you actually _need_ a welder before you watched that show? Were you actively looking at different welders and weighing up their features vs. costs?

If so, had you considered the possibilities of _hiring_ a welder for those seldom/rare occasions you need one? Or just paying someone to do the occasional bit of welding you might need done? (I am assuming, maybe incorrectly, that since you don't already own a welder, you are not someone who actually has high demand for welding at present. Perhaps you're planning some future activities that imply " _lots of welding_ ".)

If you were _not_ actively Welder Shopping, then their advertising worked, didn't it?

<comment><USER22> I think parent's point is that, precisely, it _does_ work, when things are intelligently targeted, rather than unintentionally weird and annoying.

<comment><USER28> And I think my point is that they probably didn't really _need_ that crap, but the advertising convinced them that they did. I think that's a bad thing.

(And possibly I'm straying offtopic for the thread. _Begs forgiveness_.) :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> In his seminal essay _Dabblers and Blowhards_ Maciej Cegłowski made the case that Paul Graham's essay _Hackers and Painters_ was inaccurate in its depiction of many programmer's work habits being similar to that of painters.

Cegłowski's argument was compelling because he had worked as both a professional programmer and a professional oil painter. That deep expertise in both fields made it possible for him to pick the holes in PG's arguments.

It seems that Cegłowski hasn't done much work in the AdTech industry. Pity, because his summary of the _Scott and Scurvy_ [2] story is a wonderful piece of writing.

[1] [http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm](http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm)

[2] [http://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm](http://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm)

<comment><USER13> I think the article goes off the rails where he says that the money going into advertising companies as investment ends up in the pay-out stream. I have seen no evidence of that to date (but I'm happy to be informed if there is such evidence). Up to there it is mostly accurate.

The path investor money takes if it ends up with the industry is that it is used to buy advertising for new products and services backed with investor money.

And so I also disagree with the conclusion. There will not be an implosion, but what there will be is a change of direction to maintain revenue. This has historically been true of advertising in general, ads today on TV for instance are totally different compared to ads on tv in the 90's, the 80', the 70's and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The problem with this article is that it says (in an entertaining way) that the numbers don't add up, without showing or linking to any math.

<comment><USER18> That's because the article is just a thinly veiled ad for the author's ad-free service.

<comment><USER31> How does that work? "Advertising is dead - that I means I should subscribe to this specific consumer ad-free service"?

<comment><USER18> "Advertising is very bad and unsustainable and it's going to bring about the end of the universe because of evil venture capitalists. Is this what you want? No! So if you want to save your soul, you can repent now and start using sustainable, ad-free services. Like mine. Only $11/yr."

<comment><USER31> What he says is that _publishers_ , who rely on ads, will suffer from the bust. His service is in no way related to publishers. He also doesn't directly link to his service on the page.

I think your accusation is completely spurious, frankly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm not a marketer so correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not sure I agree that it's even possible for advertising to bubble in the traditional sense.

The biggest budgets are all pretty tightly regulated. They have surprisingly good information on exactly what impact their ad buys are having, and that information informs their allocation.

The smaller budgets don't necessarily have that, but I assume they consistently churn as businesses open and close. Is this article suggesting the churn of new businesses is going to suddenly drop to zero?

How could advertising bubble with that level of transparency?

<comment><USER33> Well, for one, the riskless rate of return could raise above zero, and you might have to factor in the amount of risk your ad buy represents. If you advertise in order to grow your user base, but that userbase is neutral or net negative, when funding costs go up, your gamble that you can shift customers from neutral to profitable is less viable.

But imagine a secondary structure of ad buys: you buy mobile ads promoting your app, which monetizes itself through ads. If the ad market falls, you've effectively bought ads high and sold them low.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> As I pointed out a few weeks ago, only three of the top 50 current "unicorns" are ad-supported: Snapchat, Instagram, and Vice Media. Since then, it's come out that Snapchat isn't doing too well and their valuation is down; we may be down to two ad-supported unicorns soon. The current startup boom is not ad- supported. That's a good thing.

<comment><USER35> What about Twitter? Actually it's only a bit of ad revenue and a huge chunk of investor money keeping it afloat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> There is no advertising bubble. I used to think there was one but this article convinced me otherwise:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-03-03/advertisings...](http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-03-03/advertisings- century-of-flat-line-growth)

What may exist (maybe that's over as well) is an advertising startup bubble.

<comment><USER37> Great link, thanks. More people need to take a look at this (actual) data.

I do think the (online) ad business is going to change radically over the next decade, but it's far from a bubble ready to burst. It'll be much slower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Given the current economic conditions and recessions around the world, I guess it will take some time for it to register in ad sector. Ad sector is still full of investor money and it will take months (and in some cases, years) for them to feel the pressure from the economy.

PS: Maciej is such a great writer. I enjoy his writing immensely. Everyone should emulate his clear & concise style.

<comment><USER39> Why does the ad sector trail so far behind the rest of the economy? Poor signaling?

<comment><USER13> Because it works. For now. Think of ad spending as you would think of spending on arms for a war. If you don't out-spend your competitor they'll own the market. So until the problems are really large the ad sector will actually make _more_ money rather than less on the same volume of products moved because the amount of money required to effect a certain level of user engagement is a larger one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Well, I think it's easy to overestimate the damage "hideous monstrosities ... left flopping on its muddy bottom" will do if and when money leaves adtech. Sure, they've been surveilling me. But what damage can they _really_ do?

They probably roughly know where I live, roughly where I work, and when I move between A and B. They know my age, race, gender. They may know a sizable chunk of my social network. Maybe the porn I like. It seems possible, but unlikely, that they'd know my bank, ISP, or actual home address.

So they sell my info. What will the purchaser do with it? Send me more, better spam? So what - I'll block it and move on.

<comment><USER21> The fear is that they'll use it to blackmail you. "Give us $X or we will send your wife all the texts you sent to person Z." or perhaps more realistic, "Give us $X or we will publish that embarrassingly bad love letter you sent to person Z" or even "Give us $x and we will reveal your alternate handle"

The first bit of comfort is that the details you would want if you were to blackmail someone are not the details that advertisers want when trying to get you to click on an ad, so the people who end up with this private data might find it less useful for blackmail than we think. They probably don't have my embarrassingly bad poetry.

but... they probably do have all my alternate handles, and that's embarrassing enough.

I think one of the major saving graces here is the unreliability of the data; especially once it has been sold a few times, it's gonna have a lot of mistakes. Because for advertising? a few mistakes don't really matter. This is gonna make the "deny everything" defense a lot stronger.

Of course, the big thing about blackmail is that it mostly only makes sense when going after the big fish; there is a lot of hard to automate work in finding the victim's weak spot, and then actually extracting the money (or whatever)

Most of us probably don't have to worry about being blackmailed unless we get rich or someone rich wants something from us... but it's still pretty bad for us if a giant cache of data that can be used for blackmail ends up in desperate hands.

<comment><USER13> > The fear is that they'll use it to blackmail you. "Give us $X or we will > send your wife all the texts you sent to person Z." or perhaps more > realistic, "Give us $X or we will publish that embarrassingly bad love > letter you sent to person Z" or even "Give us $x and we will reveal your > alternate handle"

As a rule that is information advertising companies do not have or have access to.

<comment><USER21> as I point out later in my comment, they probably don't have the love letter... they probably _do_ have my alternate handles, as I sign on from the same devices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> "There's more money being made from advertising than consumers are putting in."

Should we care how Google, Facebook and others make so much cash? Should it matter?

Honest question.

(The author suggests the firesales by these companies when things go south will involve internet users' personal information. I agree.)

<comment><USER42> And interesting thing is how people are all up in arms about the NSA tapping private information, but are completely oblivious to advertising companies doing the same. At least the NSA's objective is to fight terrorism, companies like Google/Facebook invade people's privacy for the sole purpose of making money from it.

<comment><USER43> I implicitly agreed to Googles terms when I used Google. I never asked to be born in the States.

<comment><USER44> You implicitly agree to citizenship by not renouncing. And in any case, the NSA may (supposedly) surveil non-citizens with fewer restrictions.

<comment><USER43> You have to pay to opt out of citizenship. Name any other club that you have to pay over 1000 USD to not be a part of.

<comment><USER44> Mafia

Anyway, the parent comment made no sense. Maybe people expect privacy _because_ they're US citizens. But the NSA doesn't specifically surveil people for that reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The idea that advertising is a consumption tax is wrong. You don't use "cost- based pricing" in advertising (i.e., you don't decide how much to charge to make sure you are covering your costs of acquisition). You decide how much to spend on a given ad channel based on the average revenue you expect to get from a customer. There may be other important metrics like payback period -- or sometimes even less tangible things like the number of customers may be important if scale is an end in itself -- but in any case, rational people in charge of acquisition are making sure they are getting some benefit out of the ads at the optimal price that was set independently. If you start marking your price up beyond what people are willing to pay just because you want to make some ad channel effective, you'll see conversion drop and the channel will become _even more inneffective_.

I would argue that two companies with identical products -- one who acquires customers organically and one who acquires customers through advertising -- should set the same price. The first will have higher net margins but the other will enjoy more total profit if they are smart.

</comment><comment><USER46> I don't get what imbalance this article is talking about? Advertisers pay publishers to market their products, and sometimes it is financed with VC money - but this is true of any market, not particularly adtech.

Someone sells inventory, someone buys inventory, and there are middlemen to make this happen. Maybe too many companies are competing to be the middleman, but that's a problem that exist in every market (food delivery?). In the end some companies will die, so what?

I can't see where a gap is created other than this. Investors are betting on technology companies, that are supposed thrive when even more money is spent on programmatic than today (taking away budgets from TV, search...)

Maybe the author is not making a good enough distinction between publishers and technologies? The diagram of "advertising" the author refers to is almost entirely composed of technologies - very few agencies or publishers.

</comment><comment><USER47> Rick Webb's comments on banner ads are a pretty good indirect rebuttal.

[https://medium.com/@RickWebb/banner-fraud-doesn-t-matter- fc8...](https://medium.com/@RickWebb/banner-fraud-doesn-t-matter-fc84413fe59c)

</comment><comment><USER48> A counterpoint to this is that adtech startups that have gone public have been crushed. Look at Rocketfuel, Yume, and Tremor for examples.

</comment><comment><USER49> (I work in market research industry for promotions/ad optimization and effectiveness; off and on-line)

I agree completely with Maciej points. There is one other factor that should be considered; the more ads served to us (normal consumers); the less our reception to them is thus the new ads need to be more powerful. Only giant companies can fund the creativity and subtlety needed for very effective ads on a large consumer scale; everything else is noise in the consumer mind except for tiny well-targeted niches. Those are the two groups (giant companies and very niche businesses) that will survive the consumer-ad bubble burst easiest.

</comment><comment><USER50> This article seems very light on data to back up its main claim:

"You'll notice that the incoming and outgoing arrows in this diagram aren't equal. There's more money being made from advertising than consumers are putting in"

All the figures I have seen seem to show the exact opposite, i.e that online advertising is growing and profitable, for example see:

[http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/27/this-is-mary-meekers- eye-p...](http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/27/this-is-mary-meekers-eye- popping-2015-internet-trends-report/)

</comment><comment><USER51> I don't immediately agree with the premise of this article: that the consumer pays an advertising tax on the good or service being purchased.

I tend to believe that advertising actually adds value to the good or service, especially when it's exactly the same as a competing good. When you buy General Mills' Honey Nut Cheerios instead of Offbrand Honey Oats, the advertising on the sale has actually payed for itself and then some, increasing the profit margin above the good itself.

On a macroeconomic scale, the best example I can think of is the Soviet Union. Advertising was thought to be a drain on society under the Marxist thinking of the time, so the Soviet Union didn't allow it. But then they found without advertising, it led to under consumption. I think there were other problems too, but eventually the Soviets started advertising, despite their initial misgivings about it.

A quick google didn't reveal any good citations, so I'm certainly open to other ideas on this, but my main point is that this article over-simplifies the value that advertising generates for an industry.

Edit: Found an interesting article on the Communist world's relationship with advertising: [http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/5816/volumes/v03/NA-03](http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/5816/volumes/v03/NA-03)

<comment><USER52> Adds value from the perspective of the seller, sure. If I buy the honey nut cheerios vs. the off brand honey oats, I've received poor value because I've paid more for the same thing. And it's only adding value for the seller if they can sell the product for more than they pay in advertising - if this wasn't the case, people would not advertise because they would lose money.

I'd also like to suggest that the Soviet 'underconsumption' you speak of might be better characterized as 'proper consumption'. It's not a mandate that we buy a product just because someone's selling it.

<comment><USER51> _I 've received poor value because I've paid more for the same thing._

I disagree with this completely.

Did you buy it because price wasn't important to you and it was on a more convenient shelf? General Mills paid for that shelf space out of their marketing budget, so the added value was convenience.

Did you buy it because your kid likes the cartoon bee and wouldn't eat any other cereal? Then the added value was entertainment. This is the same value you get when you buy a movie ticket.

What about when someone buys shoes from Gucci as opposed to loafers from Kmart? The consumer is paying for the marketing, without question. But they're getting something for their money - self esteem, status, etc.

<comment><USER52> Honestly, this reads like an argument from an advertiser trying to justify their purpose.

Where a box is on the shelf - at least in every supermarket I've visited - <USER2> no effect on the convenience of the product. So that's a stretch.

I don't have kids but I am aware of the phenomenon of children making choices that an adult would not make. I won't assert that I would never buy my kid the cereal s/he wanted because it was marketed to them, but I will suggest that the value of entertainment gets canceled out by my feeling like a bad parent in that situation. Maybe I'm just bitter because my parents wouldn't buy me the fancy-box cereal.

Finally, I think Gucci is in the image business, which I agree is heavily dependent on advertising to sell the image. Without advertising it wouldn't surprise me if Gucci didn't exist. If your self-worth is tied up in what shoes you wear then I agree, advertising has added value here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Someone should study what would happen to Facebook/Twitter's financials if startups stopped buying app install ads.

Startups will buy more of these (out of desperation to get growth from their remaining funding) before they buy none (because they will finally run out of cash). See AOL's 2001/2002 financials for a past example.

Oh, and by the way, we are at the beginning of a huge funding crunch (perhaps someone else can pitch in with some citations on funding activity etc), so this WILL happen.

</comment><comment><USER54> This article seems rather vacuous, and I'm not sure why it has so many points or comments.

Ignoring the way the article is presented, its point could be explained in a single sentence: startups are spending a lot on advertising, which is causing an investor-funded bubble in startups dependent on advertising.

Whether this is really true depends on the relative quantities of the money being spent on advertising by startups. A quick google says over $100 Billion is a reasonable estimate for online advertising annual spend, as a ballpark figure. Startups are raising say $20 billion [1] a year.

Even assuming a large percentage of funding is going to online advertising, we're only talking about say a percentage point increase in the size of the ad market. So I think this article is probably incorrect.

[1] [https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/internet-startups- vc-2014/](https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/internet-startups-vc-2014/)

</comment><comment><USER55> I see Google Contributor as an answer to this. It would be especially compelling if GC offered site owners a way to make GC users _never_ see ads and / or perhaps had a way to nudge users into being GC users. GC is so close to fully realized micropayments for content, and that seems to be what we need to escape the advertising swamp.

<comment><USER56> Nice try, anonymous Google employee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> 1) People don't really want to understand how they are getting fucked. They are getting fucked gently enough they don't care.

2) There will be no reckoning. There will be "bubbles" like any other industry but, ultimately, they'll recover at the same pace of housing did after 2008. I'm sure people who post these articles will be convinced that was the "reckoning" but it is just the normal cycle of business in the capitalist system.

3) All this article does is really re-hash the history that has existed for decades and, ultimately, is "necessary" for mass market sales. The corner mom & pop doesn't need to advertise in this manner because its local and the locals advertise for them via word of mouth. Its also dead outside of the service industry because even with the cost of advertising its cheaper to advertise+mass produce. [i.e. restaurants, barbers]

</comment><comment><USER58> "The only way to make the arrows balance at this point will be to divert more of each consumer dollar into advertising (raise the ad tax), or persuade people to buy more stuff"

You could also raise the price (CPM) of digital advertising.

Remember all these adtech companies deal in digital display. They take (for the most part) from traditional tv, print, classified, search (basically Google's monopoly), billboards etc. These decisions driven by ROI (cost benefit analysis based on price)

Sure, its competitive. And I agree that investors get excited about 'revenue traction' that isn't real traction. But in 2015 the winners have already separated from the losers in my opinion. There's maybe 5 to 10 companies on the Luma chart that are winners (outside of FB, Google etc). And to be a winner you need revenue growth, real profits and real cashflow (I'm talking net income, not adjusted EBITDA).

</comment><comment><USER59> Wish I knew someone working in advertising (words not often spoken) so I could ask them but from a consumer point of view I have a suspicion that advertising is adapting just fine and shifting even more from overt to covert advertising. My friend's gamedev company pays an ad agency to astroturf on amongst other places 4chan. I suspect now broadcasting is within the reach of anyone advertisers will take advantage of this mercilessly and you will not be able to tell it's an ad because it will be coming from the same channels that normal people use. It already made online reviews worthless by making fake ones. Now every other form of communication will be suspect. Overt advertising at least isn't immoral but this covert approach is a deception from the start. Must be horrible to know you're making the world a slightly worse place to live in.

<comment><USER60> >My friend's gamedev company pays an ad agency to astroturf on amongst other places 4chan

Does this actually work? Shills are pretty obvious on 4Chan due their usual lack of "culture fit" and tendency to call anyone praising a videogame a shill.

<comment><USER59> I don't know if it works. At least they believe it does, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it. It's just part of the bigger social media package so I don't know if it's even possible to evaluate it individually. How would they track it? I think it's all madness and it must be a soul crushing job to do the menial work on this completely aside any moral judgements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's not surprising that this article is at the top of HN because a surprisingly large contingent of HN is convinced, against all evidence, that advertising doesn't work.

Unfortunately, the article doesn't actually offer _any_ evidence of there being a bubble in advertising. If anything, online advertising is actually being underbought at the moment.

For there to be a bubble, advertising spend would have to be growing at a rate which outpaces supply of advertising space. In fact, when it comes to online advertising the reverse is true.

Consider first that advertising _in general_ is actually a remarkably boring business. The entire industry consistently consumes 1-2% of GDP, and we have not gone out of that historical band. [1] There's just not much evidence of there being a bubble in the overall advertising industry.

When it comes to internet advertising specifically, the argument for a bubble is even weaker. Ad spend on internet platforms (particularly mobile) continues to lag behind consumer attention. [2] Consumers are spending tons of time on mobile, but advertisers aren't spending nearly enough on mobile to match that supply. If anything, I think advertisers should be spending $10-20B more on internet advertising than they do.

Finally, consider that advertising prices are at rock bottom. That seems extraordinarily inconsistent with there being a bubble. The author ignores this fact by attempting to insinuate that the bubble is entirely investor- driven, but that doesn't match his hypothesis. Firstly, if investors are currently subsidizing the entire online advertising industry, then when investment pulls back we would fully expect advertising prices to rise—enabling the investors to be paid back (ie. not a bubble). Secondly, it doesn't match my experience: the late 2000s was a good time to be in adtech or social media, but these days most VCs aren't actually that interested in the sector.

Yes, advertising is annoying. Maybe it "doesn't work" on you. But that's not an argument against it being an effective industry, _especially_ if you're arguing against targeted online advertising specifically. The biggest online ad budgets are very tightly run and you can be quite sure that the advertisers have studied and confirmed that they have a significant ROI.

Finally, one note about the insinuation that "it's going to get ugly" because adtech companies have our personal data. This ignores how incredibly noisy and inaccurate most adtech data is. It's "accurate" in aggregate, using statistical models, but it's just not very reliable when it comes to an individual. When the individual data is not accurate or trustable, the capacity for danger (or blackmail?) is extremely limited.

[1] [http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-03-03/advertisings...](http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-03-03/advertisings- century-of-flat-line-growth) [2] [http://www.kpcb.com/internet- trends](http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends)

</comment><comment><USER61> In my seventeen years online I've never ever bought a product or service based on an ad. I've bought from newsletters but never from ads. The difference the way I see it is that newsletters are highly targeted because they originate from a web site that I _frequently_ visit. Whilst ads rarely take into account the frequency of your searches. You happen to search for shoes once and then for weeks, or even months, after you're bombarded with relevant ads.

<comment><USER62> Well that's one anecdote, here's another:

My first ever online purchase was direct from an advert.

I needed 128mb more RAM, so I bought it from crucial. I knew of crucial because a gaming forum I visited had a single banner advert for crucial that never changed, so I always noticed it.

Advertising works, and even if you think it doesn't you're wrong. Every day you'll make purchasing decisions and often you'll tend toward products you recognise the name of. That process doesn't come from magic, it comes from advertising, the majority of which you'll not even notice.

<comment><USER63> My everyday purchasing decisions are mostly driven by opening my cupboard and checking if there is enough muesli left for the next three days. I haven't seen advertising inside my cupboard yet but any day now...

<comment><USER64> so you can't name one brand. If so then advertising is working. when you went to go make a purchasing decision if that brand was even considered advertising did it's job.

<comment><USER63> Is this a useful definition of advertising, especially in the context of everyday purchases brought up by eterm? The most prominent brand I interact with is a major grocery chain. This is because they have a huge store 5 minutes from my house. I'm not going to start going to another store even if it carpet-bombs my browser to get brand awareness. VC-funded adtech won't help anyone scale brick and mortar.

My purchasing decisions are based mainly on whatever is the cheapest. I do find brands useful, to the extent that if a product is brand-name, it's likely to be more expensive than the no-name variety one shelf below. Saves some mental effort of comparing prices more closely.

The muesli I purchase is store-brand. I have made the decision by comparing nutritional content of a number of varieties.

I have been advertised to to get me to look at the nutrition labels, I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Possibly naive question but...is there a repository of ad-banners that are currently being served somewhere (and maybe also an archive of historic banners)?

<comment><USER66> Probably not in any searchable form. You could spider top 10000 sites and pull the banners they serve. Even the big firms who actually server the banners probably do not have a good archive, it's all disposable JPGs and PNGs to them.

<comment><USER67> Of course there is. Adbeat, WhatRunsWhere, even a YC funded company, but I can't remember the name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> The targeted ad technology sucks. It basically just shows me ads for things that I've already purchased... for months afterwards. Also, I'm convinced most other ads just don't work.

Once those finding this current circus realize the above the bottom is about to fall out of the market real quick (and many "apps" / "sites" that rely purely on ad revenue wil go with it).

</comment><comment><USER69> The diagram being used to demonstrate the complexity of the ad space is ridiculous.

For example, listed under "infrastructure:"

\- Google \- Php \- Stack overflow \- jQuery

Need I go on?

</comment><comment><USER70> It's been festering for a while. Three years ago, I overheard (in SF):

> _[Overheard]: Online advertising is getting bizarre; it's almost like > derivatives trading…_

(original: [https://twitter.com/AlanHogan/status/268458504673693696](https://twitter.com/AlanHogan/status/268458504673693696))

</comment><comment><USER71> When I was working in a startup, I remember to be constantly shown ads from the startup itself, even though it sold something I would NEVER buy.

The way these recommendation systems worked is heavily flawed at a large scale.

</comment><comment><USER72> And it not just advertising. My understanding is that consumers pay less for Amazon products than those products cost Amazon to deliver. The difference is being made up by Amazon investors.

<comment><USER73> That's not the case. Amazon's e-commerce division is profitable. Last quarter it showed a bit over half a billion in profit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> "The prognosis for publishers is grim. Repent! Find a way out of the adtech racket before it collapses around you."

</comment><comment><USER74> Any word on these mentioned startups trying to circumvent ad blockers? What are some of them/what are they using?

</comment><comment><USER75> Great points

</comment><comment><USER76> I am extremely skeptical of the accuracy of the adtech-over-time chart. I looked for companies I knew revenue numbers for, and I saw revenue flat and them suddenly appearing in the last box despite existing for years before his timeline even starts, for instance. [This is a bit hard to write compellingly, because you can figure out precisely who I am if I say the exact companies, and I'd prefer not to have LinkedIn be the sidechannel resource for people to violate my non-disclosures about revenue.]</comment>


Qntm's SCP Foundation Works - <AUTHOR> https://qntm.org/scp <comment><AUTHOR> I posted this because antimemetics are a great concept, and recently qntm finished their story "Five Five Five Five Five," which is all sorts of creepy and lovely and fun.

<comment><USER2> url doesn't work.</comment></comment>


Phone Is Vulnerable Because of 2G, but It Doesn't Have to Be - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/06/your-phone-vulnerable-because-2g-it-doesnt-have-be <comment><AUTHOR> "Apple, Google, and Samsung should allow users to choose to switch 2G off in order to better protect ourselves. Ideally, smartphone OS makers would block 2G by default and allow users to turn it back on if they need it for connectivity in a remote area. Either way, with this simple action, Apple, Google, and Samsung could protect millions of their users from the worst harms of cell-site simulators."

Yeah, how about it Apple, Google, Samsung? Why do you allow this known backdoor into your customers communication channels? Allowing 2G downgrades is like reverting back to using TLS 1.0 or SHA1. It's 2020. Users should be able to disable 2G just like these other weak protocols.

<comment><USER2> I don't understand. My Samsung Galaxy series phones (GS9+, GS8, GS7s) all allow 2G data to be disabled in the Mobile Networks menu. You can choose LTE/3G/2G auto-stepdown or any subset thereof. I set all my phones to LTE/3G only as soon as this exploit was identified.

The notification screen gives you a warning about 2G being 9ff that can't be cleared, which is annoying... but that's all.

<comment><AUTHOR> "... the vast majority of these smartphones don't give users any way to switch off 2G support."</comment></comment></comment>


ThoughtBot launches Upcase.com - <AUTHOR> https://upcase.com <comment><USER2> This looks promising, and enticing. As an eager and willing novice in web- development, the pricing is a bit steep for me but for students or freelance remember that this is tax-writable.

Also Thoughtbot has a ton of great tools like Bourbon and the Paperclip gem among other things.

[https://github.com/thoughtbot](https://github.com/thoughtbot)</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a neural network I can use to help diagnose cancerous moles? - <AUTHOR> Researchers published a study earlier this year [0] about promising results in using neural networks for classifying skin lesions as cancerous. The results are on par with professional dermatologist.<p>Does anyone know if this neural network is available or if the results have been replicated? There are a few apps out there but I've read the accuracy is lower. I would like to use this technology for personal use in addition to professional screening.<p>[0] https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v542/n7639/full/nature21056.html <comment><USER2> There's a 5 point checklist your dermatologist will give you for melanoma that is pretty easy to follow, assuming you're not sight impaired: [https://www.melanoma.org/understand-melanoma/diagnosing- mela...](https://www.melanoma.org/understand-melanoma/diagnosing- melanoma/detection-screening/abcdes-melanoma)

And melanoma isn't very fast moving. So that checklist plus dermatologist visit should suffice: your personal human neural network will do.

</comment><comment><USER3> In another discussion on this site, somebody from academia had suggested contacting academics directly because most are usually happy to help. I suggest contacting the lead author [1] - perhaps they can mail you a link or the code itself.

[1]: [http://cs.stanford.edu/people/esteva/home/index.html](http://cs.stanford.edu/people/esteva/home/index.html)</comment>


FounderDating Launches New Year's Initiative For Budding Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/01/no-regrets/

<comment><USER2> I guess I have to a New Year's resolution as well. I hope to launch MomIamAlive service, to tell worried parents that their busy/workacholic/clubber/student kids are safe without spying them of social networks :) Thanks FounderDating for making this resolution an online milestone!

</comment><comment><USER3> You are 33% more likely to finish something if you share your goal with others. This is great! Founder Dating is also a great network for finding people to work with on these goals. My goal is to organize more Hakcathons in Las Vegas. Let me know if you want to come!

</comment><comment><USER4> inspiring for people who may not be ready to commit full time yet, but who need that kick start to work on a side project.

<comment><USER3> It's amazing to me how your mind changes when you stop thinking about life as a job and instead as goals you want to accomplish. Thanks for setting this up!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> awesome way for founders to get going and connected in 2013. congrats on the launch.</comment>


How can i setup my own SlinkSet site? - <AUTHOR>

Posterous aquired Slinkset back in 2009, in may 2011 the Slinkset service was shut slinkset.com is no longer available. No infos, no alternatives for creating my own "reddit-feature-like" page?
Or does someone know?
On a sidenote: I found out that post @ reddit are banned from indexing(without any notice or warning), especially regarding topics of clean energy and fossil fuels. Plus there seems to be alot of sockpuppeting going around too which organize to downvote certain submissions.
Anyway i would liek to setup now my own I-Like-Link(with small data) webpage to follow the industrial revolution 2.0.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> Pligg is an open source version of digg: <http://pligg.com/>

HackerNews runs on ARC Forum: <http://arclanguage.org/forum>

Reddit is open source: <https://github.com/reddit/reddit/wiki>

<comment><AUTHOR> Hej thanks, will check these out!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Presentation of Slinkset

[http://www.slideshare.net/netcrit/slinkset-blank-social- news...](http://www.slideshare.net/netcrit/slinkset-blank-social-news-builder)</comment>


Oh snap! Faceberg raises another $500 million - <AUTHOR> http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/10/oh-snap-faceberg-raises-another-500.html <comment><USER2> How possible is it that this rumor is true, but still goes unreported by the mainstream media and unknown to Facebook employees?</comment>


Major Email Provider Trends in 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mailchimp.com/major-email-provider-trends-in-2015-gmail-takes-a-really-big-lead/

<comment><USER2> Please tell your friends not to use Comcast email, or anything else that depends on where you live.

If you move, and there's no Comcast at the new location, or you just opt for something other than Comcast, then you've lost your address.</comment>


Design and Creativity Are Borderless - <AUTHOR> https://www.esperanto.design/ <comment><USER2> Was one of the stops on this creator's journey Lag City?

I don't know because I had to sit through > 5 sec loading animation, which just brought up a "Click here" screen that also needed additional loading time.

Fully expect this to be on Awwwards' Site of the Day sooner or later.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been curious about esperanto for a long time and in the midst of serious study of design so was pretty excited to see the intersection here...

Unfortunately this just seems to be some kind of logo. Looks nifty. But the meaning is not clear to me.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is reminiscent of the early 2000s when flash developers were able to convince their clients they needed fancy animations and a splash page.

The design distracts from the content, which is pretty terrible when the subject is design.

</comment><comment><USER5> Loading... loading... loading...

<comment><USER6> You can tell the experience level of a designer by the number of unnecessary animations and transitions they put into an experience. The two are often inversely correlated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> hey it's just like Flash but without the consistent framerate</comment>


Blekko Gets a Million Searches a Day. Only behind Google and Bing. - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/11/blekko-first-week/

<comment><USER2> > Blekko, a well-funded new search engine that _aims_ to be No. 3 behind > Google and Bing

Inaccurate title; it implies Blekko is currently the #3 search engine while the article states this is just an aim. (They are probably aiming to be higher than 3. Shoot for the moon, might catch a star, right?). Glad I heard about it though. Interesting idea on slashtags; seems very roughly similar to some of DDG's !bang commands.

[1] [http://comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2010/10/comS...](http://comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2010/10/comScore_Releases_September_2010_U.S._Search_Engine_Rankings)

<comment><AUTHOR> oops. won't let me change it. we will survive somehow...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 370KB for a search engine landing page is ludicrous.

<comment><USER4> I especially hate this when I'm forced to use the Blackberry browser. It makes me feel the pain of every unnecessary kb!

<comment><USER3> With a litte context a 56k modem would take over 70 seconds to load the page (if nothing have been cached, like landing on it the first time).

As a blackberry user, I probably would have thought the site was broken :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> i think these numbers are kinda pointless since there is so much buzz for it. Give it 2-3 months and we'll see if people actually switch to it permanently

</comment><comment><USER6> Yeah, I'll second the quality of the searches. Especially those where you know what you're looking for (obscure programming docs and forum/group chat logs for one)

Great to see that level of success. I hope it's not due to the novelty of this, and I'm sure we're bound to see adoption slowly creep up with this slashtag business (and probably some similar stuff from Google as well)

</comment><comment><USER7> I would wait at least 6months to a year to see if blekko is still relevant or used. Iirc cuil did ok when they first launched also.

</comment><comment><USER8> Search quality is still somewhat lacking:

 _F# download_ 's top result is an old build from 2008. After that, it appears to be some spammy software download sites.

 _F# generic comparison_ #10 result is "Sun Emporium boys swim trunks - Compare online at Bizrate.co.uk". It also suggests an autocorrect to "F# genetic comparison".

</comment><comment><USER9> Is this another Cuil trying to follow Google or is it looking to do something different like Wolfram Alpha and Duck Duck Go?

Personally I still use Google for 90% of my day to day searching, but I'm trying harder to use Duck Duck Go where I can.

</comment><comment><USER10> The searched results are surprising good!

But I'm not sure how they will handle blackhat SEO, especially they allow users to apply as editor much like domz.org

</comment><comment><USER11> "Only behind Google and Bing"

Are there any other search engines? Most others are either obsolete or niche.

<comment><USER12> Did I miss something happening to yahoo? [http://au.search.yahoo.com/search?p=yahoo+search&fr=yfp-...](http://au.search.yahoo.com/search?p=yahoo+search&fr=yfp-t-501&ei=UTF-8) Yahoo search still up?

<comment><USER11> Yahoo turned their search over to bing.

<http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/07/yahoo-gives-up/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Given that the only reason to use Bing is to find the address for google chrome when I reinstall xp, why would I ever care about this?

And in addition the headline is a joke -- google properly does that many searches a minute. Blekko isn't even an also ran.</comment>


Inventing Demand - <AUTHOR> http://startupblog.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/inventing-demand/

<comment><USER2> i like this guy's authenticity. it sounds like he cares about his users and his business's success. good post, inspiring reminder (i don't usually like these kinds of posts)

<comment><USER3> As an example of Steve's commitment to Rentoid, he lists his mobile phone number on the site and _actively_ encourages people to call it. He's had calls at all times of the day and night, however the feedback he gets from his customers through this is second to none. He also gets the opportunity to convert an unhappy customer into a happy one instantly. The phone is still a powerful medium, especially in businesses where trust is paramount.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For non-Aussies; Harvey Norman is like Best Buy here in Australia.

I am still a newcomer to Australia (~3 months) and I noticed a good deal of department and chain stores here have their owner's names. In the U.S. we have corporate names brands.

<comment><USER5> founder more so than owner.. Thinking Coles, Myer, David Jones, etc here.. Those companies are all publicly listed now..

For current Owner I can think of Harvey norman, Bing Lee (although it doesn't exist in VIC, Ken Bruce, And Crazy John until he passed away..)

Also: Walmart.

<comment><USER6> Crazy John's name was Mustafa.

<comment><USER3> I didn't know that. Mustafa Ilhan was his real name, not John Ilhan. There you go.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ilhan>

<comment><USER7> "Crazy Mustafa's" doesn't have quite the same ring to it

<comment><AUTHOR> More commonly heard angrily yelled out of car windows in Sydney Road.

<comment><USER6> Or the cook at Alaysa.

I'm surprised at the number of Aussies in here.

<comment><USER3> I noticed that too! A great Aussie success story brings us all out! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In case anyone is wondering - Harvey Norman is a large Australian retailer. <http://www.rentoid.com> itself is a Melbourne based startup.

</comment><comment><USER9> He also invented supply!

<comment><USER10> In fact, he did invent/fund supply and hoped there would be a demand for his service. He was also spending his own money in order to bootstrap and taking the associated risks. He was obviously prepared to risk that the demand would be very low or zero. One risk he doesn't mention - what if demand had exceeded his physical ability to supply the items he'd promised? Or what if he offered too many of the common items and effectively ended up competing with his own potential users who have something to rent? How and when (if ever) did he decide he'd done enough bootstrapping? I imagine these are all things he thought about and would have been interesting to hear about as well.

<comment><USER11> _He was obviously prepared to risk that the demand would be very low or zero_

That wouldn't be risky. Let's say he lists 5 Wiis. If no one rents a Wii, you simply don't buy it. If one person rents a Wii, you buy 1 Wii. If 5 people rent Wiis and 50 more express interest, you increase the number of Wiis you list and meanwhile demonstrate to people that there is a market for Wii rental.

 _Or what if he offered too many of the common items and effectively ended up competing with his own potential users who have something to rent?_

You could, essentially, do one-sided-collusion with your users. For example, suppose the site offers 10 Wiis at $100. Later, one person offers a Wii for rent at less than or equal to $100. You simply stop offering one of your Wiis, and either hold it in inventory or sell it used to recoup most of your purchase price. The supply of Wiis stays constant but the portion of economic activity happening between customers increases.

The big two risks: listing more items than he could fulfill (either for lack of capital or lack of sufficient supply among the merchants he used -- you can't rent 30 Wiis if they'll only sell you 5, and your failure to deliver on the contract would only be discoverable _after_ you've taken money for it, which spells "serious egg on face") and theft. If you're renting for 5% of the purchase price per week with a 50% of retail deposit, and the Wiis are not coming back, even if you're getting your Wiis below retail you could start bleeding money _very_ quickly.

<comment><USER12> _Theft_

The business model is predicated on other people's honesty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Doctors do this all the time, there is even a term for it called "supplier induced demand." In a normal setting you'll see that as the number of suppliers for a particular good or services in creases, demand should decrease as there are too many in the industry.

What doctors have done is they induce demand by changing the way they offer their services. For example spending more time with customers or offering better service. This is why in such areas as Beverley Hills where there are hundreds of plastic surgeons they still all charge you a premium price. They all offer the same service, but because they can induce demand by their name and skill and location they make more, all of them.

Also this is one of many factors why the health care in America cost so much. Doctors can pretty much make up their own pricing. The more specialist the more you can charge, so everyone suddenly claims they are specialist doctors so they can charge you $1000 for clipping your nails.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is a great tip. Need more of same on HN.

</comment><comment><USER15> Boot strapping is under-rated. Planning and strategy templates are over-rated.

</comment><comment><USER16> Really nice marketing hack. But someone should alert him to the invention of thumbnail generators :)

</comment><comment><USER17> Technically he tapped demand previously unsatisfied in the market.

<comment><USER18> Yes - but those people didn't realise they had the need.

The potential demand only mantifested after he created an imaginary supply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> you've got to be careful with that, though. A long time ago I was writing software to help people sell books. I got mired down in actually selling books, and the software itself never became very good.</comment>


Ask HN:  Games where the more random you are the higher you score? - <AUTHOR>

Do you know any games where the whole point is to test your randomness and this is made obvious to the player?
It should be fun, so just asking the player to type in a sequence of random numbers would not do.
It's hard for humans to be random, so there's a challenge here. There are statistical tests that you can use to see how random something is. <comment><USER2> i think it might be at least an interesting "game" if you had an app that was just a single character display in which you type in a number, and then a display of your score which is based on the randomness.

just a simple display that immediately lets you know if the number you just typed in raised or lowered your score. and then maybe compared it to other players. and then a button to click to end it to see stats on what you entered in.

wouldn't exactly be super fun for the passes, but i'd be entertained by it for a while.

<comment><USER3> Or how about a flash game where you're presented with an empty box. You're told to draw a line of a certain length and you get more points if your line goes over the least popular paths.

It would probably require some pre-crunching of the numbers, but I would imagine you can plot all of the points for the graph in order to determine scoring.

Although thinking about it, I'm not sure if you'd be rewarding randomness or just rewarding deviation from the norm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Do you know any games where the whole point is to test your randomness and this is made obvious to the player?_

I believe this is called "parenting," with the understanding here that "randomness" is usually designated as "unpredictability" or "flexibility."

<comment><USER5> With 18 years between new games and the inability to save, better make sure you're playing at the best of your abilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> rock, paper, scissors</comment>


Why Americans Don't Like Jazz (2003) - <AUTHOR> https://dyske.com/paper/778 <comment><USER3> > If the song has any musical substance, it can be played on a piano alone

The level of ignorance and pretentiousness in this sentence is mind boggling. The human voice is the ultimate instrument, not the piano. Hell, we have not even had the piano for that long. Words can not be expressed on a piano. That is what makes singing and rapping unique, you are able to tell a story combined with music. Strange Fruit would not have the same meaning or significance without the words attached to it, neither would many songs.

Also, Miles Davis himself loved and embraced rap. He literally made a jazz/rap album.

Jazz is a dying genre in the united states, because American audiences are tired of hearing it, and there have not been any groundbreaking new jazz artists in the last 30 years.

Rap is one of the most interesting and innovative genres of music now, and literally incorporates and uses so much jazz. To Pimp a Butterfly is a great example of a rap album that is heavily influenced by jazz. It was also a wildly popular album and one of the most critically acclaimed rap albums ever.

<comment><USER4> > and there have not been any groundbreaking new jazz artists in the last 30 > years.

I strongly disagree with this statement, the music is out there if you were to look.

Jazz has moved past the standard 'swing and ballad' forms that were popular throughout the late 20th century, and most listeners can't shake the roots of the genre from what defines the modern equivalent; It would be akin to die- hard old school rap fans denying that rap in it's current state should even be considered rap.

>That is what makes singing and rapping unique, you are able to tell a story combined with music.

What makes jazz (particularly the instrumental kind) unique is being able to invoke emotions and tell a story without being bound to some language barrier, an abstraction that transcends spoken word, that speaks to the pattern matching automata of the language part of our brains, regardless of race, language, or background.

<comment><USER5> > Jazz has moved past the standard 'swing and ballad' forms that were popular > throughout the late 20th century

I mean, that's not really saying much. Jazz moved past the standard stuff with Ornette Coleman, Coltrane etc in the late 50s and early 60s. Miles Davis' Bitches Brew led to the whole jazz fusion thing a bit later.

I somewhat agree with the GP about no groundbreaking new jazz artists. There are many great musicians great at their instruments today, for sure. But I just don't hear anything radically new happening. Although I do admit that it may be due to my own biases.

<comment><USER4> If you don't look for the radically new, you won't find it, when competing with a larger volume of tracks being released that aren't radically new.

Here is just one example out of the hundreds: [https://stevelehman.bandcamp.com/track/bamba](https://stevelehman.bandcamp.com/track/bamba)

Stylistic change isn't meant to be groundbreaking anyway, I believe it is from the gradual stretching of boundaries over time that leads styles to be unrecognizable from their origins that inspires new styles to be developed.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for sharing. I'm familiar with his records with Vijay Iyer. They're amazing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It may be that the reason Americans don't like jazz is that we take it for granted because we invented it. It's uninteresting because we've heard various forms of it our entire lives — from nightclub fare to swing to dixieland to jazz's roots in gospel and spirituals and blues and bluegrass. Ho hum, we've heard it all before.

Another reason may be that few of us play an instrument. Those who do can't help but appreciate the skill required to play even a simple line of jazz, much less in an ensemble or when inventing the line extemporaneously.

Frankly I'm in awe of the raw musicality of people like Armstrong or Coltrane or Fitzgerald, even though their music generally doesn't entertain me, at least, nowhere near as much as it impresses me technically and artistically. And I _do_ play an instrument (or used to).

All the same may be said of classical music too, which I believe is also dying in America. However I tend to like classical more than jazz, for some reason(s) I also can't explain.

That said, I do love to hear non-jazz artists adopt elements of jazz into their music, like Sting's use of jazz's instruments, layering, and weird time signatures. Maybe there's a future for jazz as the spice that adds flavor to other genres of music.

<comment><USER7> If people are bored because "all jazz sounds the same" / "heard it all before" how is that the popular sounds of today are all regurgitated EDM / rock-lite / rap-lite / "nothing-music" that literally all sounds the same and most of it awful? :P

There's been a long downturn in appreciation for good music IMO. My parents generation (boomers) are more musical than my generation and I think it's getting worse. More of them play instruments. More of them (can) sing. The music they like isn't necessarily highbrow, but it has more musical complexity than most of the stuff on the radio these days. Even simple stuff, like harmony, or a unique rhythm.

A lot of popular music today is atonal trash written for the meme generation. Autotune, weak synthesized sounds, highly compressed for punch to the detriment of everything else, same old rhythms, no harmony, barely a melody, etc. I have nothing against dance music, or hip-hop, in fact I have a deep love for music in both of those genres, but there's a thick layer of terrible that rises to the top of the pop charts and you have to dig through it to find music of any worth.

I'm no musical elitist, but I do take the time to listen outside my comfort zone and it has broadened my horizons enough that I'm not satisfied listening to whatever tripe some top20 station decides they'll make popular this week. I'd rather listen to Muddy Waters for the 1000th time. :)

<comment> blaser-waffle "Millennials are killing music with their beats and their memes"

> but there's a thick layer of terrible that rises to the top of the pop > charts and you have to dig through it to find music of any worth.

This is a trite argument that's been true since the 1950s. Pop is designed to be as lowest-common-denominator as possible, because radio stations need to make money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the author makes some good points, especially about how the public has become so much more visually oriented.

I would just add that for jazz, one of the reason it lost popularity is it became so avant guard after World War II with the rise of bebop, and left the public behind.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a fucking joke, right? Jazz dominated American music for ages and is as influential as the Blues. It's like making a post today titled "Why Americans Don't Like Doowop."

We get it, you need to feel important for knowing something cultural.

Also: "To be able to enjoy instrumental music, you must be able to appreciate abstract art, and that requires a certain amount of effort." Lol, okay. I listen to Skrillex. Therefore I am cultured.

<comment><USER10> This response is so aggressive, it makes me wonder if there is more to your opinion of the author than what you've initially shared. I can't find specifics in the writing to warrant the "we get it, you need to feel important" attack.

<comment><USER11> Because it's a lazy and boring article. It takes what could have been an interesting topic and returns to the beaten to death theme of how "Gangster rap music is ruining this generation. Things were so much better back in my day". It's honestly condescending and the entire thing implies that most people nowadays are simply incapable of appreciating higher forms of art because they lack the education, which is an incredibly simplistic answer to a nuanced issue.

<comment><USER9> Well said, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This could explain the relatively less popularity of electronic music in America vs. much of the rest of the world but I'm not sure that's even the case anymore. So maybe Americans don't like jazz cause they like electronic and other types of non lyrical music like most of the rest of the world. Sure probably not as much as lyrical music but a lot of that is due to marketing and exposure. That's likely the main explanation actually. The marketing and exposure provided by popular culture in America is frankly terrible. Mostly garbage whether it's music, arts, film, etc. I think that's the real reason for the phenomenon the article describes.

<comment><USER13> > This could explain the relatively less popularity of electronic music in > America vs. much of the rest of the world

Interesting. I was under the impression that EDM is big in USA.

<comment><USER12> I'd say it's big nowadays but still small compared to other styles like rap and compared to the rest of the world. That's despite the US being the birthplace of many of the main genres like house and techno. You don't hear it on the radio and most people here are still not familiar with it but then festivals pull on crowds of tens or even hundreds of thousands. In much of Europe and the rest of the world on the other hand, it's ubiquitous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > If the song has any musical substance, it can be played on a piano alone

That's obviously not true. Piano can only play discrete notes. By contrast, many instruments (e.g., voice) can slide between notes and also play quarter tones.

<comment><USER15> Without agreeing with the author's, your point about being limited to "discrete notes" strikes me as a non-sequitur. As if music had more "substance" the more notes it contained?

<comment><USER16> There are musical phrases where a smooth glissando is essential to how it sounds. And honestly sometimes the timbre of the specific instrument too. The piano rendition may not get across the feeling the original music creates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Btw recently stumbled upon this article: "Streaming services are seeing a jazz renaissance amongst younger fans" [https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment- arts-44813683](https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-44813683) Surprising but encouraging ;)

</comment><comment><USER18> For better or worse, today people are often more interested in the story - <USER2> myth that a work of art tells about itself and its creator - than in the substance of the art itself.

<comment><USER19> In comparison to when ? I'd be more optimistic about people's interest in music.

I grant you the days where affluent people bought partitions and sang in their home at the piano could be seen as focused more purely on music.

But from there, the second a know name is associated with the song there is a part of imaginary that is stuck to the piece. Then album covers with art, tv performances, music clips, famous actors going into singing. It's all the same mechanism to my eyes, just optimized to put a halo around the music wider than just a famous name.

It's always been there in a form or another, and it doesn't prevent people to get hooked on random songs they heard somewhere or got recommended without any exposure to the press campaign.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> About the tangential point about the paintings of Mark Rothko compared with those of Monet, I think people would be more open to enjoy that kind of art if the creation of those works didn't carry any prestige.

I think what people find distaceful is when the creation of those works is supposed to carry the same prestige as the creation of a universally aesthetically pleasing work, in the case of the aesthetically pleasing work the bulk of the effort is on the side the artist, while with non- representional work the bulk of the effort is on the side of the viewer changing his perception and opening up rather than on the side of the artist who may just drip some paint on a canvas, or hang an empty canvas.

<comment><USER21> Why it should be universal? As artist you don't have to be approachable.

It's the same with reataurants. When you get to the top top tiers the food is not always pleasant. It is interesting, it is experience and you have to be very open and educated to enjoy it.

Yes art has become much more about interesting ideas, concepts and contexts. You need to be art educated to enjoy it and big part of it is also failed bullshit. Around Rothko times art world started to move this way because they just needed to go further and deeper. They needed new direction. It is really hard to come up with new original ideas all the time (so hard in fact that current art world is in crisis and nobody knows where to go next).

Few other points: \- Rothko is just much darker artist. The emotional response people have to his work is not happy compared to Monet. Maybe thats why people don't like him so much. \- Rothko has still became one of the most popular artists. Try some artists 30 years after Rothko to see thehuge difference. \- Calling abstract painters "just drip some paint on canvas" is like saying about programmers "just typing something on a screen".

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Because they lack sophistication?

> _The current market share of jazz in America is mere 3 percent. That > includes all the great ones like John Coltrane and the terrible ones like > Kenny G (OK, this is just my own opinion)._

Well, in a populist culture without an aesthetic hierarchy, where you can't rank Kenny G as terrible and Coltrane as great without having to explain yourself, what place there is for jazz or anything more demanding than triteness for that matter...

<comment><USER23> > _" Well, in a populist culture without an aesthetic hierarchy"_

Closing your eyes doesn't make things disappear. Otherwise, I'd be a wizard.

<comment><USER22> Closing your mind, however, does, for all intents and purposes.

<comment><USER23> Au contraire, it exists despite your refusal to see it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Like the author, I also never pay attention to lyrics but unlike him I hate most jazz.

I don't like it because of several reasons. Firstly, the saxophone doesn't translate well to electronic mediums; it reminds me too much of the buzzing sound of a fly. It gives me a whiny, nagging feeling... puts me in the mood for swatting a fly.

Secondly, I associate it with the concept "superficial" \- Probably because of the way it is used in movies.

<comment><USER25>
      the saxophone doesn't translate well to electronic mediums

Perhaps a broader exposure to various saxophones and their players would help. For example, Grover Washington Jr. (e.g. Winelight) contrasted with the soprano sax of Jay Beckenstein (e.g. Spyro-Gyra's first 3 albums).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Jazz" encompasses such a huge variety of styles and sounds, it's almost meaningless to say you categorically like or dislike it.

When people say they hate jazz, it's probably because they had the misfortune of listening to jazz they disliked before listening to jazz they liked.

</comment><comment><USER26> Off topic, but I found it interesting that there was a parody of "My Way" by Frank Sinatra about Ebay. Weird Al made a parody of "I Want It That Way" by the Backstreet Boys titled "Ebay".

</comment><comment><USER27> There are so many reasons that jazz is unpopular. It goes far beyond a single reason like "Americans prefer visual art". As a big fan of jazz and lots of other styles of music, here a few of those reasons I've seen in action:

1\. Jazz has a long tradition of taking "standards" (popular songs largely from the 1930s-1950s era) and reinterpreting them with ever more complex harmonic arrangements. This has been going on for generations and we are several iterations down the rabbit hole of re-interpreting the same songs into ever more avant-garde versions. This makes it incredibly hard to get into jazz as a new listener because you wouldn't be familiar with those original songs or care about how they've been re-worked.

2\. Jazz musicians and fans tend to be very protective of their art and compete with each other to show off the depth of their knowledge. They can really put off anyone trying to get into jazz on their own. Musical neckbeards abound.

3\. Jazz originally became popular by taking the most popular songs of the day and re-working them to sound daring and original by using more complex harmonies (think Coltrane's 'My Favorite Things'). But many jazz musicians are still playing the same 70-year-old songs that modern audiences don't care about. It has no relevance to a modern audience.

4\. 80 years ago, Jazz was _cool_ because it was mashing up pop music in new ways and it sounded threatening to old people. It was _risky_ \- the rap of its day. Now it is the least cool thing that could possibly exist and the audiences are nearly only old people.

5\. Jazz is all about seeing how far you can push harmonic complexity. It's a breath of fresh air for people who are bored with hearing basic major and minor chord harmony over and over. But a lot of what's popular right now with kids (i.e. soundcloud rappers) is very simplistic harmonically. There's a lot of atonal-mumble-rapping over beats (which is what sounds _dangerous_ and _cool_ in 2019). What jazz is bringing to the table just isn't what young audiences are looking for right now.

6\. So much music that people hear that is labeled as "jazz" is truly terrible muzak. That puts off possibly interested people from even trying out jazz.

7\. Even the word "jazz" sounds dorky in 2019. Think "jazz hands."

8\. Mainstream jazz since 1975 or so has produced some of the most navel- gazing, unlistenable theory-music imaginable. The greatest timeless jazz music, like tracks by Miles Davis and Coltrane have 70-80 million plays on Spotify. But no one outside of Jazz fanboys want to listen to whatever Pat Metheny is playing on his 42-string guitar-harp. It just sounds dorky.

All that being said, I think there is tons of great jazz and jazz-adjacent music being made now. It just isn't always branded as "jazz". Here are some things to check out - plenty of young people killing it in the jazz scene:

Julian Lage (former child prodigy / jazz guitar virtuoso) - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5ggv-5s4bs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5ggv-5s4bs)

Jacob Collier (former child prodigy / everything virtuoso) - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlFD298wTOM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlFD298wTOM) or [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPLCk- FTVvw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPLCk-FTVvw)

Vulfpeck (funk / just having fun) - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4G0nbpLySI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4G0nbpLySI)

Jon Baptiste (maybe you know him from the Cobert Late Show) - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3qTwHRECmM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3qTwHRECmM)

Punch Brothers (more folk, but here playing with Jon Baptiste) - [https://youtu.be/alW_ZSMw7sM?t=70](https://youtu.be/alW_ZSMw7sM?t=70)

Cory Henry (Keyboard virtuoso) - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8j7XJxew7s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8j7XJxew7s)

There are tons of others and lots of overlap with hip hop - check out people like Thundercat.

</comment><comment><USER28> 1\. Playola

2\. Most people don't have good taste

3\. A bewildering abundance of platforms, delivery methods, genres and performers

As nonprofit stations go, KCSM 91.1 FM ain't bad.</comment>


Are VC's in Silicon Valley better? - <AUTHOR> http://ds.tl/19Wguuw

<comment><USER2> Would this also mean that tech companies located in the valley have a higher likelihood for success and a better exit because they surround themselves with better investors/mentors?</comment>