Sangat Pedas
20Dec/101

Angry birds are spying on us!

Angry birds has become my main source of entertainment in airports, the waiting room at the dentist and during boring meetings (sound of). And even though the birds are angry and on a rampage, who would have thought all the fluffy birds are in fact spying on you and me?

A research reported by the Daily Mail tested 101 apps and found that 56 transmitted the phone's individual number (UDID) to a private company, some 47 sent the phone’s location and five sent age, gender and other personal information.

Among the 56 apps sending the phone's UDID is Angry Birds which sent the information to the game’s makers Electronic Arts. Pandora, the popular music app, sent gender, location age and the phone ID to a string of advertising networks. Android and iPhone versions of a game called Paper Toss, where players try to throw paper wads into a bin, each sent the phone’s ID number to at least five ad companies.

27Nov/102

Adf.ly cracked the code on monetizing URL shortening services?

Weird, wednesday checking our traffic and I found a new traffic source giving us 14.000 visits that day, mind you, with an average of 1.4 pv/visits. Seems that this traffic comes from adf.ly, a url shortening service owned by X19, a UK company residing in London. So why is this interesting? Well, besides the traffic they bring us Adf.ly seems to be the first URL shortener that actually pays people to use their service, and that made them grow fast, really fast up to the point where they're bigger than for instance ow.ly. So, did adf.ly crack the code on big time monetization of URL shorteners or will they be nothing more than a one day f.ly?

14Nov/100

Fortune favors the brave

One of my favorite business quotes is one from Donald Trump "As long as your going to be thinking anyway, think BIG!" Evidently the guys of a bold and brave Indonesian startup going by the name of "Sitti" agree. With their localized contextual advertising system they're aiming to throw Google Adwords of its thrown, at least in Indonesia.

A (translated) quote from their blog:

We challenge Google inc to compete. We are sorry.
Again, really sorry. I am afraid of Google.
Google has 1 million servers. Sitti has got 6.
Google has 20,621 employees. Sitti has got 20.
Google has 1000 PhD's who work for them. Sitti has got 1, and even then not really after 6 years of trying.
Google brings Rp 230 trillion in one year. Sitti bring Rp 630.000 from sales of bottled tea in the cooperative Udin, the OB in the office Sitti.
Google has the world. Sitti has Indonesia. And just Indonesia.

Don't apologize and don't be afraid guys, you're heroes in my book. All the great companies started small once facing seemingly undefeatable competition but at least tried and made it. No guts no glory!

Whatever anyone might say, despite having all odds against you we give you guys the big thumbs up! It's challengers like you guys that make the Internet better. Word! Semangat!

13Nov/100

How to use KPI’s

Time for some serious blogging. Mind you, we've got to keep working on our credibility because we don't want people to think this blog is only a sarcastic parody on what goes on in the digital market. So let's talk serious, let's talk KPI's (Key Performance Indicators), specifically website KPI's. Cool stuff? I mean KPI's are AWESOME. Nothing better to impress your colleague entrepreneurs with a comment like "yeah we just hit 450.000 visits per day", look at those faces, admiration combined with jealousy all around. Of course quickly responded by an alpha-male saying that on his supersite.com the average pageviews per visits had gone up with a staggering 30% to 23 pv/visit. Wow! that's great, super duper good for you!

29Oct/100

SEO wisdom

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