Yeah I'm blogging about this now. Sometimes I need to do the really simple stuff...
So, lets first describe what I'm calling "Facebook Voting". Basically a company, group or whatever decides to have a competition which the public will vote on. And this vote will take place by placing the photos, or quotes or whatever on their wall, and people "Like" them to get votes. These are most common during christmas, valentine's day or something like that.
Example: "Llamas'R'Us is trying to see who has the nicest llama. Take a picture of your llama and post it on the wall so people will vote on it. Winner will get a free alpaca starter pack"
So, in theory it works well. Why not use a popular social network to see what the public in general likes, and collect votes using the simplest method.
But what happens in practice? One Most All of the competitors will toddle off to their buddies and tell them to vote for them. So in the end the winner will be the person with the most willing friends. So when they have a competition, they really shouldn't bother with asking them to post pictures or whatever, they should just count the friends.
So, why do they still do this? Fact is that its all they really want. They're not interested in your picture of you with your girlfriend on valentine's day, what they want is people on their mailing list. Fact is before you can vote you have to 'like' their page. This automatically subscribes you all the updates which they'll produce - advertisements or whatever. its a total win for them.
So - how do you get the good stuff without the bad? The simplest solution is to tell your friends to stop asking you. Otherwise, if you really really like your friend you can :
a) Like them. Vote. Wait until your friend wins. Unlike
b) Like them. Vote. Open the newsfeed options and add them to the block list.
Simple.
Llama
[Warning: Slight ICT nerdiness ahead]
So, those of you who have been following the news will know that the .xxx domain is starting registrations. The idea is that Adult sites can have .xxx at the end instead of .com, .org or whatever. Already larger companies are trying to bag either own domain to prevent other people from using it. For example disney.xxx would be registered by Disney just to prevent someone making disney-themed adult content or something.
So, this leads to my question - Are domains still important? Is it vital to 'own' a particular domain, any similar spellings/mispellings or stuff you don't want people linking to your company? (The first one is called typosquatting, while the latter, to give an example - "atarisucks.com" is owned by Atari and redirects to their website).
In my opinion, the answer is no - and that it doesn't really matter anymore.
Before it may have been important. Search engines weren't so good at all, so if you wanted to visit an online shop, you're just go to h t t p colon slash slash w w w dot shop dot com or whatever. Your friend told you of an awesome website? He hands you the URL and you type it in yourself.
How many people still that sort of thing nowadays? If I'm looking for a website on llamas , I won't manually type in "llama.com" "llama.org" "llamas.com"... or whatever, I will open my favorite search engine, type in "llamas" and determine which websites seem most reputable by the blurb. The only times I type in the URL manually is if I know it by heart, or if I've visited the site before (so FF gets it from the history)
So in this day and age, we don't really need to have bagged a particular URL, since people are going to use a search engine to find the site anyway.
A funny note I'd like to end with was that I once bought a bottle of Gatorade, which upon its neck had "Google: Gatorade" written on it.
So, if you disagree, please Discuss.
