You keep saying Bezos used to work at McKinsey, but I don't see that info anywhere else? He used to work at the trading firm D.E. Shaw, and Amazon seems to operate in a very un-McKinsey way in many ways (i.e. they don't use PowerPoint), so this is confusing...
Google has consistently operated as "do as I say, not as I do". They've rolled out these 4 ads above the fold off and on, in addition to Product Ads, and Hotel/Insurance comparison ads. Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.
I would agree - however, it seems like Google is in a position where their algorithm doesn't necessarily have to be good, just good enough. And good enough basically means they don't torch any high-profile sites that would begin to make the public question whether or not Google is still the best search engine. Unfortunately, this means that many smaller businesses might get thrown out with the bathwater :(
I think it's safe to say that's the answer - SpotHero is doing quite well and just raised a $4.5M series A, GiveForward as mentioned has crowdfunded a good amount of money for people's medical bills, and FeeFighters sold to groupon relatively early on. None of these are "breakout successes" to the tune of a 100M valuation, however.
I think the usage of girls here is likely intentional and is a very important and much better word choice than "women" IMO - it shows the power differential common in many of these situations.
I wouldn't say this drop in unique linking domains says a whole lot about the fall of valleywag - what domains dropped off, and at what rate? Is it just because of a certain story thread acquiring huge waves of links across other gawker networks or other blogs responding to topics and linking in the course of discussion?
My guess would be that gawker pushed some of their partners/syndicates toward other more profitable Gawker properties once VW got rolling and it was clear how much traffic/revenue they could expect from the current valleywag style & audience.
Were other gawker properties launched at the time of this drop?
Or it's possible that they want you to believe this?
I find it strange that both of the Preston-Werners posted blog posts directly after the github post came out. Usually I'd think lawyers would not encourage this...
Probably a good time to mention that Google Ventures invested in RetailMeNot.
I think keeping these kind of coupon codes as a %rev affiliate model rather than CPC ads makes it easier to justify the high level of spending (much of which is cannabilizing other marketing channels) - if it was more directly comparable to adwords & Product Listing Ads CPC-based costs, I think more large brands would move faster to cut the wasteful spending going on in these programs.
Right now many rationalize it as "4% of revenue is a great acq cost" - but it's not a true acquisition cost as you already acquired many of these customers and if the affiliate sites didn't exist, 99% of these sales would still happen.
If you're a pure SEO built company, are you really betting it all on SEO? Without it you'd have no company, and if it weren't risky, there would be no opportunity left.
Your adwords rep will hide the complexities if you like - be prepared to bleed money all over the place though - in many simple, complex and esoteric ways.
Most of those "no price listed" tools run somewhere between 5-15% of ad spend. Many times with high minimums. I see no reason to choose one from scratch.
Either learn adwords (really learn it, practice, test, do it right) or hire someone who knows what they're doing (and beware of all those who think they do but don't...)
Google is super optimized to get into your wallet so either play ball or stay the hell out of the path of the greatest money machine ever created as it rakes in cash all the way til it can't monopolize more.
What are the first principles of journalism? What is journalism?
For all the words journalists spend on this topic, I've never seen anything which makes a whole lot of sense to regular non-journalist people, often the crux of the journalist side is some vague statement like "journalism is key for democracy". Is it? What part of it is?
Then maybe we can find ways to make a new journalism model which works without paying for the paper it's printed on and getting some nice local classified ads with your bundle.
This story is just another piece of the wu's marketing genius. Could it be true? Sure, so they may as well have you think about it - argue the truth, etc. Mystery shrouds the shaolin sword.
Wu-Tang are one of the few music acts to really get that it's about entertainment.
I get that it's easier to set up WPEngine, but this seems like one of those cases where you might be better off learning what to do - just set up a self-hosted VPS with nginx + varnish?
At least if you're gonna have multiple sites, this WPEngine is expensive stuff.