There's no reason to have the "claps" -- they could easily measure engagement without the readers having to actively do anything (visits to page/time on site, etc.). This reeks of a gimmick/someone trying to do something for their MBA thesis, vs. actually trying to get authors fairly paid.
There's no way that affiliate links can pay the bills for publishers; numbers don't ad up (otherwise everyone would do it, and no one does -- well, actually, there's extremely limited situations where it works in some consumer corners, but those situations are limited and the total amount of revenue is also very limited). And how much extra traffic are you really going to refer? Ads are sold on the thousand -- $X per thousand (consumer can be cents up to maybe $8, B2B much higher). So even if you referred 200 people that's not even worth any effort. Unfortunately, if you're not going buy a subscription, register for a paper or click on an ad, you're probably not worth anything to the site anyhow.
I love this, but I worry about longevity -- if we convert all our code snippets to this, and then this dies, all the older blog posts become useless. You'd be surprised how many reads even 5+ year old blog posts can get.
And you may be absolutely right -- I'm going off what I've heard from young people anecdotally out of college who say they weren't given a second look because they weren't from MIT or Cal Tech. But perhaps that's only for entry-level positions, or perhaps my information is just plain wrong.
Let's break down the reality of this situation as it currently stands:
1) You can't say what you want at work, period (there are no first amendment protections at work, just from the government). The person who posted the memo was naive and this memo from the CEO is corporate bullspeak to look good for outside PR. That's all this is, and if you take it for anything more you're also naive. For all intents and purposes it means nothing.
2) The company might be trying to make women feel more welcome by having the statement from the new diversity officer and the CEO, but I can tell you as a woman the LAST place I'd want to get a job right now is Google -- everyone is going to look at you like you only got your job because you're female; it's going to be extremely hard to get people to take you seriously. That's why, if you're going to hire only for diversity (not that I recommend it), do it in silence, don't tell the world, as it only backfires against those same employees you're bringing in.
3) If Google really wanted to get more females and minorities in its rank it should be looking at why it focuses so highly on only top rank schools (IF TRUE: MAY NOT BE-- SEE DISCUSSION BELOW) -- there's plenty of great, smart people constantly overlooked by Google because they can't see past their own biases in this area, which some would argue is a bigger barrier to diversity at Google than straight hiring by gender and race alone.
The site as it stands doesn't, as looking at the site currently has plenty of jobs that requires passing a criminal background check. It appears this site is more idea than execution at this point.
I'm sorry but I call bullsh*t on a lot of aspects on this story. I think this may have been true 5-10 years ago, but not now, not the way the Web works now. Everyone ignores those cross-link e-mails. Getting the amount of articles he says is NOT enough; you need more. You just don't get high-quality content for .05 cents a word. And that's just for starters. I know, why would this person lie? But really, for those of us who do the Web day in, day out, there's a lot that just does not ring true in this post.
You can't just file on behalf of someone else; copyright doesn't work that way. If you own copyright, you can sue. If you don't, you can't. If Zillow doesn't own the images, this is one and done -- she wins.
So much in here is interesting (and right), but the best part I think comes at the end: Zillow doesn't own the images. So whether or not you there's a legal argument for fair use, Zillow has absolutely no right to file a copyright case in the first place because they don't own the images. As the EFF rightly points out, there is no "super copyright" that Zillow can exercise here. Really good stuff overall on fair use, but love that nice whopper at the end.
I'm thinking I'm going to listen to the many, many outside experts, plus what I see myself reported by other insiders, vs. one anonymous insider I run across on a site who worked for her and appears to have bias.
Thank you for laying it out so well. I am a female executive and I am so sick of everyone saying that she's only getting criticized because she's female. So what, we can't get criticized if we do a horrible job? If we treat our employees unfairly? If we don't do what's best for our companies? She was a bad CEO and she deserved to be fired long ago.
Why not pay the reviewers? I don't understand this -- they're the most important part of the process. Pay the reviewers for their time and that might start to turn this around.