Twitch has rapidly become the site I stay on the longest, mostly for Hearthstone and Magic the Gathering streams. It's the first time I enjoy watching a "sport" live. Just a few hours ago I decided to pay for a Twitch account in order to not see ads, something I wish YouTube would allow me to do (I don't want to use AdBlock, because I think it's unethical).
I hope that if this is true, it's a feature that YouTube will copy and not one that will be disabled in the future.
I didn't find pricing on the Twitch site. But for 9$/month (looked it up), i'd probably pay for YouTube to, if that means more copyrighted content is available to me with no ads
I've been feeling this way about testing for a while now and I'm glad that DHH wrote about it so I don't have to feel "wrong" or "embarrassed" by it anymore.
I personally have gone a bit further and only write tests after a successful incarnation of a project (that means customers) that I want to keep developing, or if writing and running the test itself costs me less time then F5'ing a page or mucking around in the rails console.
I have noticed that it's much easier to throw away code that I haven't invested a lot of time in and usually the second time I write it (with tests), I have a much clearer idea of how to implement and test something.
How can Bitcoin ever go mainstream if you need regular people to secure their computers, remember their passwords and backup everything so wallets aren't lost?
This is not exclusive to Kuwait. I've seen several of these kinds of storefronts all over South East Asia. People use an app like "Line" to order stuff and communicate payment options . It's really interesting to see how people use social networking in unintended ways.
Most of the stuff that is sold is relatively cheap (< 15$), but trust is still a big problem. In my time there, I always wondered if it would be worthwhile for Facebook to facilitate this by for instance handling the payments, but I don't even know if they knew about this kind of stuff happening.
Can you give an example of a country in SE Asia where that sort of commerce is common? I'd have thought that people would opt to use one of the e-commerce platforms, since they provide payment and anti-fraud solutions.
Anti-fraud for e-Commerce is a long way to go. Most people still transfer money via bank using SMS (and they take screenshot of their cellphone for proofs to the seller).
Twitter, Instagram, Line, BBM, WhatsApp, and Facebook are being used for eCommerce.
Most of their customers won't mind if they were "tagged" (in Facebook) by sellers while westerners would complain like there's no tomorrow (and unfriended their friends if the sellers were their friends).
I'm just in awe to see how SE Asia countries are using social media.
PayPal, etsy, and eBay is like a disease over there. No one wants to deal with third party eCommerce platform. I don't know whether it is because of the cost or other things.
What I know is you can not scale verification of bank transfers once it reaches a certain number.
You exist in the market as it is, not as you wish it to be. If you can't find a way to make it pay (if that is your priority/a requirement) then you'll fail and someone else will try. If no one can think of a way to make it pay, then we'll lose such sites until someone can.
If you remove the incentive to freely distribute content, eventually people will stop doing it. When this happens, most of the content you enjoy will end up behind a paywall. The reason you don't see it now is only a small portion of the internet is aware of and uses these products. Most of us can't work for free, and I imagine a substantial portion of this reader base's income is directly or indirectly supported by advertising.
And we'll go back to having a greater proportion of hobbyist sites. People doing it for the love of it rather than the money. That's fine.
I think advertising is a terribly crude way to make money from a website, as well as being cultural and aesthetic pollution. I think we'll look back on this period when websites were ad-funded with embarrassment.
Of course, I can't think of a better idea.
But if the use of ad-blockers increases then many many sites will go pop (the really good ones - the ones that people are actually actively willing to pay for - will survive of course) until some clever sausage eventually thinks of a better idea. And that will be great. Good old free market at work.
... most of the content you enjoy will end up behind a paywall.
This is often threatened, occasionally attempted, and rarely continued after the resulting precipitous traffic drop. "Content" is not rare. If a particular producer can't figure out a remuneration technique that doesn't annoy consumers, she'll find her lunch eaten by competing producers who can.
But unless you made a site especially for mobile devices, and also use mobile-friendly ads, I'm just downloading the huge ads that you serve your desktop users, without even being able to see them when I zoom in.
I have seen a lot of small shops in Thailand that feature iMac's with iTunes accounts that are loaded with apps. People go there, pick out the apps they want, leave their phone there for an hour or so and then pick it up again for a very low fee.
I'm not sure if all of those phones are jailbroken, or if they just use a single iTunes account to synchronise with hundreds of phones.
I believe the restriction is that each iTunes account can be synced to 10 devices, and each device can sync with 5 iTunes accounts. So it's very likely that those shops are jailbreaking the phones and installing pirated apps.
They can always sell the app and charge for updates Tweetie 2 style. Or add in new features via in-app purchases. Or they can charge for push notifications.
Sparrow was selling hundreds of copies each day for 25$, they were making a lot of money from it. They probably wouldn't have made 25 million $ like they apparently made with this sale, but it's enough to keep a team of developers happy and productive.
They probably wouldn't have made 25 million $ like they apparently made with this sale, but it's enough to keep a team of developers happy and productive.
Perhaps this acquisition is just the modern equivalent of royalty/noblity calling up artists and poets. Getting "the call" to work at Google is the tech world's equivalent to being appointed poet laureate or court musician.
I hope that if this is true, it's a feature that YouTube will copy and not one that will be disabled in the future.