Kartik Agaram

Advertising vs Spam

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 09:01:21 -0700

You just built something and are trying to get the word out. What are the ethics of telling a bunch of strangers about it? Is all unsolicited communication spam? If I send a message to three people, is that bulk? What if I send a million mails, each email by itself? What if the wording of the messages is different? How different does it need to be?

Calling @addressed tweets and facebook events “spam” is increasingly meaningless; let's reserve the word for truly egregious messages. Instead, if you're considering telling acquaintances or strangers about something new, this formula may be useful:

Likelihood the receiver will find it undesirable * Volume of messages

The first component measures harm to the receiver and the second measures harm to the service provider. Let's try out a sanity check: A random email from your spam folder. It is undesirable to you, and the sender clearly knows it. They've sent out another batch a few hours ago with negligible click-through rate, they've been sending these messages for months, maybe even decades. They're forging headers and adding nonsense words to try to evade spam filters. And it's going out to a few million people and significantly adding to internet traffic. Verdict: definitely spam.

Advice

If you're considering telling acquaintances or strangers something, this formula translates to advice:

Is there almost no chance they'll like it? Stop.
Is it very uncertain they'll like it? Tell just a few people. If it does well you can increase volume in a subsequent campaign.
Are you seeing signs that they didn't like it? 1 in 100 people complained about it? Only 1 in 300 responded? Stop transmitting.

If you genuinely think some of your recipients may find it useful, if you're not trying to tell too many people all at once, and if you're prepared to stop and take stock of how the first batch did — go for it.

There are no numbers in this reasoning, but I don't consider that wiggle room. It's hard to translate the sender's opinion into a number. If you are wrong in your opinion you'll find out from the recipients of your initial small batch. If they tell you and you don't heed them, you're spam. If you try to sidestep their comments in superficial ways, you're spam.

The volume measure is even more relative. What would be considered spam 10 years ago wouldn't today. Especially if you stop transmitting after one batch.

One corollary of this analysis: if it's unsolicited and in bulk, and you're sending it anonymously, it is spam. Period. Advertising requires accountability.

(Triggered by this discussion on HN. Thanks to Jonathan Tang, Ranganathan Sankaralingam, Ke Chen, Srikanth Agaram, and Jonathan Nelson for reading drafts of this.)

Perspectives on happiness

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 13:13:31 -0700

Chuang-Tzu: Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.

Tim Ferriss: The opposite of happiness is boredom.

Eliezer Yudkowsky: When people complain about the empty meaningless void, it is because they have at least one problem that they aren't thinking about solving — perhaps because they never identified it.

Alex Krupp: Given perfect freedom people have a tendency to do just enough to make themselves minimally happy, even if greater happiness is ultimately attainable.

me: There is no 'minimally happy'. Different things either make you happy or they don't. However, happiness from a source can last a long or short duration, ebb faster or slower.

Paul Graham: Unproductive pleasures pall eventually.

Credit: HN thread on existential angst.

Uptake happens fast — or not at all

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 18:47:59 -0700

Mike Speiser: Most of today’s massive consumer web properties experienced exponential growth fairly shortly after launch. A few thousand users over a few months is probably sufficient to find out it you have hit a nerve.

Stephen O'Grady: Whatever the reasoning, more and more developers, projects and firms were transitioning away from centralized to decentralized. And happier for it. The trendline was clear, which is why we weren’t exactly going out on a limb predicting the ascension of Git, Mercurial and their brethren.

Thinking critically about the ideal of a techno-utopia

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 15:55:51 -0800

Technology can compromise resolve. East Germans who watched West German television were paradoxically more satisfied with life in their country. The fact that Dresden—where the 1989 protests started—lies too far and too low to have received Western broadcasts may partly explain the rebellious spirit of the city's inhabitants. While we fret about the Internet's contribution to degrading the civic engagement of American kids, all teenagers in China or Iran are presumed to be committed citizens who use the Web to acquaint themselves with human rights violations committed by their governments. For the vast majority of Internet users, increased access to information is not always liberating. With their endless supply of entertainment, Twitter and Facebook might make political mobilization harder, not easier.

Technology empowers all sides equally. We cling to the view that all non-state power in authoritarian countries is good, while state power is evil and always leads to suppression. Not all opponents of the Russian or Chinese or even Egyptian state fit the neoliberal pattern. Nationalism, extremism and religious fanaticism abound. Facebook and Twitter empower all groups—not just the pro-Western groups that we like.

Technology drives decentralization; demonstration requires centralization. Thanks to the decentralization afforded by the Internet, Iran's Green Movement couldn't collect itself on the eve of the 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution. It simply drowned in its own tweets.

Technology increases noise and misinformation. We assume the Internet makes it easy for citizens to see who else is opposing a regime and then act collectively based on that shared knowledge. In the age of the Spinternet, cheap online propaganda can easily be bought with the help of pro-government bloggers. Add to that the growing surveillance capacity of modern authoritarian states—greatly boosted by information collected through social media.

Technology shines a harsh light. Diplomacy is, perhaps, one element of the U.S. government that should not be subject to the demands of "open government"; whenever it works, it is usually because it is done behind closed doors.

—Paraphrasing Evgeny Morozov

Tyranny of the majority, or regulatory capture? Just be more agile.

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 13:24:35 -0800

Plato, de Tocqueville, et al.: In a democracy, the greatest concern is that the majority will tyrannize and exploit diverse smaller interests.

Mancur Olson: Narrow and well-organized minorities are more likely to assert their interests over those of the majority.

Neil Freeman: Just redistrict the states after each census.[1]

me: Can this idea be generalized? Minorities can be oppressed or powerful; strive to so intertwine motivations that minorities are eliminated. Track minority power and standard deviation of group size as a quality metric for democracy.

But maintain diversity. And don't allow collusion to foster bubbles.

[1] Credit: James Fallows. Related comments: Hacker News

Books can be of any length — if they're mysteries

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 18:18:35 -0800

“People apparently only read mystery stories of any length. With mysteries, the longer the better and people will read any damn thing. But the indulgent, 800-page books like The Brothers Karamazov or Moby-Dick of a hundred years ago are just not going to be read anymore.”
— Cormac McCarthy. Contrast Jeff Bezos.

“Better get busy”

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:11:09 -0800

“Frank Curiel Field in Curaçao looks like every small-town baseball field you've ever seen. But it's filled with primal cues, a window through which kids can see the ascending realms of heaven stacked above them in neat levels. First comes making the league all-star team (one of those guys). Then playing for Williamsport (those guys). Then just above that is getting signed by a scout, playing in the major leagues (being one of those guys). For a six-year old at this field, these aren't gauzy dreams; they are tangible steps on a primal ladder of selection reflected in the crackle of the radio, the clutter of the trophies, the glint of the scout's sunglasses. It is sort of like standing in the Sistine Chapel. The proof of paradise is right here: all you have to do is open your eyes.”
—Daniel Coyle. Curaçao has been to six of the last eight semifinals at the Little League World Series.

Search wars

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:56:49 -0800

“Search is broken like browsers were broken in 2002.”
— Asa Dotzler of Firefox doesn't like Google

Sniper Business

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:22:36 -0800

via Scott Locklin

Why it's ok to sell startups early

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 12:31:12 -0700

“Startups operate in a financial system that is inefficient, illiquid, and challenging to manage. More transactions of any kind or size help improve overall startup ecosystem health. Liquidity and transparency serve to grow the market and reward founders more richly.”
— Dave McClure. A more detailed model from Fred Wilson.