1) It requires very little trust to FB connect a site. FB now lets you explicitly control what they can access and what they can post, very easily. This used to be an issue, but not anymore.
2) True, but when you are a startup it's better to focus on making your experience great for some people than making it OK for all people. You should definitely support non-FB users over time, but it's pretty reasonable to have a single code path at launch.
It's because a Facebook connected user is just a much more valuable user to your service. You have access to their friend list, photos, likes, etc. And it's easy.
Sure, they could do the work to let non-FB connected users in as well, but given the scale of FB and the value of FB data, it's really hard to justify that work until you've hit product market fit.
When you only have one path to sign up and register it's really easy to focus and make that path as high quality as possible. Later you can add support for the people that want to use your product but don't have FB.
This was a no-solicit agreement, not a no-hire. If you were working at Apple and wanted to work at Google, you could just apply and get hired.
And then you could get a counter-offer from your current employer. Nobody stopped this from happening, and a lot of engineers made a lot of money doing exactly this.
Not to mention major wins in healthcare, Iraq, and avoiding the major impending economic collapse that was in place when he took office.
He's no saint, and I'm as pissed as anyone about the illegal wiretapping that happened under his administration. But keep in mind that no major politician will agree 100% with your views. And no president can or will keep 100% of his promises considering this shifting political climate and his limited powers in our government.
I highly doubt it was that little. I've seen quite a few acquihire term sheets and the payoffs are a lot better than you would think for the founders.
I bet the investors get their money back, the founders of Cover get $2m - $4m each in stock alone (vesting over 4 years of course), and the employees get $500k / year in total comp.
I'd be very interested in hearing why a consumer would use bitcoins when a credit card option is available to them. The only reasons I can come up with are:
- The user is a bitcoin evangelist
- The user bought/mined bitcoins early and wants to cash in without selling them which would incur an exchange fee and tax hit.
- The user would prefer anonymity for that txn. Assumes no physical delivery (e.g. online porn)
- The merchant offers a steep discount for btc. But why would a merchant offer a fee more than the 0.35% referenced in the article?
And yet, the stats presented in the post seem to suggest otherwise. After they finish watching the porn, users click the ad and convert. Even if they click and convert at a lower rate than traditional media the data suggests that the lower CPMs more than make up for this.
It's not great for brand advertising (potentially). But for affiliate type marketing this seems like an untapped goldmine.
Have you tried working with third parties like Nanigans or Tellapart to optimize your ads?