Computer Support Blog

Unlike some of the clone sites of Pinterest that sprouted up when Pinterest’s meteoric rise to popularity began, most notably Shopalong, Pinterest has been stumbling through monetizing the site.  While the executives at Pinterest are not at all resistant to the idea of monetizing, like Facebook’s founders were when they were simply focused on creating something new and cool, Pinterest has been slower than some similar sites to figure out how to make money off its own popularity.  For the last month, though, Pinterest has taken steps to stop others from making money off the site, even as it figures out how to better generate revenue itself.  Some of the ways Pinterest is working, under the guise of stopping spam, to prevent other individuals and sites from utilizing Pinterest include: Read more »

Even though Facebook continues to grow and dominate the social network market, the Internet giant has had a pretty rough first half of the year.  The Facebook stock offering was fumbled and the value of the company remains below where it was when the IPO occurred.  Even before Facebook went public, one of the nagging concerns to both the corporate executives and potential investors was how Facebook was monetizing on mobile platforms.  No company, Facebook included, has yet produced a reliable, consistent, and strong revenue stream from advertisements launched on smartphones and tablet computers.  However, Facebook may be prepared to change that, which is making Facebook users wary. Read more »

Talent finds a way of finding its niche; people who are extraordinary seldom remain in positions that could be filled by virtually anyone with similar training.  As a result, it is largely unsurprising when a talented person leaves a good-paying, even prestigious, position to strike out on their own with a vision that is unique.  That is exactly what Carly Bellis did when she co-founded Impaktu. Read more »

The challenge many advertisers and brands continue to have is connecting with customers, especially new customers, utilizing the Internet.  Many Internet-savvy potential customers already use ad blocking software or, because of the prevalence of ads around the Internet, mentally block out all but the most inspired Internet ads.  With social networking, the challenge of connecting advertisers and potential clients is still one that experts in the industry are figuring out.  Trying to crack the formula to utilize the power of social networking for business purposes is what Josh Emert is involved with now and with GoChime, he may be on the right track! Read more »

Do you remember when you could go on Facebook and connect with your friends and illustrate a sense of community over shared interests?  That function is still present on Facebook, but it is increasingly harder to find it with the sheer volume of advertisements on the once simple and cool social network.  With the revelation that five individuals suing Facebook for how “social advertising” was used without their consent or a way to opt out resulted in a $10,000,000 charity donation as settlement the reason you can now opt out of social advertising is pretty clear!  If every person who did not want their “likes” used to advertise products to their friends cost Facebook $2,000,000, Facebook would rapidly become unprofitable. Read more »

How would you feel if every time you made a telephone call, you had to listen to an advertisement?  What if, periodically, while you spoke on the telephone, your conversation was interrupted by advertisers trying to sell you on their products and services?  Would it be possible to feel anything but outrage if that sort of advertising not only occurred, but was based upon the topics of the private conversation you were having?  This sort of privacy violation seems utterly, almost indisputably, wrong when it comes to a hypothetical situation involving telecommunications, yet each and every day, Internet users accept that exact circumstance.  Why? Read more »

As technology has improved and advanced, advertisers have worked very hard to find new ways to exploit it.  Especially with new forms of communication technology, advertisers try to integrate product placement and utilize the new mediums to reach tech users.  For those who lived through the meteoric rise of the Internet, the days of slow modems also meant a time when you could go online and not be bombarded by advertisements all over your screen.  The video game market has been one that is much tougher for advertisers to crack into.  Advertisers want to reach the demographic, as video game players spend several hours at a time focused on gameplay, when they are not interacting with any other medium upon which they could encounter advertisements.  Xbox Live is now trying to get users to “play through” advertisements from big businesses. Read more »

Today, we have a disturbing experiment for you to try, assuming you are not using any form of advertisement blocking software and cookies are enabled in your web browser (they usually are if you have your computer set to automatically enter your login information when you visit your most frequented websites).  Open a search engine and initiate a search for something you have never looked for before and shares no commonality with any website you already frequent.  For example, search for “computer glasses” or, even more specifically, “Superfocus.”  Once the search results come up, visit every page on the first page of search results.  Tomorrow when you go online, if not sooner, consciously look at the advertisements on the websites you usually frequent.  The odds are better than even that whatever topic you searched in depth yesterday will appear heavily saturated on the sites you visit today.  In fact, because of Web Targeting, the odds are significantly biased toward advertisements you see being related to that random search topic. Read more »

The business of doing online business is more vital and robust than ever. Those businesses that are not yet taking advantage of the Internet as an income channel are rapidly finding themselves at a competitive disadvantage.  But setting up an online business can be difficult, especially for those who are not technically inclined.  Few people understand that as well as Mitchell Harper does. Read more »

Because the advertising for some of the big telecommunications companies is so prevalent, one might think that it was one of the giants of telecommunications that developed and founded the first 4G network.  As it turns out, though, it was not Verizon or AT&T or another nationwide mobile phone network that created the first 4G network in the United States.  No, that honor goes to a little company called Clearwire.  Clearwire could not have developed and initiated their 4G network had it not been for Hope F. Cochran.

Hope Cochran is the Chief Financial Officer of Clearwire Corporation.  Cochran joined Clearwire in 2005 and she was instrumental in seeing the company through its initial public offering of stock.  That IPO raised $11.5 billion and funded the establishment of the Clearwire 4G network.  Without Cochran’s savvy and business acumen, Clearwire would not have been able to establish the 4G network and show the companies in Big Telecom how it was done!

  Read more »