AOL is still the weirdest successful tech company in America

You probably know AOL as a conglomeration of websites that presumably make money by selling advertising next to their articles. But in fact, AOL as a media company is a constant money-loser. It lost $17 million in advertising on its fleet of sites—AOL.com, Huffington Post, Moviefone—in the first quarter of 2012 and another $5 million in the first three months of this year.

So, as a business proposition, AOL is a media company—an ad company—with diminishing losses. But as a profit-making business, AOL isn’t a media company, or an advertising company, at all. It’s a vestigial subscriptions business gleaning cash from people who haven’t graduated from the era of pshhhkkkrrrrkakingkakingkakingtshchch*ding*ding*ding”.

Earnings filed under “membership,” which includes $168 million in subscriptions plus revenue associated with services like AIM, accounts for more than 100 percent of the company’s profit, just as it has for years. As Peter Kafka notes, this is both mind-boggling and not even close to being news.

How to Mine Bitcoins

Simple article on how to mine bitcoins.

Mining bitcoins – a process that helps manage bitcoin transactions as well as create new “wealth” – are the new Beanie Babies. Luckily for us, however, bitcoins seem to be going up in value and should maintain their value over time, unlike your mint condition Tiny the stuffed Chihuahua.

But how do you get bitcoins? You can begin by buying them outright, but the market is currently wild. At $188 per coin, the direction of the bitcoin is anyone’s guess right now and, unlike equities, these things don’t split. In short, you should probably mine. But what is bitcoin mining?

Think of it as work done by groups of people to find large prime numbers or trying keys to decrypt a file. You can read a lot more about it here but just understand that for every block mined you get 25 coins or, at current rates, $4,722.25. Currently a single bitcoin is valued at $188, an alarming result that is probably caused by money movements related to Cyprus and a general bubble-like excitement over the platform in general. In fact, many wager that the DDOS attacks on many bitcoin-related services are direct action by hackers to inject instability in order to reduce the price.

Google Affiliate Network is Shutting Down

Google is shutting down Google Affiliate Network (formerly DoubleClick) for the second time, effective in July 2013. Supposedly it’s so they can focus on other products.

Read the full blog post from Google below:

Our goal with Google Affiliate Network has been to help advertisers and publishers improve their performance across the affiliate ecosystem. Cost-per-action (CPA) marketing has rapidly evolved in the last few years, and we’ve invested significantly in CPA tools like Product Listing Ads, remarketing and Conversion Optimizer. We’re constantly evaluating our products to ensure that we’re focused on the services that will have the biggest impact for our advertisers and publishers.

To that end, we’ve made the difficult decision to retire Google Affiliate Network and focus on other products that are driving great results for clients.

We’ll continue to support our customers as we wind down the product over the next few months. And there are other products that can help you achieve your goals. Affiliate publishers can continue to earn AdSense revenue through the AdSense network. And marketers can take advantage of other CPA-oriented Google tools like Product Listing Ads, remarketing and Conversion Optimizer to drive valuable online sales and conversions. These areas are growing rapidly and we’re continuing to invest heavily in them.

Enough with the entitled whining about Promoted Posts — Facebook isn’t running an advertising charity

Facebook’s history has not been without a healthy dose of entitled outrage. Each time the company releases a new feature, users are horrified (NOOOO! Not change!) and threaten to boycott. The spirit of those boycotts are frequently undercut by the fact that they’re organized… on Facebook.

No surprise, the mob is after Zuckerberg again, with torches re-lit and pitchforks sharpened. This time the uproar isn’t about privacy (for once). It’s about something called Edgerank. That is the algorithm Facebook built last year to determine which people see which posts. It’s meant to give you updates from only the people and Pages you’re most interested in.

Facebook has always been pretty open about how it works, and that hasn’t changed. The reason everyone is suddenly pissed off is that, as Facebook rolls out new ad products, page managers are noticing exactly how few fans their page’s status updates actually reach. Only 15 percent. That stat is according to Facebook – and have been used to pimp its paid product, Reach Generator, the precursor to Sponsored Stories. The company is constantly tweaking the algorithm, and the most recent tweak specifically decreases the exposure of brand pages.

Facebook’s 4 million business pages are managed by brands, celebrities, artists, charities, and commercial organizations, which had, until recently, accumulated Facebook fans and marketed directly to them on the platform for free. Now Facebook, a commercial entity with a top line, bottom line, and profit motive just like the very owners of the pages on its platform, is charging those page-owners to increase the number of fans they can reach. The page owners are not happy. How dare you limit access to the followers they painstakingly accumulated on your platform?

I get it, but to them I say: What the hell did you expect? And secondly, Facebook has to do this.

Wahooly - Trade Influence for Equity

There’s an interesting experiment afoot in the startup community, which poses the following questions to entrepreneurs: Would you be willing to trade equity in your startup in return for social media buzz, and customer feedback? How much, if any, would you fork over? Minneapolis-based startup called Wahooly is both asking those questions — and proffering a few answers.

Soft-launching in late September, Wahooly set out to create a platform on which socially-connected and early adopter-types, who are not accredited investors, can grab a small stake in up-and-coming startups by sharing their influence in exchange for a piece of the action. The goal: To help address one of the biggest obstacles encountered by early-stage companies — traction.

From TechCrunch

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