Ask YC: I just quit Microsoft to work on this product full-time. What's your brutal feedback?

Re:Ask YC: I just quit Microsoft to work on this product ful... by dfranke on Thursday February 07, 2008 @03:49AM (#110802)

I don't have Flash, so I can't use your demo, but I think I get the gist of it anyway. I'm wary of the placement options other than "fixed". I have no tolerance for ads that do anything to cause my eyes to jump away from text -- this generally includes moving around the page or changing color balance from one animation frame to the next. Whenever I see one, I'll hit the back button and never come back. Most people have more patience with this sort of thing than I do, but I'd still urge caution.

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Re:Ask YC: I just quit Microsoft to work on this product ful... by arooni on Thursday February 07, 2008 @03:51AM (#110803)

Thanks for the feedback dfranke.

You actually don't need flash to run our demo, the ads are already appearing on that page (provided you have javascript enabled). The flash demo is only to help walk you through what triggers the ad appearing and disappearing. We tried to make the ads as pleasing as possible and ridiculously easy to get rid of (hit the X, shake your mouse, or hit the escape key on your keyboard). I'd be interested in seeing what you think of them. Example: http://www.phonemyphone.com.

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Re:Ask YC: I just quit Microsoft to work on this product ful... by dfranke on Thursday February 07, 2008 @04:07AM (#110816)

Yes, there are several things that set me off here:

1. Whatever network you're serving the image ads from is already in my blacklist, so I just get the loading indicator. The indicator animation is irritating.

2. Get rid of the fade-out animations. Just have it disappear.

3. Any event that fires on mouse movement is evil. Re-position the ad on page-up/page-down instead.

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Re:Ask YC: I just quit Microsoft to work on this product ful... by arooni on Thursday February 07, 2008 @04:09AM (#110818)

Thanks for the feedback dfranke. Sounds like you've got AdBlocker extension installed on Firefox. Our NetworkAds don't currently work with AdBlocker but our ImageAds and TextAds should.

These are great feature ideas I will add to Trac for new releases.

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Re:Ask YC: I just quit Microsoft to work on this product ful... by dfranke on Thursday February 07, 2008 @04:17AM (#110822)

Ping me once you've implemented these and I'll take another look. But anyway, like I said, I'm as curmudgeonly as they come about this sort of thing. If you succeed in not annoying me and still get clickthroughs from other people, then you've definitely got a viable product.

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