marcin

URL shorteners provide one of the two values.

- short link that is easier to share/doesn't break in the process (when you send it via email, need to copy-paste on your mobile or just want a cleaner FB message

- tracking that will give the poster insight on the number of clicks and other performance indicators of the message

No one in their right mind would use 302 redirect, because you then loose things like Twitter share counts, or card implementation.

There is an odd case of someone using the shortener for marketing purposes (I do it for my product), but it usually will be a by-product of something deeper that offers value to the user. And, as many of those services are free (as your referred Pocket), it's a small price to pay for an otherwise great product IMO.

Product/tech teams raise that concern (logic being that anything could happen within JS) - in my opinion it's more of a product/engineering/marketing conflict than any real logic/evidence behind it.

Not excluding current clients is a common problem, which is actually technical. Retargeting requires tags placed in multiple places (homepage, blog, marketing automation, and yes - product). Placing retargeting pixels on product pages is often seen as risky, detrimental to product performance or your clients data. I believe the upside from being able to distinguish between clients and prospects outweighs the risk factors (which are quite superficial to be honest). There are other ways to exclude current clients such as custom interactions and landing pages, but that's a longer story.

Frequency and time capping are actually a common sense in retargeting. Having said that, current tools are not great at it as it's hard to do proper cohort campaign/analysis. We're addressing it with both time and impression caps, as well as cookie lifetime. Retargeting people on leisure sites or in times when they're usually in 'downtime' mode can also be a problem, which is why precise insight into individual placements is necessary.

I actually did run comparison test for our client - regular product retargeting (a site that is very heavy on educational material) vs content retargeting (specific landing pages with content). The engagement level on content were off the charts (up to 90% download rate, TOS, Bounce Rate). So educating works far better. Only trouble is, you need email, which 95% of visitors are not ready to give you on first hit - that's why retargeting works so well here.

With the Youtube audience, this could nicely turn into new stream of live shows/reality TV where everyone can participate.

Any plans on having beginners tracks for people not fluent in coding and soldering?

Besides possible fake 'credibility' boosts this may impact your Edgerank etc. thus acting like social media SEO booster. I think some external services evaluate their rankings on number of likes as well.

Just wanted to add, that this hack was verified for external links and pages - it's still to be tested whether it could be applied to FB comments, pages or apps.

Quite interesting how the way British sport had it's turnaround is similar to building of the startup ecosystem worldwide: investment in institutions and infrastructure, various stages of money distribution, ruthless focus on what works ('no up-round for you babe') and doubling down on the winners. I wonder if you truly can manage the country like that.

If you think about business plans as frameworks for evaluating the viability of a business, there are new formal tools, like Business Model Generation that serve exactly the same purpose (evaluating the current viability of the business in a structured way) but more aligned with web reality (fast time to market, pivots, extreme competition).