We knew it would happen. It always happens. Not long after Twitter's popularity hit the stratosphere, the spammers began swarming. Now direct messages boxes are packed with Mafia invitations, follower lists have been infiltrated by pornbots, and I had to put up with dozens of impostors trading on my name before my verified account was able to show who's really me. Whenever something gets big and successful on the Internet, you can bet that there... Continue Reading

What do users really want? It's a question that publishers ask themselves all the time. We look at the comments our articles receive. We review our stats. We check the popularity of keywords. We ask for ideas on Twitter. And we do all sorts of other things that try to second-guess what's going through our users' minds so that we can deliver content that interests them most. But maybe we're asking the wrong question. Continue Reading

Last July, I wrote about how Amazon.com was breaking into contextual advertising with its Omakase program. Now they're at it again with another context-based advertising system. This time though, they've taken a leaf right out of Kontera's books. Instead of placing ads in ad units, they're linking to keywords in the text and serving floating ad balloons. You can see samples here and here. Continue Reading