Bad design doesn't make sites successful. It's more that sites that for some reason have a strong grip on the user can get away with being lame in other respects. But you can't learn anything from this lameness, because it's random.

"...24 concentrated hours spread out over 4 days..."

Oh.

Reminded me of the old Steven Wright joke when he went to the Quickie Mart and it was closed.

He said, "But the sign says 'Open 24 Hours'"

The owner replied, "Not in a row."

Summary: the UI designer of Gmail, Google Reader and Google Calendar joined FriendFeed, and Paul is really excited about it.

This hole isn't there because I wasn't aware of it, but because I trust users here. Writing code to enforce rules is boring, so my general approach to abuse is to wait for it to happen before I expend time preventing it.

End of world predicted: fate of Internet uncertain.

Seth Godin pointed to a study from the AOL Global Advertising Strategy about who actually clicks on ads:

'Advertising is the bread and butter of the web, yet most of my friends claim that they never click on ads, typically using a peacock tone that signals their pride in being ad-averse. The geekier amongst them go out of their way to run Mozilla scripts to scrape ads away, bemoaning the presence of consumer culture. Yet, companies increasingly rely on ad revenue to turn a profit'

'Who are these "heavy clickers"? They are predominantly female, indexing at a rate almost double the male population. They are older. They are predominantly Midwesterners, with some concentrations in Mid-Atlantic States and in New England. What kinds of content do they like to view when they are on the Web? Not surprisingly, they look at sweepstakes far more than any other kind of content. Yes, these are the same people that tend to open direct mail and love to talk to telemarketers.'

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/12/your-ads-are...

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2007/12/03/who_cli...