Mark Pincus Blog

NY bound this week

Ill be at fred wilson's union square ventures annual meeting and then checking out fall in ny. Apreciate all recs on yoga studios (ashtanga and new restaurants and bars).

And shouts out to ny friends. if you're reading this let's connect - calcanis, nick denton, rivlin.
Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

yesnomaybe...i say nonono

after reading about the new dating site yesnomaybe.com on techcrunch, which gushed about it's cool new features, i checked it out. there is a real question with these new sites as to when you should get your PR and trumpet your cool features. obviously, the coolest feature is introductions to desirable dating prospects and then subsidiary might be doing so in a more compelling way.

yesnomaybe does a good job in their 'demo' of showing some impressively attractive women but then you register...after it's as if you got transported to a very different world. ok, typical waste of time on the net. starting to get very used to long, random detours. but then i get this email from founder, *amanda* (she apparently is so well known to me that there's no need to provide a last name or any other detail ab out her. why do i get the feeling she's a fat guy in customer support?)

Hi mark

Okay guys, sit up and take note. We need your help!

To thank you in advance, we have upgraded your membership and given you an extra 2 months Free Premier Membership, and what we need from you is simple:

The good news: there has been a bit of a media frenzy out there triggered by yesnomayB being featured on a few influential tech sites like Digg, Techcrunch and Springwise, as well as FHM magazine.

The not so good news: is that the patrons of the above sites are mostly hot blooded males, skewing the male/female ratio more toward males - but we think you can help!

Tell all your single girl friends to register with promo code FREE4GIRLS.

They will then receive 2 months free Premier Membership (expires 15 Nov 2006).

Come on guys, in order to you help yourself, you need to help each other.

Thanks for loving our product and for your positive feedback.

Amanda
co-Founder

this *amanda* clearly doesnt understand the way the world i live in works. i dont wake up looking for a new dating site with cool new features that if i just went and got all the hot women i knew to sign up for would be super fun. it's kind of like going to recruiters with a new job site and asking them to invite all the prospects they know to join so they can share with other recruiters. (oh, wait. is that jobster.com?).

anyway, i am proposing *amanda ______* for any awards out there for dumbest marketeers and wondering what she did for michael arrington at techcrunch to get such rave reviews. clearly more than i got.

evan launches obvious

evan williams has gone and done something so many of us entrepreneurs have talked and dreamed about. evan took his company odeo back and will go it alone testing and launching new services. good luck evan! it'll be fun to watch.

Microsoft's New IE7 Browser - Mixed Reviews

based on fred wilson's blog post i downloaded and installed the new IE7 browser. i want to say that there a few small things i do like about it.

positive...msft seems to have updated the fonts on my whole OS so now in my outlook email and here typing in my browser there is a nicer looking (clearner) font.

negative...where to start...for some reason (i guess to hurt google) msft decided to make yahoo my default home page and search tool bar. this is just plain stupid on their part. even if it gets them and yahoo more users in the short term it just builds the argument that they're evil.

they have added these tabs which i guess i should like but since there seems to be no way to make them go away it's just annoying.

they totally screwed up my browser-top links. why?!

they moved the url address box to the top and i cant figure out how to move back down if at all. why?!

they got rid of all IE menu items. now i dont even have a way to change my home page back to google.

here's the funniest...my msn portfolio manager app which is a msft active-x app doesnt work anymore. they've managed to screw their own active x apps now.

does anyone know if i can revert back to old IE? i'm guessing msft doesnt allow it.

now, i'll bet you that google is a lot more on top of blogs like mine than msft. it took about 3 hrs for google to respond to my G complaints. i'm guessing msft wont ever.

More on Google Desktop Drop-downs

several google people have posted comments on this blog and emailed to help show me how wrong i have been about this. first, i'm really impressed at their positive attitude about their company and aggressiveness in addressing any criticism head on. it's yet another testament to how strong this company is (and why we all have such painful envy:).

however, as much as i love and admire google (and am happily a shareholder again at a $380 buy in), i just cant buy their arguments that the annoying drop-downs in my IE google toolbar are there as the result of user requests. this is a statement that comanies often say which is sometimes true. when craig newmark says it we believe it. the guy told me he took two years to add photos to listings to make sure he was acting on what his users really wanted.

if there is a googler who wants to make a case as to how

a) users asked to have a drop down menu in the text entry box that offers up things like relatively unpopular google services like groups and froogle or generic things that bookmarks or button gallery, or

b) any of these services are truly useful to me like the original google service, or

c) how it's in my interest to not offer me anyway to turn this annoying feature off

i'm all ears.

personally, i think that some marketer realized that if you put a button *inside* a text entry box it's way more likely we'll click on it which to me gets really close to spam in a more intelligent form and really close to something msft would do if it could.

i would love to know who's idea this feature was and how they can justify it.

and common guys, how on earth do you justify changing someting in MY user interface without my asking for it or giving permission?

Figured out how Google is doing pop downs on my desktop

has anyone noticed that google has now added this useless "G" inside your google search toolbar in your browser? i know i never asked to add that or downloaded something to add it. sometimes when i click in the box to type a query, i get this annoying, stupid pop down that offers me a host of services i have no need or interest in seeing -- "web, usa, current site, feeling lucky, images, groups, news, froogle, maps, bookmarks, button gallery".

now this must be the creation of some MBA with a corporate goal like 'synergistically building our other businesses' or 'getting a greater share of the user'. this is so far off google's original premise of just trying to serve the user and 'dont do evil'. this isnt evil, but it is stupid. this is good news though. it shows that even google can mess up and that one of the new market laws is that big eventually leads to stupid.

my guess is that since google is still a company lead by super smart founders, they will catch this and fire the stupid creator of this horrible feature or do whatever google does when you fuck up. the absolute worst part is that they dont even let me have the option to get rid of their stupid G.

well i guess google has now truly the joined the ranks of big corporations with its own pointless, user hating new and improved feature. so ballmer, dont feel bad. you're not alone.

Coolest random xmas gift

my dad got me this ambient orb which changes colors to show movement in the stocks, weather and pollen and bunch of other rnadom things. at first i thought it was a joke since it has no internet connection to receive this data. finally i figured out that it must be receiving a one way broadcast via am or fm radio frequencies but it's pretty cool. first i set it to watch my stocks but i already do that. then i set it to show me the weather in sf but that's boring since its 59 degrees almost every day. but pollen levels, now that's useful new information though i dont know what i'll do with it.

forbes/google getting in our faces

has anyone noticed how some sites are getting bolder in their willingness to really hit us over the head with messages? if you read forbes' latest youtube story you'll notice that they play loud annoying ads even after you turn off the volume and then follow with their annoying video interviews you didnt choose to hear.

right after this annoying experience i went to google and had an in my face ajaxy pop up telling me about something new (cant even remember what bc i closed the whole browser to get rid of it). while it's cool to see the power google has to talk to all 100m of us in a morning, it's also scary.

tribe reboot party oct 10th

rsvp here

valleywag calls me a hippie and covers my washpost flap

i love valleywag tagging me as a hippie.

Pincus, liberal First-Amendment-Rights-believing hippie that he is, said no.

they cover my washpost flap pretty accurately.