4 ms·
Publicity is good, as long as its not "cuill" publicity. On another topic: is there any goal quite so vacuous as "raising awareness" about something?
by Prrometheus 18y ago
Publicity is good, as long as its not "cuill" publicity.
On another topic: is there any goal quite so vacuous as "raising awareness" about something?
- TomOfTTB 18y agoI'm not sure that's true. I mean, in many businesses it's true that any publicity is good publicity. But when your business is dependant on you being an authoritative source bad publicity has a real impact. What's the point of a site that reports CO2 stats if the guy has proven he can't be trusted to give accurate stats? (The link says he claims not to have been the source for the article just for the record) You're probably right in this instance. His startup was so small before and the fallout is so big that he may very well get more new visitors than he loses this time around. But I'll be curious to see if they make return trips or whether they assume he can't be trusted and go on their way.
- Prrometheus 18y agoI have no idea which kind of publicity this will end up being, by the way. Environmentalism itself is so popular that it would take a pretty big screw up for CO2stats to be irreparably damaged. There is certainly a market.
- dcurtis 18y agoFor commercial online enterprises, "raising awareness" is a euphemism for "getting signups." Although I think Alex is, at heart, genuinely interested in helping the environment (he has a PhD in environmental science and is an environmental fellow at Harvard, after all). The fact that he has found a way to monetize his interest and help the environment at the same time is great. And it appears to be very profitable as well.
- axod 18y agoI think in many minds this will be summarized as: * CO2stats said google uses X * Google said they use Y, which is far less than X