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> The relationship with Superfish is not financially significant; our goal was to enhance the experience for users. I would prefer for this to be a lie than fo

by tyho 12y ago

> The relationship with Superfish is not financially significant; our goal was to enhance the experience for users. I would prefer for this to be a lie than for it to turn out for this statement to be true. Surely nobody at Lenovo honestly belived that ad injection improved user experience?

therealwill 12y ago
Well, a lot of people use their computer to purchase things. How do people know what to purchase? Ads! Therefore more ads = more knowledge about what to purchase and results in a better user experience QED /s.
- doodpants 12y ago
  You know, I often feel as though I'm living in a cave, because there are many things out in the world that I'm unaware of, and I often wonder if it's because I use Adblock. Take Uber, for example. It's apparently a popular ride-sharing service, which I've only heard of recently due to a bunch of articles about them getting into trouble with the law. So how did that service get to be so popular to begin with? How did people first hear of them? I'm guessing that there were lots of banner ads for them all over the web, which I've never seen. Of course, my curiosity as to what goods and services I might be missing out on is not strong enough to cause me to turn off Adblock, because good lord, the web user experience is horrible without it.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Well, truth be told, most products and services out there are crap, and if something is actually good (or stupidly bad), you'll learn about it anyway. People like to talk about things that solve their problems well. Hell, in tech the Hacker News itself is a nice place for that; most of my "product discovery" happens here. Sure, maybe sometimes you will be late to the party, but you'll find out about good products eventually, and hell no, I'm not going to look at ads unless forced at gunpoint.
  - sejje 12y ago
    I've never seen an ad for Uber. I know about them because I keep up with startup news. They were in the news plenty before the legal issues.
FooBarWidget 12y ago
This would SEEM obvious because as techies we hate ads. But you can't extrapolate this to the general population. There was one time when I visited my mother. We started her instant messaging program, and we were presented with special offers. I recognized it as such within half a second, so I almost automatically checked the 'Do not show this again' checkbox. My mother alarmed me: "No, do not make it go away! I want to see the offers, they're useful!" I was mindblown. Another example: I have snail mail advertisements. But my girlfriend, who's living with me now, asked me to sign up for advertisements such as supermarket special offers. Another mindblown.
- mynameisvlad 12y ago
  > supermarket special offers Why would you not want to sign up to know about what discounts are available at your local grocery store, especially if you frequent it weekly.
  - cordite 12y ago
    Our kind of audience has learned to be more effective with less distraction, likely because we have encountered information overload routinely before and therefore changed our behavior and preferences to prevent or lessen the problem.
  - obsurveyor 12y ago
    Keyword there is "snail mail." You're saying you really want this stuff in your mailbox every week? I don't want any snail mail(of any kind), any week but it's something I still have to live with.
    - tomp 12y ago
      In contrast, I've been refusing to opt-in to my banks online statements for a long time now, simply because I want to have important stuff (e.g. my money) printed black-on-white. Email can be easily faked.
      - 12y ago
cmyr 12y ago
...for users¹ ¹ ...of our targeted advertising platform
skywhopper 12y ago
I feel like many marketing professionals have deluded themselves into either thinking this is true or redefining enough words in their vocabulary that it becomes true. eg, If these ads result in people buying something, then that "proves" they were "useful" and thereby provided a "good experience" to the user.
- profinger 12y ago
  I hear it all too much! Serious BS!
xienze 12y ago
> Surely nobody at Lenovo honestly belived that ad injection improved user experience? I can see the marketing folks honestly believing this. See, the problem with people in marketing is that they come up with ideas that sound good in theory but neglect to consider the implications. "Wouldn't it be great if I was presented with offers to buy things based on context clues in the web pages I'm browsing?" "Wouldn't it be great if I didn't have to enter passwords all the time?" After the marketing brainstorm session the engineers are asked "can this be done?" And the answer is usually "Yes, but..." This is the point at which the marketing droid zones out. "Make it so!" So yes, I do believe someone in marketing thought this was a great idea. And if it worked perfectly without compromising security, it probably would be a good idea. But there's always compromises in technology, and the marketers either can't grasp or don't care about the consequences.
- pixl97 12y ago
  Marketing folk are both the biggest scammers and biggest suckers at the same time. Causality is not one of their strong points.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  I don't know. My experience with the output of marketing and sales people is that they come up with ideas that sound good only to them, and not to anyone with even a miligram of conscience. I try to attribute it to a kind of job-related blindness rather than malice, but seriously - quite often those ideas boil down to "how can we scam those poor schmucks"? It's like no one ever asks themselves the question if the idea is actually good for the end user. Good business is about providing value for proper compensation. If you're trying to trick your customer into paying more money for less value, you're just scamming them.
  - xienze 12y ago
    Well, at least in my experience they do come up with some ideas that are genuinely about making the user experience better (to increase retention/sales/etc. of course). Like the idea about doing away with or simplifying passwords somehow. It's an idea with good intentions and if it could work perfectly it would be _awesome_. But it doesn't work perfectly -- there are major drawbacks. The sales and marketing folks just don't understand that part of the equation.
chinathrow 12y ago
Fucking PR speek. That needs to stop too.

by tyho 12y ago

therealwill 12y ago

Well, a lot of people use their computer to purchase things. How do people know what to purchase? Ads! Therefore more ads = more knowledge about what to purchase and results in a better user experience QED /s.

doodpants 12y ago
You know, I often feel as though I'm living in a cave, because there are many things out in the world that I'm unaware of, and I often wonder if it's because I use Adblock. Take Uber, for example. It's apparently a popular ride-sharing service, which I've only heard of recently due to a bunch of articles about them getting into trouble with the law. So how did that service get to be so popular to begin with? How did people first hear of them? I'm guessing that there were lots of banner ads for them all over the web, which I've never seen. Of course, my curiosity as to what goods and services I might be missing out on is not strong enough to cause me to turn off Adblock, because good lord, the web user experience is horrible without it.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Well, truth be told, most products and services out there are crap, and if something is actually good (or stupidly bad), you'll learn about it anyway. People like to talk about things that solve their problems well. Hell, in tech the Hacker News itself is a nice place for that; most of my "product discovery" happens here. Sure, maybe sometimes you will be late to the party, but you'll find out about good products eventually, and hell no, I'm not going to look at ads unless forced at gunpoint.
- sejje 12y ago
  I've never seen an ad for Uber. I know about them because I keep up with startup news. They were in the news plenty before the legal issues.

FooBarWidget 12y ago

This would SEEM obvious because as techies we hate ads. But you can't extrapolate this to the general population. There was one time when I visited my mother. We started her instant messaging program, and we were presented with special offers. I recognized it as such within half a second, so I almost automatically checked the 'Do not show this again' checkbox. My mother alarmed me: "No, do not make it go away! I want to see the offers, they're useful!" I was mindblown. Another example: I have snail mail advertisements. But my girlfriend, who's living with me now, asked me to sign up for advertisements such as supermarket special offers. Another mindblown.

mynameisvlad 12y ago
> supermarket special offers Why would you not want to sign up to know about what discounts are available at your local grocery store, especially if you frequent it weekly.
- cordite 12y ago
  Our kind of audience has learned to be more effective with less distraction, likely because we have encountered information overload routinely before and therefore changed our behavior and preferences to prevent or lessen the problem.
- obsurveyor 12y ago
  Keyword there is "snail mail." You're saying you really want this stuff in your mailbox every week? I don't want any snail mail(of any kind), any week but it's something I still have to live with.
  - tomp 12y ago
    In contrast, I've been refusing to opt-in to my banks online statements for a long time now, simply because I want to have important stuff (e.g. my money) printed black-on-white. Email can be easily faked.
    - 12y ago

cmyr 12y ago

...for users¹ ¹ ...of our targeted advertising platform

skywhopper 12y ago

I feel like many marketing professionals have deluded themselves into either thinking this is true or redefining enough words in their vocabulary that it becomes true. eg, If these ads result in people buying something, then that "proves" they were "useful" and thereby provided a "good experience" to the user.

profinger 12y ago
I hear it all too much! Serious BS!

xienze 12y ago

> Surely nobody at Lenovo honestly belived that ad injection improved user experience? I can see the marketing folks honestly believing this. See, the problem with people in marketing is that they come up with ideas that sound good in theory but neglect to consider the implications. "Wouldn't it be great if I was presented with offers to buy things based on context clues in the web pages I'm browsing?" "Wouldn't it be great if I didn't have to enter passwords all the time?" After the marketing brainstorm session the engineers are asked "can this be done?" And the answer is usually "Yes, but..." This is the point at which the marketing droid zones out. "Make it so!" So yes, I do believe someone in marketing thought this was a great idea. And if it worked perfectly without compromising security, it probably would be a good idea. But there's always compromises in technology, and the marketers either can't grasp or don't care about the consequences.

pixl97 12y ago
Marketing folk are both the biggest scammers and biggest suckers at the same time. Causality is not one of their strong points.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
I don't know. My experience with the output of marketing and sales people is that they come up with ideas that sound good only to them, and not to anyone with even a miligram of conscience. I try to attribute it to a kind of job-related blindness rather than malice, but seriously - quite often those ideas boil down to "how can we scam those poor schmucks"? It's like no one ever asks themselves the question if the idea is actually good for the end user. Good business is about providing value for proper compensation. If you're trying to trick your customer into paying more money for less value, you're just scamming them.
- xienze 12y ago
  Well, at least in my experience they do come up with some ideas that are genuinely about making the user experience better (to increase retention/sales/etc. of course). Like the idea about doing away with or simplifying passwords somehow. It's an idea with good intentions and if it could work perfectly it would be _awesome_. But it doesn't work perfectly -- there are major drawbacks. The sales and marketing folks just don't understand that part of the equation.

chinathrow 12y ago

Fucking PR speek. That needs to stop too.