I used are because I am referring to the team of people building that amazing product.

I don’t know why I hadn’t seen the connections earlier! The new paid sticker business model they are probably trying to implement is a certain winner! It even has a cool name: Sticker Store. You already expect them to be paid at some point. Your brain has already been induced that expectation when it first saw the word “store” and saw the shopping basket. The first time I entered I wondered where the paid ones were, that’s how normal it felt in my mind.

They are monetizing on something people do right now in heavy amounts: texting. Or, better said, Facebook Chatting, as almost every device is connected to the Great Internet. With a lot of people using this way of communication, they are going to score big. Who wouldn’t want “premium” smilies others don’t have, so (s)he can boast? How many are willing to pay for it?

They have about three options of making money out of this:

1) Make their own icon packs, then sell them for 99 cents per pack. Instant profit.

2) Allow designers to upload their own pre-approved packs, split the sales.

3) Sell integrated campaigns to big companies for a looooot of money (see the Despicable me stickers).

Now I also have an answer for the size of the stickers: you have a big (and dynamic) canvas to work on. Chatting as you know it will be changed forever. Just you wait and see.

Facebook would be an interesting company to work for nowadays, a lot of cool, social stuff to develop with such a big and diverse user base. Good job, Mark! (Also, good job, Mark’s team, you are a bunch of awesome people)

Because it increases engagement. If most people are like me, once they see the Seen on the bottom of the conversation, they come back to see if there is any reply and end up browsing Facebook for whatever other reason.

I am really curious how much it increased the engagement with Facebook since they introduced the Seen time feature to conversations on the site.

It goes both ways. Continue reading →

I read in a comment on a review of a gay bar: “You don’t HAVE to be gay to enjoy this place”. It hit me so hard what kind of a world I lived in and the kind of world that shaped my line of thought. A world in which gay people are hated and marginalized, although we seem to advocate for their rights.

When you hear the expression “gay bar” do you, as a straight person, think of it as a place where you would never enter willingly, but where you would enter only once in your lifetime and consider it like going to a zoo, or you just don’t give it so much importance?

I know it’s a stupid thing to ask on the Internet, but please answer truthfully.

Noreen – A Short Film – HD from El Zorrero Films on Vimeo.

The author of this movie poses an interesting contest: try and find an alternative explanation for what happened, other than the obvious one your mind presents.

Here is mine: pervert Nolan was actually Noreen, who had a sex change operation. Noreen was the “her” Frank referred to when he said “I miss her”. The dead guy on the floor was actually gay and fell in love with Nolan. The previous night Nolan told him the truth. In the morning they argued, Nolan was holding a gun which accidentally discharged and shot the dead guy. Nolan than staged the scene to look like a suicide and called the cops. He hurried to make the Police call response time of 10 minutes. He feared that if he called in later the Police would have figured out there was fishy, as the gun was not freshly fired to fit in the 10 minute response time, so the caller is the murderer.

Con makes me think of Sherlock Holmes teaching Watson how to keep her mind open to alternate possibilities in the series Elementary. During his “mistakes” he makes you think of alternate versions of the truth. Him saying “No, the gun went off!” means he is hinting you a possible alternate possibility, that the guy did not shoot himself, somebody else shot him when the “gun went off”. The dialogue between them, “plotting” what to tell the team that arrives after them, is actually the dialogue that happened in the shooter’s mind: to tell the truth or to make something up.

I wonder if the guy that wrote this short is involved in the series Elementary or any detective series. I also wonder what he imagined happened with the dead man.

I say this because I believe that humans need ONE leader. Not many, just one. I think that even the most powerful group of people in the world has a ruler, ONE person, in charge, who can settle a dispute. The Alpha Being.

That’s why humanity invented religion. We need to feel someone is in charge in order to feel secure. The mere thought that we are in charge of our own destiny, that nothing is written for us anywhere, that our future is solely in our hands is purely ludicrous.

LOVE.

I also find the animation to have a very good analogy to the story of Jesus Christ.

I realized one thing: Google Chrome only updates itself when you shut it down. It never prompts you for an update. So let’s have a challenge: who can keep the longest without updating Google Chrome the regular way? When you are ready to prove it, just comment with a link to a screenshot with the version, your system uptime and the proof that you didn’t turn off updates.

You can, of course, cheat, but why be a douche if there is no prize? Just pride.

We are a sad living thing, us humans. When we are young, we are presented with an image of perfection which we are then instructed to achieve. What I was forgotten to be taught was that we are actually all different. I do not need to be as good or better than someone else, because there is no way of comparing two people.

The truth is that we are taught to be a whole, perfect individual. But we are formed from many particles. If even one is missing, we are not that perfect image that we should become. Some struggle to find the missing parts in order to be whole, others accept that they are holed and enjoy life as it should be loved.

I find a funny link between whole and hole. As I see it, a whole is a hole that found its w.

I am now struggling to accept that I don’t have to be that shining image that was induced to me when I was little. To absorb the fact that I am perfect just the way I am, because everybody in this world is perfect. And then learn to be happy and feel fulfilled with who I am right now.

I feel that I am always chasing dreams. With failure, it’s simple. I accept failure and move along. I might linger a bit, but I’ll move along eventually. Success is the hardest, because I don’t rejoice it. I just check the tick-box in front of that dream and jump to the next one. I am now trying to learn to slow down, smell the roses, not worrying about anything in the world. Just be here, in this moment, be happy for what I achieved.

It’s hardest when your wholeness depends on someone else. Because in this case, you need that person to be your W. And that is no longer your decision. Good luck with that.

A corporation is pretty much like high-school. I am so clear about that right now. You can also observe the division into castes: the new kids, the cool geeks, the popular guys, the lame geeks, the hipsters, the naughty guys etc. I actually even wonder if people’s behavior ever gets past high-schoolish levels. Throughout life I see almost the same division as it was in high-school.

Human beings feel the need to divide, to reduce everything to an explainable form. And there are the ones who embrace the unexplained and try to make sense of it, and the ones that fear the unexplained and try to destroy it or enslave it in order to feel powerful and in control again.

Life is all about balance. Just as the physics law of action and reaction, throw someone off balance and he will try to get back to the previous state with all his will. And even when someone throws himself into the unknown abyss, there is an invisible force that tries to pull him back to the old ways. If he falls prey to it and is lifted back to safety, he will become one of the many we know as “Feel Good, Inc.” They are happy with what they have and fear that change will bring them unhappiness.

The ones that fight the invisible “Feel Good” force and keep falling into the abyss are faced with two options: “Feel Great Every Day, Inc.” or “OMG, I wish I were dead right now, Inc.”. Int’s a matter of choice, actually, of adjusting one’s lens to fit the road you are travelling on or the one you wish to be travelling on.

I gazed into the abyss, got mesmerized by it and threw myself in it with all my might. I am feeling the “Good” force creeping onto me, but I am fighting it fiercely. I think I am winning, too. So, right now, I find myself still floating through the abyss, I haven’t reached any f”all-signs” yet, but I wish that when put in front of The Choice, I would choose the “Feel Great Every Day” exit.

Here’s to hoping!