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OK, I changed my mind when I discovered that www.dell.net goes to www.snap.com, the creators of what is likely the most irritating web technology ever!

Seriously though this all reminds me of the regular attempts by the International Olympic Committee to shut down every "Olympic Pizza" shop in host cities.

I have been using the 'snap co2 saver' for the last couple of months, and it works very well for that use. Much easier to set up than drilling down through 'Windows' dialog boxes for the average user. It also seems to wake back up from sleep more reliably than using the standard Windows setup, though I have no idea as to why that would be true. Better registry edits? Has anyone else used this to tame their power consumption?

http://co2saver.snap.com/

http://www.snap.com/ is doing something different, Cost Per Acquisition. They let you set a specific action, once that action is completed you are charged. No need to worry about simple click fraud.

Bill Gross's new startup Snap.com has a great new advertising model that solves the click fraud program.

They offer traditonal online advertising options such as charging for the number of times a listing is displayed, and a pay-per-click model (That Gross originally pioneered with Overture).

Snap's big contribution to online advertising is "Pay-Per-Action". They track a user's click-stream from their search engine, to the site, and track a user's movements there. So a bookseller can agree to pay 2% of sales for leads from Snap. Or Friendster could agree to pay $.25 per new subscriber.

This has two big advantages over PPC. It 100% eliminates click fraud. It also eliminates risk to the merchant, there's no more wondering what percentage of PPC visitors will convert to sales.

More on Snap.com at my blog IAmAdamSmith

Our team at online travel startup TripInvite.com plan to start a "Pay per Action" campaign after we launch later this month. Other travel sites signed with Snap are paying about 2 to 3% right now.

One nice interface that does something similar to this is snap.com. I like how it allows you to refine the search from multiple selections. Much nicer than multiple pages of data to click thru. You can just close in on your desired item, back out a bit and refine as needed. Great visual tracking as you type as well. Very sweet!

Inktomi sells search, directory, and Having used their services twice (once when I worked on the search engines for snap.com, and again when I wrote the search system for ifilm, I can't help but think that I've seen what google is doing quite a few times before.

They scored a great win when they took over yahoo; plenty of revenue there, and selling access to the search engine for co-branding (via API or whatever) is a great way to rake in cash; but it's not unique!

Inktomi offers news, shopping, and directory (taxonomy) services, but their results stink. We fixed alot of this on the ifilm engine (take a look) but it's nothing like google.

BTW, does anyone know for sure that her Playboy pictures won't be published, and if so, why?

Hey OOG, would you settle for Nell McAndrew?

Better yet, check out the Bomis Krista Allen web ring. And if you really want to see her in action, you'll soon be able to rent Emmanuell e: First Contact on DVD.

I'm sorry good sir, but bomis.com has owned that patent for quite some time. See the press release of September 27, 1999: http://bomis.snap.com/about/pressreleases/990927.h tml.

The main problem with search engines, is the results are usually polluted with porn, warez and other such stuff, by people with loads of METAs or whatever the search engine looks for. What we need is a search engine that starts (from either a directory, or a classic search engine), and re-ranks the results according to how useful people found the site they clicked on.

But, wait a minute, they're here! There are several sites that use a popularity-based reranking system, excite and snap.com being among the most popular. Of course, the other engines are following in their footsteps - it appears that direct hit (who power hotbot and several others are using the same sort of thing.

It'd be even better if it could group users into profiles according to their (user-selected) demographic (eg: doctors, british). That way, if an American types "football" they get links about American Football (gridiron?), if a Brit types "football" they get links about soccer, and if an Australisian types it they get links about rugby.

Search Engine Watch has an article about such a system, by the same people who provide the technology behind snap.com (disclaimer: okay, I work at globalbrain, but I'm talking generally).