More change is coming to Microsoft.
The company just announced that it's killing the controversial stack-ranking system for employees.
A Microsoft employee told us that while many people will focus on the death of stack-ranking, the bigger story here is that Ballmer is losing power.
Stack-ranking is Ballmer's system for rating employees. Our source says Lisa Brummel, who runs HR at Microsoft, was never terribly fond of stack ranking.
Now that Ballmer is out, so is stack-ranking.
Stack-ranking was a bad system that caused widespread problems for Microsoft.
Essentially, the way it worked was that Microsoft managers had to rank their employees with a 1-5 ranking. No matter how good the employees were, some of them had to get the low-ranking of a 5. Seeing even good employees get a 5 hurt morale at Microsoft.
There was also a knock-on effect to stack-ranking. Brilliant employees didn't want to work together. Imagine this: You're a talented engineer. The best in your group. Do you want to go to another group of talented engineers? Someone in that group is going to get a 5, and it could be you.
If you got a low-ranking, then your earning -- For more information read the original article here.
Online ad fraud is rampant. We've known that for a long time. But it is surprising to find how cheap fraudulent traffic can be, and how some bots interact with video.
Digiday spoke with a former publishing executive who admitted to selling fraudulent traffic to advertisers in a "wink-wink-nudge-nudge" sort of way. In his confession, he revealed that his company would buy $10,000 to $35,000 in non-human traffic per day, at $0.002 per click. They'd make between $0.0025 and $0.004 from ad exchanges for every click they purchased.
A publisher goes to a traffic vendor who can, for example, promote links to the publisher's site in search engine queries or, of course, more dubious methods (Adweek released a report earlier this year labeling six vendors as the sketchiest of the bunch). According to Digiday's whistle-blower, there is no need to ask about where the cheaper traffic comes from, but it is assumed it's bot-driven.
"Publishers know," he told Digiday. "They might say 'we had no idea' and blame it on their traffic acquisition vendor, but that's bull----, and they know it. If you're buying visits for less than a penny, there's no -- For more information read the original article here.
A guy known on Twitter as @Moonlightswami was happy to get a package in the mail a few days ago. He had ordered an Xbox One from Target, he said, and, even though the video game console won't officially be available until November 22, Target shipped his Xbox to him early.
He wasn't the first one to accidentally get an Xbox One early, reports Evan Narcisse from the gamer blog, Kotaku.com. Target also sent one to at least one other gamer, known for his eBay name, priceless228.
They weren't supposed to be able to start using the new Xbox right away. Microsoft is making all Xbox One users connect to the Internet and download some special software before they can play online, Microsoft previously told Kotaku.com.
But @Moonlightswami was able to connect and get that software and start using his Xbox. He was so excited, he immediately filmed a YouTube video of the new console, and changed his Twitter handle to "#1 Source 4 XBOX ONE." He tweeted constantly how much he loved his new Xbox.
Seems as if Microsoft could have benefitted from having a few happy, excited Xbox One users -- For more information read the original article here.
