It was quite funny to read the headline ‘Pop-Up Ads Creator Ethan Zuckerman: ‘I’m Sorry’’. The apology was made in a text signed by himself to The Atlantic magazine.
Zuckerman says that for five years he and his colleagues tried to implement solutions to create income on the news and views portal. Along the way, they ended up creating a tool that has since become most hated — the pop-up ads. He claims that they did not know the damage it would cause to Internet users with their creation.
“I wrote the code to launch the window and run an ad in it. I’m sorry. Our intentions were good,” confesses Zuckerman now.
Sure, we can forgive Zuckerman, but there are still plenty of irritants online, for example, the uninvited YouTube ads. Users are forced to wait a few seconds to “skip the ad”, and not too just once. Very annoying.
Nothing is for free. Facebook’s motto for users — ‘Free and always will be’ — does not mean what it says. Small ads keep cropping up and with enough happening in them to slow down the Facebook browsing experience, depending on your connection speeds.
Browse any site and it could start playing a song or an advertising pitch, and you have no idea where it came from … It is just about bearable as soon as the user finds the button to stop the sound. More often than not, it is an impossible mission to go through the site while having to listen to the unwelcome sound bytes and find the button at the same time.
Fortunately, with the update to Google Chrome, you can detect which tab is playing the audio, which will be a great help in times of acute need.
What about the irritant of finding something interesting that you want to download, but out pops a page asking you to register your mobile phone or e-mail. Most times you end up not getting your download.
I still wonder if someone clicks on these banners. But the Internet is full of “winners” banners, and which could be the window for PC viruses to come in.
