On Facebook, domain investing and charitable giving.
Here are three things that have been on my mind. One is tangentially related to domains, one is about time spent domain investing, and the other is timely but not related to domains.
1. Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) is getting absolutely crushed by the iOS tracking changes. The beauty of advertising on Facebook as you can just tell it to find new customers and it works its magic to find them for you. Now, it’s harder for it to find customers and it to see who converts, which destroys the feedback loop that makes it so valuable.
While few people will shed a tear over Facebook, it’s also hurting a lot of small businesses that rely on Facebook for business. Everyone yells about privacy, but I’m not so concerned about the practical implications of some of this data collection. As an advertiser, Facebook uses a bunch of data about you to deliver relevant ads, but it doesn’t really share this information with its advertisers.
It’s clear that privacy is going to change the ad tech game, and I think this will benefit contextual advertising that is based on what you’re doing and what site you’re on rather than your browsing history. This could help domain parking. Domain parking started to get into the behavioral advertising game, but links tied to the meaning of a domain work great.
2. One of the most expensive things in domain investing is your time. Some of it is unavoidable; you have to put time into finding the right domains to buy. But a lot of time is wasted. It’s wasted on platforms that don’t work well. Waiting for errors to clear, inquiring about where the domains you bought are, combining accounts full of expired domains. If there’s any gift the domain industry could give to domain investors this holiday season, it’s making sure their systems work right and are reliable.
3. I’ve learned a lot of things late in life. Like, don’t donate cash directly to charities. Instead, donate appreciated securities. You don’t pay the tax on the appreciation and get to deduct the full amount from your taxes, so you have more cash to give to the charity. There’s no wash rule on these donations, so you can immediately buy more of the same stock. You can even donate cryptocurrency. The easiest way to do this is to set up a donor advised fund at Schwab or a similar company. Donate your stock to the fund then you can distribute it as cash to the charities.
