You might also like this story about weaponized clickbait →

I wrote about the rise of companies like Outbrain and Taboola, which have led to the proliferation of sleazy tabloid links all over the web:

Reading news online over the past year, I came to realize that more or less every story now includes a beautiful woman. Tucked into modules with names like "around the web" or "you might like," there she is, demonstrating her bosom or backside or pearly-white smile. Often she is a celebrity, talking about weight loss, filing a lawsuit, or collapsing onstage. Other times she is a fitness guru, or a fashion expert, or (in at least one case) a "former pole vaulter" who is "still smoking HOT." The women of "Around the Web" are ubiquitous, they are alluring, and they only want one thing — your click.

Outfoxed: how protests forced Mozilla's CEO to resign in 11 days →

On the day Brendan Eich resigned as Mozilla's CEO, I wrote about the strange path that took him from company co-founder to pariah a mere 11 days after he got the company's top job:

In nearly two decades working on Mozilla’s mission, Eich became known as a brilliant technician and a crusader for the open web. But after becoming Mozilla’s CEO 11 days ago, Eich became known primarily for his opposition to same-sex marriage. In an era when Jeff Bezos donates millions of dollars in support of marriage equality in Washington and Mark Zuckerberg marches in the San Francisco Pride parade, Eich stood out both for his opposition and his refusal to discuss his beliefs. His appointment sparked an extraordinarily public debate between him and the broader Mozilla community over when a CEO can claim a right to his own unpopular beliefs — and what should happen when those beliefs clash with the written values of his company.

Office politics: Microsoft comes back to reality →

Upon the release of Office for iPad, I wrote about Satya Nadella's vision for a renewed Microsoft:

The world Nadella describes is also one in which Microsoft, after years of chasing the tectonic shift to mobile devices, can lead again — by helping other businesses navigate the shift to mobile devices that threatened to derail Microsoft itself. Former CEO Steve Ballmer saw Windows as the center of the world, and the story of Microsoft was the operating system’s unstoppable march around the globe. At a small news event in San Francisco today, Nadella formally acknowledged a changed world: one where our computing is more likely to be done on a device made by a competitor than one branded with the Microsoft logo. "There is no trade-off; it’s reality for us," Nadella said as he pledged to bring Microsoft services to customers whatever platform they use. "What motivates us is the realities of our customers."

Twitter experimenting with showing how many people saw your tweets →

I was the first to report that Twitter has begun showing some users how many views their individual tweets are getting:

Like many experiments in Twitter's continuous redesign, showing users what amount to pageviews is likely an effort to encourage people to tweet more. For users with a modest number of followers, tweeting can sometimes feel like shouting into a void. That's why Twitter started letting you know when someone favorites something you retweeted, or a tweet you were mentioned in — those moves help to build a feedback loop that still doesn't feel quite complete. A view count lets you know that even if you're not receiving retweets or favorites, your posts aren't going totally unread.

Hucksters and hustlers: inside the hidden brand orgy of SXSW →

While attending my first South By Southwest Interactive Festival, I wrote about how the event had gone from a gathering of top tech minds to a numbing orgy of the #brands:

The festivalgoers in Austin this week mainly represent not blogs or design firms but some of the biggest corporations on earth. The interactive festival that drew 9,000 people in 2008 drew more than 30,000 last year, and what awaits them is a freewheeling carnival of brands. Outside the convention center, they stand in line to eat crowdsourced Oreos. Inside, they attend seminars on hashtag design. All around the convention center this week, corporate spaces glimmered in the rain like so many banner ads. In a way, SXSW itself has become the worst website ever — it just doesn’t realize it.