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End of the Free Internet
Posted by
michael
on Fri Feb 22, 2002 01:19 AM
from the where-the-sidewalk-ends dept.
from the where-the-sidewalk-ends dept.
efedora writes: "The End of Free keeps a list of the various transitions to paid services from free net sites. The list is getting longer. When I think of an individual site that's really worthwhile I say to myself, "Sure, that site is worth $4.95 a month". The problem is there are going to be lots of sites at $$$ a month and it sure adds up." Of course even Slashdot is planning on rolling out subscriptions-for-no-banner-ads sometime soon, so I suppose we're not entirely immune to the subscription bug either.
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End of the Free Internet
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subscriptions for non-banner-ads (Score:4, Insightful)
Get in touch with reality. Jesus.
Re:subscriptions for non-banner-ads (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't -- and, as a result, I haven't seen a banner in ages. All I get is the outline of the rectangle where the ad should appear.
Believe me -- when you're still using a dial-up connection, turning off the graphics makes all the difference in the world as far as surfing speed goes.
Re:subscriptions for non-banner-ads (Score:5, Funny)
Re:subscriptions for non-banner-ads (Score:4, Interesting)
Hey, I'm not from the USA. Thanks to a very effective market-monopoly by our largest Telco who has exclusive rights to the copper, there are less than 25,000 DSL subscribers in the whole of New Zealand.
And then, even if you are lucky enough to live in an area where DSL is available, you face the prospect of paying by the megabyte [telecom.co.nz] for data sent/received (including traffic generated by DOS attacks, spam etc).
But wait -- it gets worse!
This large telco also appears to have placed severe throttling on P2P traffic such that some people are reporting speeds as low as 1KB/S when using the cheapest DSL accounts.
You guys in the USA should think yourselves lucky!
Re:subscriptions for non-banner-ads (Score:5, Informative)
and put
<script>
window.close()
</script>
in the error page associated with 127.0.0.1
Re:subscriptions for non-banner-ads (Score:5, Informative)
No shit. For good laughs, cut-and-paste the text of a news article into a text editor, then save the HTML and compare the difference.
I believe the current record for lowest S/N ratio (ignoring tomshardware.com's practice of putting one sentence per page ;-) for a mainstream news site is http://www.theglobeandmail.com [theglobeandmail.com].
Ad-laden CNN serves 22,700 bytes of HTML for a 1400-byte story.
The Globe and Mail delivers a staggering 90,587 bytes of HTML for a 3082-byte story.
Those numbers are for surfers who surf with images off, by the way. The bloat is Javashit, banners, towers, stock quotes, polls, and navigation to every section of the newspaper. I don't even want to think about what it'd be like with graphics on.
And these jerkwads wonder why their bandwidth bills are so high.
Re:subscriptions for non-banner-ads (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:subscriptions for non-banner-ads (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:subscriptions for non-banner-ads (Score:5, Interesting)
Money Slashdot gets from readers under current system: $0
Money Slashdot gets from readers under proposed system: $0 (if, according to you, not a single person pays)
How is this a stupid idea?
*It does not cost Slashdot anything, and might bring in money.*
I would probably pay even though I currently block about 98% of the banners that Slashdot shows.
Why?
Because I get a lot out of Slashdot. I am willing to pay, or even donate, to a cause/service that is offered for free that I get something out of. I have disposable income, like most of Slashdot, and I am willing to give some of that up for things that I like (like Slashdot)
I have contributed monetarily to FSF, EFF, and CPSR, as well as the Red Cross and the Salvation Army.
I am not under the impression that I deserve everything for free, nor that these services can rely on others for support. I realize that Slashdot does have income from advertisements now, but I am willing to give up a few dollars to make sure that Slashdot continues even if this dries up (have you checked how much less people are paying for ads these days?)
I bought a Slashdot T-shirt from CopyLeft pre-Slashdot buyout in part to support Slashdot.
I think you are the one that needs to get in touch with reality.
ThinkGeek (Score:4, Interesting)
([x] feet up, in freezing temperatures with wind... and rain. Hey, can I get a light? Sure can. ThinkGeek Delta Shockproof lighters!)
Re:subscriptions for non-banner-ads (Score:5, Funny)
Well, you'd be insane to use this for anything important... but yes, they have [slashdot.org].
Re:subscriptions for non-banner-ads (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Popup
2. Popunder
3. Resize to full screen and hide all buttons
4. Spawn even more ads
5. Move around the screen so I can't click the close button
6. Eat up 90% of my system resourses and often crashing windows by using some shitty flash/java advertisement
7. Attempt to autoinstall spyware repeatedly
8. Play sound at the loudest posible volume and keep the distortion just low enough to where you can understand what is being said.
9. Follow my mouse around
10. Reset my homepage/searchpage
11. Flash bright, highcontrast colors and jitters.
Am I forgetting anything?
Re:subscriptions for non-banner-ads (Score:4, Insightful)
But that swings both ways. Site admins have been expecting to make a profit (in the long term) from something that people are simply not willing to pay for. It sucks, but it's simple economics and crying about it won't change the fact.
and thats a culture that's about to change.
The change will not be that people will suddenly pay for all the sites that used to be free. The change will be that all the free sites that lose money will disappear.
I'm still convinced that the only solution to the "free site" problem is not on the profit end of the equation, but rather on the cost end. When bandwidth is of negligible cost (and it has to get there eventually, I'm very surprised it's taking so long) then sites will be able to stay afloat on the lower profit margins.
If I were to pay for slashdot, (Score:4, Insightful)
(A) Quality Journalism. Not Katz. Not Taco spelling things wrong or Hemos missing commas.
(B) Moderation issues fixed. See "The Post."
That is all.
Re:If I were to pay for slashdot, (Score:4, Interesting)
* The ability to vote on articles in the queue, a la Kuro5hin, instead of being at the mercy of the editor's whims as the non-subscribers are.
* Extra moderation points
* The ability to turn off ads (as is already planned), and maybe be optional for a discount on having one's own ad displayed on Slashdot
* Priority for articles that are submitted. That is, news items submitted by subscribers will be considered first.
* Some damn spell-checking on things that _are_ posted.
Just my 2 cents
Slashdot has banner ads? (Score:3, Funny)
Paying for the internet (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with that kind of model is a lot like the problem with Slashdot moderator points--you only have so many go around. If you spent $5/month on slashdot, would you have the inclination to spend another $5 for cnn.com or another $5 for espn.com?
Re:Paying for the internet (Score:5, Interesting)
I would pay $5.00 per month for google.
Anybody else can go screw themselves. Charge me $5.00 and you'll force me to try out your competition to see if I like them as much or better.
Eventual (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, I'll bet money that after people begin feeling comfortable with paying for content, the ads will come back. It's just the nature of the beast.
Re:Eventual (Score:4, Interesting)
The other end of the spectrum are the new sites launching with a pay element from day one. These are of high value to the user, offering information on stock prices, access to a valuable network, or some other information. They will often replace a telephone or paper based service that was charged at a premium previously.
The pay does model work, even paying thousands a year, if the content is of genuine value to the consumer and hasn't been freely available in the past.
Paying to remove banner ads is simply not going to make anyone money - why? - I can better spend the money upgrading to DSL or buying coffee. I don't get anything new.
Paying to 'support' a site could work. But only if a large enough minority actually put in some money. For something like a cancer patient support site this will work, for
And as another poster points out - Google style ads are the way to go. When I read a mac story on
I'm Fine With Subscriptions (Score:3, Interesting)
- You can keep Katz. I don't hate the guy as much as most people around here. He's not a moron, and he writes interesting articles. BUT, please ask Robert Cringely to write an article or two every month. I'm not sure if this would violate his contract with PBS, but he would be a nice addition to the Slashdot staff (perhaps he could even write an open-source/free software slanted column in addition to his PBS gig).
- No banner ads for subscribers, of course.
- Some "free" item every six or twelve months, perhaps. I'm talking small here, like a travel coffee mug of a relatively aesthetically-pleasing t-shirt with a slash and a dot on it.
- Ability for more customization than non-paying users. I'm thinking of some nifty themes, perhaps (everyone loves the apple./..org gfx, let's get some more good looking stuff). Also, subscribers should be able to moderate more often. I probably earn at least five karma points a day on my two accounts but haven't been able to moderate for MONTHS.
- Perhaps a general forum with a few different categories where subscribers can post questions, etc. I'm imagining an "Off-Topic" room, a "General hardware" room, and a "Software" room right now. Of course, this would all be OSS/FS-related chit chat for the most part (except for silly OT posts).
Eric Krout
Some day... (Score:4, Funny)
Keep the net free and make banners less intrusive? (Score:5, Interesting)
Banner free subscriptions (Score:3, Insightful)
Somewhere else in the office someone says... "Why is our banner model not working again?
But really, that model stopped working a while ago so now most sites run "house" banners, advertising partner sites and various sections / products within their own sites.
Paying for no banner ads? (Score:4, Insightful)
What I'm really saying is: Pay for content. Don't pay for ad removal.
The good, the bad, and the solution (Score:3, Interesting)
The bad thing is that bandwidth isn't free. When amateur sites are good, they get popular, and their bandwidth cost increases without bound.
The solution. It'd be nice if the bandwidth costs were paid by users. We already pay money to our ISPs. In an ideal world this money should pay for the bandwidth costs of the http requests that we send *and* the contents that we receive in return. Fan sites would no longer fear the bandwidth costs of the slashdot effect. They would only have to worry about the server not crashing. And for that we have prayers.
Why I might pay for /. (Score:3, Insightful)
My view is this: It's like subscribing to a magazine. Except the magazine is updated very frequently and covers a much broader spectrum of news than any print magazine.
Yes, it's not perfect. Sometimes I don't agree with what editor X says, or what comment Y says, or what comment Y is moderated as, but it's the same as any other aspect of life: there are good and bad parts. It's an imperfect system, but I like it anyway.
I like
Since
Anyway, that's just my ignorant, pigheaded opinion. I do suppose it's a wee bit off-topic but I figure that a lot of posts on this thread will be talking about this very issue.
Network needed (Score:3, Insightful)
There needs to be a network. Users who want to subscribe to sites can go into the network and click a checkbox for all the sites they want, at a low price per site (more along the lines of $1/mo or something.) Then the total charge is added up and run through their CC once. This would help reduce credit card and processing charges for the individual sites; they'd just get a check every month from the network for all their subscribers.
Ad and Subscription Fees (Score:5, Insightful)
To recap my understanding of the issue, regular print periodicals are either completely paid for by users (mostly books, and your more distinquished journals), or by a combination of user fees and ad fees (most magazines and newspapers). A few periodicals get by purely on advertising (Village Voice, for instance)
It should be noted that in the mixed fee case, advertising provides the vast majority of revenue. Subscription fees pretty much are just used as a signal to advertisers that people are actually reading, and therefore willing to pay for, a magazine.
Since online pubs can completely verify readership, the signalling aspect of subscrber fees should have been rendered unnecessary. Also, since distribution of online content is cheaper than regular paper pubs by several orders of magnitude (though certainly not free, as was once touted), online pubs were thought to have an advantage over offline pubs in that regard.
Somewhere along the line, this new paradigm has, at least temporarily collapsed. I suspect a lot of it has to do with poor understanding of market forces and implemantation rather than the ultimate unfeasability of ad-supported, free online content.
Re:Ad and Subscription Fees (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it has to do with clickthrough. A magazine ad gets paid for wether or not you look at the ad or just flip to the next page. Nearly 100% of web ads are based on people actually clicking on the ads. If the original ad monkies had had thier heads on straight, we would have kept the OLD system, and subsequently seen 90% of the ad-revenue models succeed and we'd still be living in paradise.
I wouldn't pay... (Score:4, Funny)
...but I would put a $5 bill down CowboyNeal's g-string in exchange for a lapdance.
It all adds up (Score:3, Interesting)
We're getting nickle and dimed to death on all the stuff, and after a while, people are going to stop being willing and/or able to pay. *I'm* not paying $4.95 a month. And in SlashDots case, unless the ads suddenly start taking the whole screen, I don't even notice them. Some sites are in my firewall database so I never see the content anyway.
And incidently, how effective are these ads? It appears that ThinkGeek advertises a lot, but I never click through to them. I can probably count the number of ads I've clicked through on.
Now, for one time fees, like Opera, it's worth paying the $$$ to get rid of the ads. THOSE types of ads use screen space you can't get rid of, since it's integrated into the browser. For SlashDot type ads, they scroll right off the screen.
So does SD really think anyone will pay $4.95 for ad free, *other* than as a method to support the site (ie, they'd pay anyway, but this way they feel like they're getting something for their money?)
And speaking of nickles and dimes, anyone check their phone bill recently? New charge: Infra Structure Upgrade for disasters. Greaaat. And I'm not even done grousing about paying for 911 service on a line that I never (in fact, can't) make a voice call from.
--John (running out of nickles and dimes)
Why not try and add some value? (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically what they have done is package some of their content and index it in a way that is worth some money each year.
The casual browser can still stop by and catch the news or discussion, but the interested user can subscribe and get nicely made PDF's of various articles and other things.
So much of what
I find it hard to believe that all the brains concentrated on this site a couple times a day that we cannot come up with something worth paying for.
Whadda think?
Humor: What you'd REALLY like in pay-Slashdot? (Score:3, Funny)
- Purchasable karma - for a small additional fee, of course
...
- VIP chat with (insert your most-loved Slashdot editor here)
- Voting-out of (insert your most-hated Slashdot editor here)
- Priority consideration in the story-submission queue
- Higher rankings in comment submission
Suggest a few of your own! (I've kept my ideas non-obscene, since this is just meant in good fun).Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [sethf.com]
Re:Humor: What you'd REALLY like in pay-Slashdot? (Score:5, Funny)
That's not slashdot, that's a democracy!
How long until the VA Systems bankruptcy? (Score:5, Insightful)
The way Downside [downside.com] views this data, it's not when the company dies, it's when the stockholders die. And they're already dead; the stock is down 99% (yes, 99%) from its peak. There are ways a company out of cash can continue to operate, (dilute, take on debt, sell off assets) but they're all terrible for the stockholders.
Charging for Slashdot looks like a last-ditch effort to give that asset some value for resale.
Problem with "free" sites. (Score:4, Insightful)
I have chosen to avoid ads alltogether on my site. If I get to the point that I need revenue to fund my site, I'll sell products from within to fund the bandwidth. Sure, I wouldn't get THAT many sales if the purpose of my site isn't to promote the products but rather content, but any sales are 100% mine I'm not feeding off pennies from banner ads purchased by other companies.
-Restil
Use Reptile.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think this is a good thing. It would require us to have a REAL revenue stream without having to rely on VC. People have to get used to the fact that someone needs to pay for the bills.
With Reptile we are going to integrate payment systems (paypal, merchant, etc) so that you can subscribe to content based on reputation..
This way you can subscibe to your favorite sites like slashdot or kuro5hin and and at the same time get access to a very high rated Salon article.
Of course a lot of this is still under development but we would love to get your help! [openprivacy.org]
Pay for Quality Content (Score:5, Interesting)
What I see is that (and it has already started happening in the last year or so) all these little web sites will be bought up by a conglomerate and mergered together. The economics of this is quite smart. I mean, it's not really economical for one small company to have a 10K server and a 1k/month internet connection. If 10 of these sites have been merged together, they would come to 1/10 (maybe a little more) of the original cost. Examples of this are seen here at Slashdot, eVite by Excite, and others.
Even then, these conglomerates will still not be able to afford to make a decent profit (I mean, that's what companies are there for..making money) So they might in the end look towards a pay for content plan. So it becomes, people will only pay for content that they care about or are interested in. Content that they read frequently. In the end, it becomes a choice for the consumers where demand sets the price.
Now for the point of this post. I would gladly pay $2-5 (approximately the price of a newstand magazine) for access to quality content. I would definitely pay that much for access to read articles and post on slashdot. In addition, this would be a great raise the quality of the content (ie posting).
Also, a number of people have posted about using ad-blocker programs. In the end, those programs are only hurting yourself and everyone else on the internet. Company need the small amount of money coming from these advertisers to barely stay afloat. These programs only go to convince the advertisers to pay significantly less for the ads because less and less people are viewing the ads. Think about it this way, would advertisers pay millions of dollars to advertise during the Super Bowl if they found out that there was a technology that a good population of TV watchers are using to block the super bowl ads?
No such thing as a free lunch (Score:4, Insightful)
And since they already do respond to your http get requests, you can safely assume they pay for the ability. This simply means what we've al known for so long but have conveniently ignored for maybe the last decade:
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
It's no longer a question of whether
I agree that the technique adopted over at arstechnica seems interesting, but I'm not sure how successful it will be.
Honestly, I have no idea how
/. has unfettered access to the best minds out there currently; use them. Start an 'Ask Slashdot' thread to come up with an appropriate revenue model, then use a poll to evaluate the most likely alternatives.
Avantgo - end of free (Score:3, Interesting)
AvantGo [avantgo.com] is weeding out what they call "Custom channel abuse". Basically its 8 or more people creating a custom channel to a site that doesn't pay up for a licence. See the Register article here [theregister.co.uk] and the AvantGo announcement here [avantgo.com].
This means that things like Slashdots own palm friendly version [slashdot.org] and my AvantSlash [fourteenminutes.com] (along with thousands of other non-profit making sites who provide an ability to view their content for free) are going to be left a little out in the cold.
I've been recommended Plucker [plkr.org] for the Palm and Mazingo [mazingo.net] for the PPC - not tried either though.
Why don't banner ads work? (Score:5, Insightful)
Banner ads, the idea behind them, does work. The problem is that people have come to the decision that they will only pay for banner ads that are quantifiable... I.E. Click Throughs.
This is not, and should not be the case. Banner ads should be sold on the number or visits on a site, and the popularity of the site.
Just like advertisers want to be seen during superbowl.... Why? Many, many eyeballs. So their willing to pay a hefty price!
I don't see a comercial during the superbowl and go... "Whoa... I gotta have that!" and then leave to go to the store.... NO! I finish watching the superbowl and then at a later date, with the proverbial commercial seed planted in my brain, I go and purchase that product.
The same goes for banner ads. It's a form of advertisement. I'm not going to drop everything to go and head over to that site..... I'm here at slashdot or where-ever for a reason. I'll do what I have to, and then later.... When I'm not too busy.... I'll head over to thinkgeek and buy that hat.
Yes I purchased many a thing at ThinkGeek and elsewhere, because of banner-ads (I would not have known about them otherwise) but I have NEVER purchased anything by means of a click-through.
So in quantifiable means, the banner ad didn't work. There was a click through but no purchase.
Ah, but I did purchase. Just at a later date.
I can't stress this fact enough.... We do not drop everything when we see a tv ad and head to the store... we do it later. Does this mean because we didn't drop anything that TV ads are failing?
Time for a philosophy change.
Good Old Days... (Score:3)
I think our perspective has changed as these sites still exist, and there is still a kind of "undernet" out there, that is often ignored by the search engines (free pages), or are simply not linked to by the "mainstream" net sites because they offer no opportunity to make a buck. It's still a neat place to spend an evening surfing around, just for the sake of surfing.
I pay for what I want to reward (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdot would be one of those. No banner ads is worth $0.00 a month to me.. I ignore them anyway. But if my few dollars a month helps keep it around and running well, THAT is worth it.
Why I wouldn't pay for slashdot (Score:3, Interesting)
Forget the ny times and it's free registration problems - we'd have to pay out for another subscription for every other link!
maybe paying should give you extra +1 bonus (Score:3, Interesting)