The Not-So-Free Web 100
Big Brass Balls writes: "The NY Times has an article about how freebies are becoming harder to come by on the web." Registration free link, even -- "just doing my bit to promote freebies on the web." And I never got my free 50 photos developed by Shutterfly, either.
Re:The Real Problem (Score:1)
Actually, neither the Bible nor archeology show that man turned the region into a desert. In the Bible, God did it. (Several sinful cities were wiped out, and the whole region was flooded. By the time the Jews returned from Egypt, most of the wilderness was desert land except for the "fertile crescent" region (or "land of Canaan") along the coast of the Mediteranian Sea.
While man may have wrecked the ecology in places like Greenland and Easter Island, the arabian desert came about naturally (or super-naturally, depending on which explanation you accept).
Good. (Score:2)
I long for a return of the days when 90% of the web was good useful information provided for free by people that care (ignoring the pr0n of course which has always accounted for most of the web)
These days, its all restrivted, polluted, corporately driven bulltshit (ignoring the pr0n of course which has always accounted for most of the web)
Re:Free Stuff (Score:2)
One google search got me a few quotes from the obit.
One more google search with keywords from the quote got me the full text of this famous, scandalous, and essentially truthful obituary, and I read and enjoyed it.
We are living in an age where any schoolchild could do the same. The slightest curiosity about such a thing (and some good search-engine instincts) can open up a vast, immeasurable expanse of culture. Who would go to the library to try and dig this article out of microfilms? But who wouldn't do two quick Google searches to satisfy their curiosity- and come away with a better historical perspective, and a little bit wiser about humanity itself?
My only remaining question is: why would it not be just as proper and valid to be able to do such a search for Roseanne Barr's famously bad singing of the Star Spangled Banner- or a clip of Geraldo being attacked by skinheads on television- or the "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" scene of Apocalypse Now?
The struggle of the Internet is a struggle of public access to culture. The fact that some of the culture is instant, and is still being treated as a product, is irrelevant. In a hundred years, it will all be the background noise of history... unless, of course, we want to make culture and history against the law, or meter it so you can only afford to ingest a tiny bit of the culture you're immersed in.
And that will be difficult... as difficult as establishing secure mass media formats... because not everyone will, or should, submit meekly to such rules.
Re:You know what they say.... (Score:1)
or communism. Look at the rest of the world to see
how well that's worked out.
I don't think it's "good" for our society to have an entire underclass who cannot access the net. I also don't think it's good to blame people who work hard and make money, or to attempt to force them redistribute the products of their labor, or their parents labor, to those who don't or can't.
What good is it to force someone to help their fellow man, instead of letting them decide of their free will where and how to help?
There are students who can't afford pencils and paper to do their homework on, or a full meal so they don't go to school hungry, or running water to bathe so they can go to school clean, or electricty or gas to heat their homes and cook what food they do have.
To whine about someone not being able to afford internet access or voice mail is absolutely meaningless, and quite frankly sickens me.
These folks can't afford to buy medical texts to get information either. But they can access the internet and read the texts at most public libraries (just fyi, I'm against censorship and filtering). These millions of kids will be no more disadvantaged than kids who couldn't afford to buy books 50 years ago. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying you need to get some damn perspective!
Free Info (Score:2)
Maybe you're just not attentive. (Score:1)
By the time I got to Shutterfly 6 months ago, the deal was 25 free prints, and I had no problem stretching them out across a few orders.
This isn't like timeshare real estate or shady little Caribbean calling card companies. Shutterfly lays out its tems pretty clearly in plain language when you sign up. If you're too impatient to read a couple of paragraphs, that's not their fault. And anyway, the free prints are free apart from shipping. They've lived up to the contract as I read it, but then, I did read it.
And in the meantime, new customers still get free prints, albeit only 15. They've shifted things to create bigger incentives for referrals, which still get you 25 per person. And it's a damn fine service. The prints I've gotten from my digital files, even the 8"x10"s, are gorgeous. And at $3 for an 8x10, what's to complain about? I've heard they don't do great work with film or with hand-tweaked digital files, but those aren't their main line of business, which is high-quality, well-optimized prints from unmodified digital camera images.
Re:By-Pass Free Registration (Privacy Invasion) (Score:1)
Banner ads don't work because they don't work. (Score:1)
Re:I think this is good. (Score:1)
Yes, it's called Kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org].
By-Pass Free Registration (Privacy Invasion) (Score:3)
Use the Channel Luke, the Channel!
Re:I think this is good. (Score:3)
Speaking as someone who happens to have a "hi, my name is Brent...bla bla bla" website, I can vouch for the fact that we'll be here forever. As long as I can get a hosting account for less than the cost of a good steak dinner (or even a bad steak dinner), I'll be showing my webcam until they pry it from my cold, offline fingers.
And your suggestion doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, either. For example, I can pay fifty cents to get a copy of my local Houston Chronicle paper, or I can get a free copy of the independent Houston Press. Guess which one has better quality? It's a flip - for restaurant reviews, hard-hitting political articles, and what's going on locally, you want the free one. For up-to-the-minute sports scores, good cooking recipes, and national entertainment news, I turn to the - well, I turn to the web, actually, but that's beside the point.
The bottom line is that charging subscribers more doesn't guarantee a higher quality. Take Slashdot - can you imagine a better source for this kind of thing? What good would it do to charge for it - most of the good stuff would disappear. I like reading the opinions of the AC's, and they sure wouldn't pay for the privilege of posting.
Yahoo! Mail (Score:3)
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Re:WTF are they talking about? (Score:2)
WTF are they talking about? (Score:5)
Re:Stupid Banner Ads (Score:1)
--
Re:But, it's more than "freebies"... (Score:1)
I think it was a well argued comment. I'm going to copy it for posterity
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Salon to full pay next year? (Score:2)
"As early as next year, Mr. Talbot said, Salon hopes to impose a fee of $75 to $150 a year to read any of its site with ads. "
I once paid for sjmercury.com (Score:2)
free stuff on the web (Score:1)
it's interesting that one of the companies mentioned in the times article was yahoo; it wasn't that long ago that yahoo phone did have advertising throughout the service. makes you wonder, when the dot com advertisers disappeared, why didn't they get others to buy the ad time? cripes, with the amount of telemarketing calls and junk mail I get, you'd think someone would want to harass me while I'm checking my voice mail.
offtopic?? (Score:1)
Thank the lord... (Score:2)
and I'm also glad I got in on x10.com's free firecracker [slashdot.org] kits [slashdot.org] which now go for 49.99 [x10.com]
Re:By-Pass Free Registration (Privacy Invasion) (Score:5)
Newswire: May 2, 2001: Yahoo! (YHOO) stock quintupled today on news that the New York Times had just signed a $2.3 trillion dollar contract with Yahoo! to publish its stories on Yahoo's site.
One anonymous NYTimes source was quoted as saying: "We just put this story up on how the 'free' model wasn't working, and our web servers crashed under the load of all the people coming from Yahoo's site. Boy, were we wrong!
Our sysadmin keeps screaming something about slashing dots affecting us, and how we're a bunch of clueless idiots, but our marketing department tells us they're positive the users are clicking on our article because they saw it on Yahoo, and besides, they throw much better parties."
Free Stuff (Score:5)
--
It was never free anyway (Score:4)
Re:WTF are they talking about? (Score:2)
So it's somehow not good to provide personal information for free (physical) stuff but it's OK to provide personal information for "free" Web mail? Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail want your personal info too. So to answer your question, no, they're not free -- you pay with your information, just like other freebies. And unlike a sample of coffee or whatever, once you're locked in to Hotmail and the like, getting out is another story [wired.com].
Re:Salon to full pay next year? (Score:1)
75 to 150 to see the site WITH ads?
someone at nytimes needs to check copy more closely.
Re:Salon to full pay next year? (Score:1)
Money for nothing on the MTV (Score:4)
Before the tech sector stocks took major dives, we had drones of companies offering everything short of their mothers for free. An influx of companies who never had a definitive game plan for their businesses who thought that by offering X service for free, they'd be the ones and only to capture that segment of the market.
Venture Capital firms went bonkers thinking that by these companies getting users they'd eventually end up having that company convert revenue by turning around, after a set quota of users were met, and offering something for pay.
Well people didn't want to pay and the companies should have clearly seen that from the beginning. If someone is signing up for a free service, what makes you think they'd want to pay for something they can move to the next competitor and get for free?
Aside from that, many people bitch about the freebie services they already have and turn around and abuse it entirely. eg. All those spammers who open up a new Hotmail account daily. So its no surprise the number of companies have declined. How do you expect them to pay bandwidth, colo, equipment fees, with
Hardcore crypto [antioffline.com]
Education vs. everything else (Score:2)
One way to support free sites (Score:2)
Re:Maybe you're just not attentive. (Score:2)
At the time I tried them, I found no such language on the site. Yes, it may have "timed out" as you describe.
I didn't contact customer service because it wasn't that big a deal: they sent a coupon and I got a couple free prints. I didn't feel entitled to more free prints, but I did wonder why the promotion wasn't as they described it.
I did raise this on Slashdot. Last I checked, I could talk about it wherever I wanted. That goes for recommendations and reservations both. Timothy mentioned Shutterfly, I responded. Get off your high horse.
As for their quality, that wasn't the topic raised. Yep, they are a solid bureau. They spend lots on those cute vellum envelopes and extra 'thank you' inserts in each shipment, which are both impressive and overdone. They lived up to their contract: they said they'd charge for shipping and materials, and they gave me the finest shipping and materials my money could pay for.
The prints themselves are awesome. If you don't want to be bothered with printing it yourself, then Shutterfly is a great bureau to save you the effort. They take care of their inks and paper stocks, where the home hobbyist would not. However, I've found that my $150 HP Deskjet 932C printer and some high glossy photo inkjet paper can rival the results, with a turnaround of ten minutes instead of four days.
If I have a dozen prints I want to send to my computer-phobic mother cross-country, I'll load up the Shutterfly client software and use their service again.
50 Free Photos from Shutterfly (Score:3)
Yep, I wanted to see what the print quality was, so I got two prints done by Shutterfly. They sent the two, and then erased the rest of my "free" prints.
Nowhere on the site could I find any language that suggested something like "up to 25 free prints in your first order." They also charged for the postage materials and service, so I know it wasn't an attempt to save themselves from 25 separate envelopes.
A newspaper in San Francisco last week (forget which one) had a front page teaser discussing the liberties taken with calling card rates. Sure, 100 free minutes for $2, but each time you dial it's a minimum of 25 minutes.
The more granularity they can force, the fewer transactions they really have to process. It's all a scam.
ShutterFly vs. Zing (Score:1)
Zing.com [zing.com]
Does anyone have comments on these two services? I just bought a digital camera and was wonder which to use. I like Zing's online storage and photo albums....very sweet stuff. Price seem similar, except Zing charges $0.50 more for S&H. If this is off topic then mod me down. I'm just looking for feedback on these sites. (BTW, Zing's photoalbum is free for unlimited storage and pictures -- that's not offtopic.)
ÕÕ
Increased burden on free sites (Score:3)
Lovers of free information might wind up inadvertantly killing a lot of it off just by trying to access it. This is a real problem.
TomatoMan
Re:Money for nothing on the MTV (Score:1)
Obviously, you never went to www.freemom.com [freemom.com]! She cooks, she cleans, she nags you about the games you play on the computer!
(Disclaimer: I have no idea if its a real site, and I CBA to find out, click at your own risk :))
Permanent no-login links (Score:3)
208.48.26.223 nytimes.com
208.48.26.223 www.nytimes.com
That's the IP address of channel.nytimes.com (the story server), which, coincidentally, is mirrored across the other nytimes.com servers (even the images they use, although in the stories, they use another server to host them), except for the main www.nytimes.com server. Plus, you can get directory listings. Can anyone say recursive wget?
Could it be... (Score:3)
Re:my free calendar (Score:2)
Re:I think this is good. (Score:1)
The lack of possibility to fund good/hi class content providing has made the internet filled with almost 100% crap.
Closer to 90% crap - then again everything is 90% crap (the internet is not an exception to Sturgeon's Law).
Re:Free Phone Calls (Score:1)
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Free Phone Calls (Score:2)
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Re:WTF are they talking about? (Score:2)
I hear you on that french fry thing. I once gave a girl a DNA sample and she came back with a whole person that looked LIKE ME. Talk about recombinant DNA techonogy and free stuff, wow.
But, it's more than "freebies"... (Score:4)
As an example, the number of sites I run across with stupid and ineffectual but nonetheless annoying "anti-copy scripts" is increasing exponentially. Usually they try to disable right-clicking to get a context menu, by throwing up an inane message about not being allowed to copy content. Naturally, the scripts can be disabled by any competent person, or can be bypassed by simply right-clicking and pressing return to get rid of the box and right-clicking again fast enough. But they represent an altogether alarming shift in attitude. No longer are people sharing information, data, resources--they're "displaying" those resources, but not allowing them to be "used" and reused.
The most obvious examples are images and multimedia. If I go to a website, sometimes I see a nice background pattern or image I'd like to save to use on my desktop. But, oh, wait, someone has disabled right-clicking. Bah. I can get around it easily, but most average net surfers will not be able to. Ditto for images--for example, my father was on a website with tractor images, and for some godforsaken reason he actually collects antique tractors; he saw pictures of the same model tractor he has, but in a beautiful already-restored condition, and wanted to save them. Bang, disabled. What would it possibly hurt him to have those images available locally? And of course RealMedia and the Microsoft asf/wmf formats exist mainly for the purpose of streaming video or audio without the user being able to save the clips.
I don't know about you, but I don't like what that represents. The sad part is that even podunk personal sites are getting into the act and restricting content from being copied to a local disk. This is just not in the spirit of sharing and goodwill and community; it's extending meatspace limits on property into the digital realm where those limits are entirely artificial and do not belong. If you release something into the digital webbified world, you should expect people to want to copy it, and you should welcome that as the result of a cyberworld where copying items has virtually no cost. Otherwise, release it somewhere else, not on the net.
To make matters worse, this is a very short-sighted attitude. Web sites disappear all the time, and if no one can copy their content locally, that content will disappear along with the website if the content was copy-protected and view-only.
Plus, the whole attitude behind that is just selfish and contrary to the principles the Web and USENET were founded on. Just think of the recent story about gaming sites closing right and left--this didn't involve copy-protection, but it does involve that attitude of not being part of the community so much as being a business first last and always. Many excellent gaming sites had worthwhile, even unique content, and were forced to close. Yet I can't recall a single one making their resources available to the rest of the community, say by giving a free licence to host any of the dead site's resources on other more successful gaming sites, temporarily at least. Funny, I thought gaming was such a community thing, and that gaming sites are an outgrowth of that community. Yet no one seems to share like a community; if a site dies, usually all its unique content dies with it, never to be seen again.
Another issue is the artificial restrictions and dangers created by digital watermarking. Today watermarking is used almost exclusively on images, but the applications for the future are unlimited. Today, it is most commonly membership sites that insert personally identifiable UserID and date and IP information into images, so that if those images turn up elsewhere, someone particular can be blamed and kicked out. But with the technologies companies like Microsoft are pushing, even non-membership sites could watermark content and persecute people for noncommercial copying of it. Watermarks will turn up in audio and video streams, background images, every kind of data. And when that happens, there will be no community on the Net; resources will never again be shared; the rules of meatspace will effectively have been artificially grafted onto cyberspace.
Even today watermarking causes problems. For a very long time USENET has been a place where people noncommercially share not just chat and other text, but any sort of data and information they are mutually interested in. There's a group my dad can post to about tractors, and even post pictures of his tractors or get images or video involving tractors. You can find groups which post high-res scans of photographic art. You can find groups for freeware and groups for pirated applications, groups for start-up sounds and groups for full mp3s, groups for pr0n and groups for bird photography. The spirit of USENET was always the spirit of noncommercial sharing of digital content, both original and borrowed from the Web and scanned from meatspace.
But, companies from the Web feel free to spam USENET with ads for commercial websites, causing my service provider costs to skyrocket, and then complain when their content is posted for free to USENET. They shouldn't spam USENET users if they don't want their stuff to be posted onto USENET. I think it's rightfully open season on content providers who spam us without our consent; we damn well should reproduce their content without their consent. Tit-for-tat.
Yet, a few days ago I was scanning through some groups and ran across a poster who was not only told by a commercial website to stop posting their images, but this commercial website posted the man's name, address, and telephone number to USENET based on matching the digital watermark in the images to a UserID and billing information in their database. He repeated the message several times. I could not believe it. They published his personal info for all to see, for posting a few images he got from them after they spammed USENET with ads. That is a violation of the highest order. And this is the sort of attitude some arrogant content providers are getting. We're not in for a rosy future.
That's all I really have to say about that, except to say that the site that published this man's personal info was http://www.photostudio17.com and I hope there's a script kiddie or haxor out there with his name on them. The USENET article in question is--aw hell, my crappy news server expired the original articles, but some message-IDs that are related are MPG.1558a2f6e185166a989de4@news.cncdsl.com kaTH6.49361$U4.11780044@news1.rdc1.tn.home.com MPG.1559893ed8cd22a6989de5@news.cncdsl.com and many others you'll find in the stated group, to corroborate the story.
In addition, does anyone have information on how to remove various types of digital watermarks? I can post the images in question somewhere, if you can't find them in the group but would like to look into the particular watermarking these abusive privacy-breakers used; but perhaps the images in the preview section of their site have similar watermarking.
I'm not really interested in these clothed pictures of late teens and twentysomethings; I'm just interested in getting back at someone who's violated internet privacy in a very real and annoying way. Comments, suggestions?
First bag is free (Score:1)
Of course...there's always the privacy thing too. I consider that part of the price.
Galego
There are some free things (Score:1)
It's Good that Internet Cos. Don't Make Money (Score:2)
The freebies fsck'd it for everyone else (Score:1)
A) NO ONE else had your technolgy/service. Because if they did, they would just give it away. Why pay when I can get it for free?
or
B) You are the Wall Street Journal or eBay.
Re:I think this is good. (Score:1)
There are still loads of freebies out there ... (Score:5)
Re:I think this is good. (Score:1)
There are only two exceptions to Sturgeon's Law : Sturgeon's Law and crap
Oops I just recursed up my own arse
Stupid Banner Ads (Score:1)
Re:Free Information (Score:4)
my free calendar (Score:5)
Registered User (Score:2)
password: slash2001
enjoy
This really isn't that surprising... (Score:3)
Now, I am not trying to seem a little cross here but how long can someone give away real products like keyboards and such as a business model? It was a good thing while the companies didn't have a clue (/me pets my pretty keyboard) but it is obvious that it would fail.
Then again, there are still a few free things on the web: I regularly use Net2Phone... it gives me free long distance from computer to phone.. sure, they cut it down to 5 minutes now but I doubt they could have lasted while giving infnite amount of time (5 mins per call, inf call now).
This is like the dot.com crunch. Those businesses that are giving away huge items for "looking at a few webs" have an unsafe business model anyway -- we should not expect them to continue after they GetAClue(tm). Some businesses stop offering free services -- of course.. all businesses? I don't think we have reached that level yet.
Free stuff that works (Score:2)
I found a ton of them, but not very many came through after filling out forms and what not.
Some of the ones that came through i thought id share.
For that special someone (Or as an office gag)
http://www.astroglide.com/intro.html
http://www.trojancondoms.com/freestuff/Product/ma
And on a totally different note, the best jelly beans in the world (IMHO),
http://www.jellybelly.com/newhome/samples.html
There are others out there i just dont have URLs handy for.
--Jon
Re:I think this is good. (Score:2)
"Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap"
1) Sturgeon was far from the first person to make this observation.
2) It's not really a Law.
3) 90% is really just an estimate. It could be just about anywhere between 89% and 91%.
4) Since it does not apply to "crap", it does not apply to "everything".
5) Sturgeon actually said "crud", not "crap".
That leaves the words "of" and "is"... and the fact that it is generally true. The rest is crap.
MP3.com's sly May Day surprise (Score:3)
But the real kicker is when you go to log in mp3.com insists you've forgotten your password. And when you go to have your password mp3.com says "There was a problem verifying your account. Please try again in a few minutes." So, either sign the new agreement or get your music yanked, but you can't sign the new agreement because their login mechanism is broken, so it's your own fault when your music placed there for free (but mp3.com's been making money off of both advertising and CD sales) disappears in 48 hours.
I imagine artists who've signed up to pay mp3.com $20 a month aren't facing this. But at least mp3.com could be honest about its tactics. Or have their ept staff left, and the systems are really failing?
Re:Could it be... (Score:1)
Enigma
The Real Problem (Score:3)
"We had five 500-pound fat guys showing up at the smorgasbord and stuffing themselves all day," Mark R. Goldston, the chief executive of NetZero. He said 12 percent of NetZero's users accounted for 53 percent of its network costs. Cutting back their use, or getting them to find another service provider altogether, will save the company $20 million to $40 million a year.
Of course, I have not seen many people say much about this. This is the problem behind the thing all along. You get users who know how to abuse the system. It is like a water well where everyone can use the water. it is fine until sompeople start to hog as much as they can.
The traditional location of the Garden Of Eden is souteastern Iraq. Archeology bears this out, at least to the degree that it used to be a fertile and lush area. Don't look now, but it has been a desert for a long time. The natural result of typical human behavior is the creation of a desert.
Now imagine this as applied to the Internet.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip
MS HailStorm devoted to a "Pay for use" model (Score:1)
Re:The economics of the web (Score:2)
What about all the people using these free services? What do they contribute back? Well, as free services disappear, people will start to learn that they need to replace these pay-sites with free sites. Almost everyone on the internet has some leftover webspace they can donate.. and many people have broadband and run linux, turning any computer into a server where services can be hosted.
Free services won't go away, they'll just be replaced with more smaller services linked together. This is no different from real-life communities (or, those of the long forgotten past) where people volunteer their time and efforts to make life better for everyone else. This is all the excitement of peer-to-peer, but it goes deeper when you realize, not everybody is out to make money.
---
if the rain comes, they run and hide their heads. they might as well be dead.
Re:By-Pass Free Registration (Privacy Invasion) (Score:1)
This is good, though. A year ago, the "internet business model" was to give away money. A few months ago, it was to give free things away. A few weeks ago, it was to give free services away.
Pretty soon one of these companies is going to figure out that a company is allowed to make money.
Re:The economics of the web (Score:1)
Oh the irony! (Score:1)
I'd pay not to see ads... (Score:2)
But I only would pay slightly more than the equivalent of what they would make if I was a user of their site who did see them. Anything above $10 to access a site without ads for a year is too much for me.
On a slightly off-topic note, one major problem with online pay-access systems is that they are single points of failure. All the databases (UMI, ProQuest, etc.) that libraries only a few years ago had CD-ROMs of are now purchased as web services. Granted, this allows them to be constantly updated, but only to those with constant subscriptions. Should an online only service go out of business, and their purchaser decide not to salvage their data, even its ex-subscribers would lose a signficiant amount of data.
freebies (Score:5)
Re:But, it's more than "freebies"... (Score:1)
step two: right-click and voila!
No Free Lunch (Score:1)
No surprise, my drug dealer did the same thing (Score:2)
Re:Free Stuff (Score:1)
Re:Porn is still free (Score:1)
Porn is still free (Score:2)
It was good while it lasted (Score:2)
And that's what many people are going to do. That could be both good as well as bad, the initial slump may be a little harsh but when you are left with only serious users you can plan accordingly.
If TV and Radio can do it, why not the Internet. (Score:1)
A fee based model isn't such a bad idea for sites like on-line magazines, but for sites like Outpost.com [slashdot.org] and others trying to sell products on the web, they have to provide a product or service that's cheaper, or easier to buy, or not found elsewhere or they won't retain customers and their business model fails. In any type of retailing, clicks or bricks, you typically make 80% of your revenue off 20% of your customers and these are customers you have to retain year after year. A retail model can't be sustained through acquisition.
But I've digressed a bit. The point is that the Net's not going to become one big fee based world where every site you visit will only be accessible via login or cookie that was bought for a $20 annual fee. Some sites like The Motley Fool [fool.com] and others will survive with a free or a blended approach offering basic services & content free and premiums for a fee. That's not such and bad thing. It's all about supply and demand and we all know what the Net has the biggest supply of and what's in the greatest demand...PORN! Maybe Kozmo.com or Freeworks should have spent more time browsing porn sites and doing some best practices benchmarking prior to launching their ventures. Who knows, they might have been as successful and Jenna Jameson's Official Site [clubjenna.com], one of the most successful porn sites on the web.
If you build it...they will come...but only if it's worth a shit.
Re:Free Phone Calls (Score:1)
They've got voice ads (and I'm not sure how effective those are - they sort of annoyed me) that sometimes play over your speakers before you make a call. They also sell headsets and phone cards and long-distance calls to other countries. It looks like they haven't put all of their eggs into the advertising basket. I wonder how well that works?
Free Information (Score:1)
What I can still get for free is information. I get well over 75% of my information at work on the Internet. I have yet to find for-pay information that I couldn't get somewhere else for absolutely nothing.
An error in the NYT article RE Salon (Score:5)
The following section from the NYT article cited has been refuted by Salon. They've said they have no such plans & that David Talbot was completely misquoted.
"A lot of our audience pays $300 a year to join National Public Radio and they don't have to pay anything," he said. As early as next year, Mr. Talbot said, Salon hopes to impose a fee of $75 to $150 a year to read any of its site with ads. Why not just impose the full fee now? "That's jumping off a cliff with no net," Mr. Talbot said. Sites that have imposed fees, like Yahoo Auctions, have experienced declines in volume of as much as 90 percent. And the biggest subscription content site, The Wall Street Journal Online, has 574,000 subscribers at $29 to $59 a year, one-tenth the monthly audience of the largest free financial news sites.
Guess the NYT just ain't what she used to be.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Free does live on... if.... (Score:1)
Re:Salon to full pay next year? (Score:4)
From salon.com
"Others have written to us wondering whether today's Premium is simply a nose-in-the-tent kind of deal, preparing the way for an entirely subscribers-only site in the future. (An erroneous media report misquoting our founder, David Talbot, outlining such a plan helped fan such suspicions.) That's not our plan."
The rest of the article can be found here: http://www.salon.com/letters/editor/2001/05/02/pre mium_progress/index.html [salon.com]
I get free stuff (Score:1)
Re:Free Stuff (Score:2)
Re:The Real Problem (Score:1)
If everyone who used cablemodems/DSL was responsible for the same amount of traffic I am (about 200 MB downstream weekdays, probably closing in on 1 GB fri sat sun) we would all be paying 150 bucks a month for broadband instead of the 50 I pay now.
Just a little thought that popped into my brain when I saw the fat guy remarks.
Brant
Re:50 Free Photos from Shutterfly (Score:2)
OK economists - if I remember my (one) microeconomics class correctly (from a few years back), doesn't an increased granularity actually increase the deadweight loss? So, in fact, they would have less profit than if they, for example, charged on a per-minute (or per-second) basis...
Of course, I guess that this wouldn't matter if the consumer didn't know about the 25 minute minimum; but I'm sure they'd figure it out after exhausting the first card, which leads back to my original point.
But this is starting to drift off-topic... But if anyone can confirm or deny this, please do so!
I think this is good. (Score:1)
The lack of possibility to fund good/hi class content providing has made the internet filled with almost 100% crap.
With charging I think we will see much more real content on the internet and just not "hi, my name is John...bla bla bla" homepages.
Re:this is to be expected (Score:1)
This is a problem because now they have made the public used to not paying for anything witch of cause is impossible in the long run.
Re:I think this is good. (Score:1)
There is nothing wrong with homepages, that is _also_ an interesting part of the internet.
My remark was towards the professionally produced hi-quality content that was supposed to be spread to all over the world. It hasn't and will not happen until it can be funded somehow.
"Take Slashdot - can you imagine a better source for this kind of thing? "
Yes, I could
Re:I think this is good. (Score:1)
If you want good quality programs you usually have to pay for them. Sure it sucks to pay, but on the other hand you get quality service, right?
I can just picture... (Score:2)
Re:The economics of the web (Score:4)
Re:The economics of the web (Score:1)
or brick-and-mortar companies who are using the internet as an extension of themselves - kind of like an online catalog store.
Luckily I am employed by one such company...
The economics of the web (Score:5)
shopping sites (Score:3)
But the thing is, not a single one of these stores offered anything compelling for me to actually go and order from them again. After all, isn't online shopping a "commodity service"? (or at least it has evolved into that)
I'm surprised... (Score:1)
I've actually never received anything more than "opt-in" junk mail to a h0tmail account from those "Get free stuff" websites. I really have better things to do with the internet anyway. Like www.thehun.net.
Re:this is to be expected (Score:3)
Right now, there is tons of advertising and no privacy, but the sites are free.
With subscription service, we will have at least as much advertising, less privacy, and it's no longer free.
The quality of the content and services will have to improve before more than a very small percentage people are willing to pay.
I liked the suggestion of paying users getting ad-free content, but it is only a matter of time before companies "supplement" the subscription revenue with advertising.
RC
this is to be expected (Score:1)
Re:Ask for Tips and Donations (Score:2)
It is as easy as putting an address where they can send a few bucks to using something like Pay Pal or Honor System.
If you set reasonable goals - like covering your web hosting, and use basic fundraising strategies you should be able to make some additional money.
Full Disclosure - We just set up a site called The Donation Project [donationproject.com] where we provide some strategies and ideas for webmasters seeking to start taking donations online.
The Donation Project
http://www.donationproject.com
support independent content producers - dammit
The cycel (Score:3)
So "free" service means that only the biggest will survive, that they'll eventually become bigger, bloated, and more inefficient (as large companies with little competition tend to do *cough*Redmond*cough*), and that sooner or later they'll face either competitive or legal demise. Thus the cycle completes and begins anew. Everyone say "oohhhmmmm".