Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Content Is King (1996)

web.archive.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 57 posts

Re: Content Is King (1996)

#31

Post by ValentineC »

soneil wrote: post #15
bernardlunn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

22 years later, we still don’t have a good way to pay for content!

I think we do - advertising is still a perfectly legitimate way to pay for 'free' content., plus subscriptions where they make sense. The current problem isn't that we can't or won't pay, or we can't or won't accept advertising. It's that each generation of adtech becomes more and more user-hostile until we're forced to fight back. So the popup became the pop-under, and devolved into popup bombs until browsers were f…

> So the popup became the pop-under, and devolved into popup bombs until browsers were forced to act.

Apart from NoScript, are there other good ways to handle "subscribe to my mailing list" modals?

Re: Content Is King (1996)

#32

Post by dredmorbius »

KenanSulayman wrote: post #2

> For the Internet to thrive, content providers must be paid for their work. The long-term prospects are good, but I expect a lot of disappointment in the short-term as content companies struggle to make money through advertising or subscriptions. It isn't working yet, and it may not for some time. And that was back in 1996..

And it's only one of multiple myths in this piece. Creators don't need to be paid for their work, but to live. This is a crucial difference.

They may be additionally compensated for having created something (or contributing to the creation of something in a collective effort), but it's that stretch between conception and emergence that is most critical, and for which the market, as it stands, has no answer. And cannot have an answer.

Re: Content Is King (1996)

#33

Post by TimJYoung »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #29
Donzo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One issue that is not addressed by the subscription model is the subsidizing effect that the ad-based model has: The finance professional who lives in New York has very valuable page views. The African school girl does not. Yet, through advertising their values are averaged. The affluent subsidize the poor without even knowing it. Putting content behind a pay-wall reduces this effect and creates an informational disp…

For me this is the only positive aspect of our ad-based Internet. It allows people with no money or means to use it - be it a poor African girl, or just me when I was a kid - to access the same information everyone else can. If we could solve that somehow, then killing off Internet advertising would immediately improve the world.

Libraries solve that need, so if there's a way to help fund that type of initiative, especially if it already exists, we should all promote it aggressively.

Re: Content Is King (1996)

#35

Post by dmoy »

joak wrote: post #18

This was before p2p and user contributed content alternate article: Content is not King https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18050621

Yup I find the odlyzko article much more informative and prescient.

See for example recent article on front page here yesterday(?) about the music industry now making a fraction of its previous money. Or even the old numbers paling in comaprison to Google Facebook Amazon - information, social connection, and buying shit.

The content industry is just not that big, $$-wise, and never has been. Humans are social animals, it wins out.

Re: Content Is King (1996)

#36

Post by MarkMc »

"But to be successful online, a magazine can't just take what it has in print and move it to the electronic realm. There isn't enough depth or interactivity in print content to overcome the drawbacks of the online medium.

If people are to be expected to put up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they must be rewarded with deep and extremely up-to-date information that they can explore at will. They need to have audio, and possibly video. They need an opportunity for personal involvement that goes far beyond that offered through the letters-to-the-editor pages of print magazines."

Bill clearly didn't consider that the 'drawbacks of the online medium' would be eliminated by everyone having a computer in their pocket. I pay for online-only subscriptions to The Economist and The New York Times, and these apps are essentially just electronic copies of their paper cousins.

Bill also seems to have missed the possibility of not producing content but instead acting as a platform for others to produce content. The network effects of such platforms have led to wildly profitable enterprises such as YouTube, Facebook and Spotify. Given Microsoft's own network effects, it's strange that Bill didn't consider this angle.

Re: Content Is King (1996)

#37

Post by stuartgm »

dredmorbius wrote: post #32
KenanSulayman wrote: post #2

> For the Internet to thrive, content providers must be paid for their work. The long-term prospects are good, but I expect a lot of disappointment in the short-term as content companies struggle to make money through advertising or subscriptions. It isn't working yet, and it may not for some time. And that was back in 1996..

And it's only one of multiple myths in this piece. Creators don't need to be paid for their work , but to live . This is a crucial difference. They may be additionally compensated for having created something (or contributing to the creation of something in a collective effort), but it's that stretch between conception and emergence that is most critical, and for which the market, as it stands, has no answer. And can…

So universal basic income?

Re: Content Is King (1996)

#38

Post by dredmorbius »

soneil wrote: post #15
bernardlunn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

22 years later, we still don’t have a good way to pay for content!

I think we do - advertising is still a perfectly legitimate way to pay for 'free' content., plus subscriptions where they make sense. The current problem isn't that we can't or won't pay, or we can't or won't accept advertising. It's that each generation of adtech becomes more and more user-hostile until we're forced to fight back. So the popup became the pop-under, and devolved into popup bombs until browsers were f…

No, advertising is inherently problematic, and always has been.

* It's intrusive.

* It's distracting.

* It promotes a host of anti-usability features

* It's creepy, and you're creeping me out.

* Ads themselves price-discriminate -- though how and when I can never be certain

* The mechanisms of advertising networks pose security issues

* The goods and services which are most highly advertised are those which I'm least inclined to buy.

* It's not relevant.

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/24107v/forbes_...

Adding to the above, from four years ago, I've since realised that advertising:

* Promotes crap content.

* Kills quality content.

* Undermines truth and liberal democracy. Supports and sustains demagoguery, fascism, and institutional oppression.

See Dwight McDonald, "A Theory of Mass Culturei" (https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2008/ESB032/um/5136660/MacDon...) (1953) (PDF), Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totaltarianism (http://gen.lib.rus.ec/search.php?req=arendt%20origins%20tota...), and Gerry Mander's Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television* (http://gen.lib.rus.ec/search.php?req=Mander+arguments+elimin...), for starters.

Hamilton Holt's excellent 1909 lecture, "Commercialism and Journalism", available from the Internet Archive, addresses most of the modern complaints against advertising, at a time when it was just beginning to massively re-shape (and, to be fair, enable) the modern media landscape.

https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holt

Re: Content Is King (1996)

#39

Post by dredmorbius »

pouta wrote: post #22
bernardlunn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

22 years later, we still don’t have a good way to pay for content!

Is subscription not a good solution? The flow of subscriptions just gets easier and faster for the readers.

Yes, universal subscriptions, based on capacity to pay. Or as is commonly referred: a tax.

Re: Content Is King (1996)

#40

Post by majani »

MarkMc wrote: post #36

"But to be successful online, a magazine can't just take what it has in print and move it to the electronic realm. There isn't enough depth or interactivity in print content to overcome the drawbacks of the online medium. If people are to be expected to put up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they must be rewarded with deep and extremely up-to-date information that they can explore at will. They need to h…

Before search engines and open source CMSes were widely adopted, it was reasonable to expect that basic news sites were going to be insanely valuable. The barriers to entry were high but the reward was now exponentially higher with the global reach potential
Post reply on HN