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BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free

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Re: BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free

#11

Post by CM30 »

ykevinator wrote: post #3

Stack overflow has the same business model.

To be fair, most platforms and social media sites tend to have the same business model. The only reason YouTube or Medium or Facebook or Twitter or Reddit or whatever else are financially viable is because most people are volunteering their efforts for free.

Arguably the same rings true of every wiki, internet forum and community site in general.

The question hence becomes 'what point does a site or service go from being innocent to exploitative?'

Few would say Wikipedia is exploiting its users. Some may say that about StackOverflow or YouTube, but many would say it about BuzzFeed or the Huffington Post.

What's the line between a community and a platform and a publisher? What kinds of sites and services and business models based on user generated free content are a good thing and which aren't?

Re: BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free

#12

Post by gus_massa »

CM30 wrote: post #11
ykevinator wrote: post #3

Stack overflow has the same business model.

To be fair, most platforms and social media sites tend to have the same business model. The only reason YouTube or Medium or Facebook or Twitter or Reddit or whatever else are financially viable is because most people are volunteering their efforts for free. Arguably the same rings true of every wiki, internet forum and community site in general. The question hence becomes 'what point does a site or service go from b…

I want to publish a few (5-10) videos for my students in the University. I don't want to care about hosting videos, upgrading the protocols, bandwidth (it's ok if my machine get overflow the day before the exam, but the owners of the other computers in the network will ask for my head). Hosting video is a pain. YouTube can solve that in a few click.

(It adds a little of discoverability and traffic, that is nice and useful in internal meetings, but it's not my main reason to use it.)

Re: BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free

#13

Post by aboutruby »

ykevinator wrote: post #3

Stack overflow has the same business model.

I guess most people don't help on Stack Overflow expecting any financial reward (maybe reputation) as the vast majority are already working. And, at leas to me, it's more of the spirit: "Help others, and others will help you" (you also learn a lot by answering questions and having comments on them).

Re: BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free

#15

Post by mikeash »

CM30 wrote: post #11
ykevinator wrote: post #3

Stack overflow has the same business model.

To be fair, most platforms and social media sites tend to have the same business model. The only reason YouTube or Medium or Facebook or Twitter or Reddit or whatever else are financially viable is because most people are volunteering their efforts for free. Arguably the same rings true of every wiki, internet forum and community site in general. The question hence becomes 'what point does a site or service go from b…

Wikipedia is a nonprofit, which is why it gets a pass. YouTube pays (some) creators, so it looks more like a normal business. Stack Overflow is much more interesting to me. People generally love it, but it makes a lot of money off the backs of its unpaid users. I suppose the key factor there is that people see SO as really useful, and doing good unpaid labor there can pay off greatly in indirect ways, like being hired for better jobs.

Re: BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free

#16

Post by indigochill »

CM30 wrote: post #11
ykevinator wrote: post #3

Stack overflow has the same business model.

To be fair, most platforms and social media sites tend to have the same business model. The only reason YouTube or Medium or Facebook or Twitter or Reddit or whatever else are financially viable is because most people are volunteering their efforts for free. Arguably the same rings true of every wiki, internet forum and community site in general. The question hence becomes 'what point does a site or service go from b…

>The question hence becomes 'what point does a site or service go from being innocent to exploitative?'

>Few would say Wikipedia is exploiting its users. Some may say that about StackOverflow or YouTube, but many would say it about BuzzFeed or the Huffington Post.

You may have answered your own question with your examples. Wikipedia isn't monetized at all. It relies entirely on fundraising. All the rest have some sort of monetization model which is built around the assumption that their users will generate free content that gives their platform its value.

On the monetization spectrum, though, I would say StackOverflow does much better than YouTube. It's designed entirely around providing value to its users, rather than merely selling their eyeballs (you can find lots of information about SO's approach to monetization here: https://stackoverflow.blog/2016/11/15/how-we-make-money-at-s...).

My personal spectrum from best to worst looks like this:

1. Funded by donations (sort of utopian and doesn't always work)

2. Funded by directly selling services/goods worthwhile to the community (pragmatic and mutually beneficial)

3. Funded by selling generic ad space to third parties (lazy as business models go, but newspapers have been doing it for centuries - this is usually a sign the organization doesn't have a well-defined audience: cf. Facebook/Youtube vs. Stack Overflow)

4. Funded by secretively profiling people and selling their personal information without telling them (just evil and gross)

As for platform vs. publisher, that's been an interesting topic in internet law. See for instance Cubby vs. CompuServe in 91: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc.

Re: BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free

#17

Post by rfrey »

devereaux wrote: post #6
barrkel wrote: post #5

Price and value are two different things. Looks like quizzes are valuable to BuzzFeed, if the gist of the article is true. It doesn't necessarily follow that the price of a quiz should go up. The price of a quiz depends on the supply of and demand for quizzes. This quizmaker may be able to charge a premium - certainly the price will be non-zero - but it's unlikely to reflect the value it adds to BuzzFeed. (This funda…

This reads like a Marxist analysis. Let's focus on the biggest flaws in the reasoning > Labour competes with other labour And consequently, capital competes with other capital. And in this day and age, it's not expensive to create a website. Assuming she's a world genius at making quizzes, all she needs in a domain name + some viral marketing, then slap ads on top on that. Some extra content would help, to drive visi…

You wrongly say the parent (which is a straight-ahead reminder of supply and demand, plus some interesting implications springing from tax policy), and then counter with an argument which is even closer to Marxism.

(Although Marx would roll his eyes at the idea that pricing was based on the skill of the producer relative to her peers, and divorced from demand for the good.)

Re: BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free

#18

Post by scardine »

mikeash wrote: post #15
CM30 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, most platforms and social media sites tend to have the same business model. The only reason YouTube or Medium or Facebook or Twitter or Reddit or whatever else are financially viable is because most people are volunteering their efforts for free. Arguably the same rings true of every wiki, internet forum and community site in general. The question hence becomes 'what point does a site or service go from b…

Wikipedia is a nonprofit, which is why it gets a pass. YouTube pays (some) creators, so it looks more like a normal business. Stack Overflow is much more interesting to me. People generally love it, but it makes a lot of money off the backs of its unpaid users. I suppose the key factor there is that people see SO as really useful, and doing good unpaid labor there can pay off greatly in indirect ways, like being hire…

Volunteering at Stackoverflow is a win-win game for me. When I answer questions there I'm improving my English communication skills while earning online reputation. I'm spreading knowledge and making the Internet a better place and I really hope Stackoverflow is making a buck in order to keep the lights on. It is a great online resource.

Re: BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free

#19

Post by pilsetnieks »

CM30 wrote: post #11
ykevinator wrote: post #3

Stack overflow has the same business model.

To be fair, most platforms and social media sites tend to have the same business model. The only reason YouTube or Medium or Facebook or Twitter or Reddit or whatever else are financially viable is because most people are volunteering their efforts for free. Arguably the same rings true of every wiki, internet forum and community site in general. The question hence becomes 'what point does a site or service go from b…

I would say the exploitative threshold is crossed when the unpaid community members don't derive any value for themselves from the content (or maybe when the community organizer derives significantly more value from it than its users.)

From wikipedia they get information, from the Stackexchange network - answers to questions that enable or improve their work or hobby; Buzzfeed's Justin Bieber haircut quizzes, however, do not provide any value to the users, apart from a tiny fleeting endorphin rush, maybe.

Re: BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free

#20

Post by bastawhiz »

For me, the real story here is that BF failed to take any action at all to retain a top five driver of traffic to their ad revenue - driven website.

Let's say that quiz interactions from McMahon come out to 5% of ad impressions for all of BF. What would a site as big as BF pay to ensure that those 5% of impressions don't disappear overnight? At most companies, I'd imagine quite a bit.

Even if we look at the low number for revenue generated from McMahon's quizzes ($200k), it's easy to imagine a company paying that much or more to continue driving those numbers. If someone is providing you a service for free that accounts for a very meaningful percentage of revenue, how much revenue could they be generating for you if you actually incentivized them to do that work? 1.25x? 1.5x? 2x? More?

It would seem to me that BF never had the realization that "huh, maybe we should protect this asset instead of protecting our short-term profits and praying she keeps doing this for free forever."

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