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A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

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Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#41

Post by ghshephard »

mibbitier wrote: post #27
eykanal wrote: post #14

Following the model from the article: In the fee-based model, the needs of the following must be met: (1) the company, (2) the users. In the ads-based model, the needs of the following must be met: (1) the company, (2) the advertisers, (3) the users. By removing the advertisers from the equation, a lot of resources are freed up to address the needs of the other two parties. It's kind of strange to say that "the compa…

You're assuming that advertisers never meet users needs. If I'm selling you a bike, and I also tell you about a good deal on bike insurance you can get, then I'm advertising at you. Maybe I get a cut of the insurance premium. BUT, I'm also adding value for the customer. It's a mutually beneficial transaction. I know it's blasphemy to claim that advertising is sometimes pretty damn useful around these parts, but the f…

I disagree with you - but I'm not downvoting you because I think you bring up an interesting point. The problem, though, is the advertising on buy.com, monoprice.com, amazon.com and even google.com is actually quite useful for me. Sometimes even the ads on dpreview.com are interesting. The issue here is intent - on these sites, I am looking to buy products, product reviews, or (in the case of google) searching for something that might be product related.

On my social networks (Path) - my intent is to see what my niece is up to, what my friends are doing, and what my mother's latest project is.

It is not (and never has been) to "Find a Female Friend in Redwood City", or, "Check out the Kmart Special".

It is this disconnect between intent and ad-presentation that makes the pollution of the twitter feed so offensive.

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#42

Post by wpietri »

eykanal wrote: post #14

Following the model from the article: In the fee-based model, the needs of the following must be met: (1) the company, (2) the users. In the ads-based model, the needs of the following must be met: (1) the company, (2) the advertisers, (3) the users. By removing the advertisers from the equation, a lot of resources are freed up to address the needs of the other two parties. It's kind of strange to say that "the compa…

Yes. Eliminating conflicts of interest works wonders for an organization. And not just in the obvious ways: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" -- Upton Sinclair

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#43

Post by mibbitier »

wpietri wrote: post #37
mibbitier wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming that advertisers never meet users needs. If I'm selling you a bike, and I also tell you about a good deal on bike insurance you can get, then I'm advertising at you. Maybe I get a cut of the insurance premium. BUT, I'm also adding value for the customer. It's a mutually beneficial transaction. I know it's blasphemy to claim that advertising is sometimes pretty damn useful around these parts, but the f…

Advertising can add value when it transmits novel information that would be hard to get some other way. But it usually doesn't. It's mainly an arms race to distort natural market outcomes. Coca Cola doesn't spend over a billion dollars a year advertising because they want to make you aware of some new fact. They just think they can make much more than that billion back by manipulating you.

Nice conspiracy theory.

Advertising is there to make sure you're aware of something. It's telling you "Hey! There's this product/movie/service etc that you might not have known about".

I find advertising extremely useful to know about new things.

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#44

Post by mibbitier »

eykanal wrote: post #32
mibbitier wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming that advertisers never meet users needs. If I'm selling you a bike, and I also tell you about a good deal on bike insurance you can get, then I'm advertising at you. Maybe I get a cut of the insurance premium. BUT, I'm also adding value for the customer. It's a mutually beneficial transaction. I know it's blasphemy to claim that advertising is sometimes pretty damn useful around these parts, but the f…

Change that to "internet advertisers", and that is exactly my assumption. Personally, I think that is a fine assumption to make. I have never seen an advertisement add value to a internet-based conversation I was having or article I was reading on the net.

So when amazon suggests that you might want to buy a certain bike helmet based on the fact you're buying a bike, you find that information utterly useless?

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#45

Post by j45 »

thinkingisfun wrote: post #24
j45 wrote: post #17

Nothing is ever free. Either we are buying a product, or we are the product. In the real world, things cost money for businesses to stay open and sustainable. I'll say it again, in a free system, we are the product that's sold to advertisers. If I had to pick one, I'd like to be able to pay for such an experience. It's preference and I look forward to seeing how it goes.

Oh, but there's several shades of grey. Take running friendica or diaspora on your own webspace, for example. You're a customer to your webhost, but the software is free. Well, it does have the cost of being kinda slow or hard to set up respectively, but still.. there are public pods you can use and donate to, and where the product is mostly the warm fuzzy feeling people get from doing the right thing. I think you ar…

My definition of a customer is someone who pays me.

Someone using a free service is a user, they may not necessarily pay.

Didn't mean to come across as underestimating human generosity, I very much believe in keeping kindness, goodness and giving fashionable, but in money, the context of a business, is largely it's bloodflow.

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#46

Post by sprobertson »

laconian wrote: post #8

I don't know why this is so hard or requires such significant investment up front. How is making a decentralized Twitter service more of a challenge than, say, IRC or Jabber? I know that the problems aren't exactly the same, but I would hazard to guess that they are on the same order of magnitude in terms of implementation difficulty.

That was my biggest concern -- it would seem that if you're building a pay-supported social network, your scaling issues will be business-side long before they are server-side.

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#47

Post by wpietri »

mibbitier wrote: post #43
wpietri wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertising can add value when it transmits novel information that would be hard to get some other way. But it usually doesn't. It's mainly an arms race to distort natural market outcomes. Coca Cola doesn't spend over a billion dollars a year advertising because they want to make you aware of some new fact. They just think they can make much more than that billion back by manipulating you.

Nice conspiracy theory. Advertising is there to make sure you're aware of something. It's telling you "Hey! There's this product/movie/service etc that you might not have known about". I find advertising extremely useful to know about new things.

Are you seriously suggesting that Coca Cola spends a billion dollars a year to reach people who are unfamiliar with their beverage?

I'm not sure what conspiracy you think I'm suggesting. There is nothing particularly hidden about what advertisers do. Go talk to people who have made ads for a living. Or take a media literacy course. Heck, go watch the Superbowl beer commercials and tell us what novel product information is being conveyed there: http://dailycaller.com/2011/01/27/top-10-super-bowl-beer-com...

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#48

Post by tlogan »

chimi wrote: post #20
wmf wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the site says, the $50 is pre-paying for an account.

Am I reading it incorrectly? It says, "You'll be committing to prepaying for a full year of 'member-level' service." That doesn't sound like, "You get a year of service."

Are you sure? Can somebody confirm this?

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#49

Post by [deleted] »

tlogan wrote: post #48
chimi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I reading it incorrectly? It says, "You'll be committing to prepaying for a full year of 'member-level' service." That doesn't sound like, "You get a year of service."

Are you sure? Can somebody confirm this?

[deleted]

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#50

Post by tvladeck »

This article is hogwash.

(1) No. In fact, this does make the user the customer, as opposed to free models that make the user the product. If the user is the customer it does impose somewhat of a guarantee that product development will be oriented around the user.

(2) Also no. Everyone by now knows that the value of a network increases very rapidly as a function of its users. Or, put another way, switching costs go way up. Knowing this, it doesn't take a PhD in Game Theory to realize that one potential strategy for a network like Twitter to stay free and attempt to achieve "lock in" (very high switching costs), and then impose tangential costs on the user (shitty advertising) that are less than the switching costs.

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