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Disqus bait and switch, now with ads

jacquesmattheij.com

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Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads

#31

Post by shortformblog »

jacquesm wrote: post #20
shortformblog wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever the case, you can turn it off: http://help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/666278#disco...

It should have defaulted to 'off'. You can break trust exactly once.

It's a free service and they're at the point where monetization is becoming a necessity. I can appreciate that, and it's not a particularly evil way of doing it, if you ask me.

I don't know about you, but I can live with a couple of non-obtrusive links that go other places—especially since, like a lot of people, I got emails about it ahead of time. If you can't, you can turn it off.

You act as if the ads are putting ugly pictures of fat people are flooding your site or ads for e-Cigarettes or other skeevy things. I've been seeing them for months — their ads, far as I can tell, are of higher quality than the ones you see on Facebook and Google search. (I see links for Exxon, Comedy Central and Citi on a recent comment thread on my site. Certainly not bottom-shelf names.)

The reason why you probably didn't notice them is because they're so unobtrusive that they were designed so you wouldn't notice them. Now whatever philosophical issues that raises, I think, from what I've seen in my own experience, Disqus handled this the right way.

EDIT: I don't get the downvotes. My point is totally valid here.

Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads

#32

Post by danso »

jacquesm wrote: post #20
shortformblog wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever the case, you can turn it off: http://help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/666278#disco...

It should have defaulted to 'off'. You can break trust exactly once.

Just out of curiosity, but what exactly did you think the arrangement between you and Disqus was? Their service obviously saves bloggers a lot of hassle, and it can't be free to maintain?

I don't mean to say that this justifies this perceived wrong, but it certainly justifies, from their standpoint, to think: "If you're going to use our service, for free, you should at least read our emails (and not filter them to the Spam folder)". Also on their side: they've allowed the ability to opt out.

So you can still drop the service on the grounds of principle, and technically, this is a "bait and switch"...but it's a pretty mild one.

Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads

#33

Post by condiment »

Disqus is in the unenviable position of having a freemium product that everyone wants but nobody is willing to pay for. Their freemium model provides commenting services with the expectation that value-added features or the need for an SLA would compel site owners to upgrade to paid plans in order to use those features. Problem is, customers that are large and important enough to require an SLA are also large and important enough to be able to afford a custom solution.

This leaves them with the options of transitioning the business model to something that people are willing to pay for, or finding ways to extract value from their free customers.

I know of one other commenting widget provider who got into this exact same morass, but they have opted to leverage the communities that their customers have created to engage in "influencer marketing", where the site owner cooperates with the commenting widget provider to have an above-board "sponsored conversation" with a third party company.

Since it's unlikely that Disqus will be able to successfully integrate advertisements into commenting feeds in a way that doesn't damage their relationships with site owners, an approach like this shifts the value-extraction machinery away from a site's commenters, who Disqus technically has no claim on, and provides an avenue for mutual profit with the site owners, who have an existing relationship with Disqus.

Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads

#35

Post by pfortuny »

jrs235 wrote: post #10

"If you aren't paying for the product/service then you are the product/service being sold." EDIT: Wow. Why the downvotes? Do people still not understand this saying? I understand it hurts if/when you get burned but it shouldn't come as a surprise when free services change to something less desirable to monetize their business models. I wouldn't be surprised if they soon offer paid "premium" accounts that don't show a…

Apart from the other aswers, you may be happy to be the product on an iteration and not on another, and you are free to get angry when people claim they live to make you happy and later you discover that there is a postscript (unless we need to suck).

Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads

#36

Post by niggler »

shortformblog wrote: post #31
jacquesm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should have defaulted to 'off'. You can break trust exactly once.

It's a free service and they're at the point where monetization is becoming a necessity. I can appreciate that, and it's not a particularly evil way of doing it, if you ask me. I don't know about you, but I can live with a couple of non-obtrusive links that go other places—especially since, like a lot of people, I got emails about it ahead of time. If you can't, you can turn it off. You act as if the ads are putting…

No one begrudges a company trying to monetize, but there's an expectation that there will be some communication beforehand.

I'm sure if they sent multiple emails and if OP discovered the matter through official communications and not by looking at the page, then he may have been OK with it but more importantly wouldn't feel like a bait-and-switch was pulled.

Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads

#37

Post by jacquesm »

danso wrote: post #32
jacquesm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should have defaulted to 'off'. You can break trust exactly once.

Just out of curiosity, but what exactly did you think the arrangement between you and Disqus was? Their service obviously saves bloggers a lot of hassle, and it can't be free to maintain? I don't mean to say that this justifies this perceived wrong, but it certainly justifies, from their standpoint, to think: "If you're going to use our service, for free, you should at least read our emails (and not filter them to th…

Whatever it was that I thought I signed up for, I explicitly did not sign up for an advertising tag, especially not a stealthy one, and on top of that not one that looks like an active endorsement on my part.

Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads

#38

Post by rscale »

jrs235 wrote: post #10

"If you aren't paying for the product/service then you are the product/service being sold." EDIT: Wow. Why the downvotes? Do people still not understand this saying? I understand it hurts if/when you get burned but it shouldn't come as a surprise when free services change to something less desirable to monetize their business models. I wouldn't be surprised if they soon offer paid "premium" accounts that don't show a…

That quote is often wrong.

For example, there are "freemium" business models where the users are segmented by usage level, or by need of additional features. In those models, the "free" users aren't being sold, they're just potential customers and advocates.

Further, this sort of breach of trust isn't limited to free services. There are paid services that start selling advertisements as well.

Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads

#39

Post by DavidBradbury »

jacquesm wrote: post #20
shortformblog wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever the case, you can turn it off: http://help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/666278#disco...

It should have defaulted to 'off'. You can break trust exactly once.

I think you are taking it far too hard. If you don't like it, turn it off or switch. Ads showing up in your comments page is hardly the end of the world. Lighten up.

Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads

#40

Post by jrs235 »

jacquesm wrote: post #27
lucisferre wrote: post #3

Just checked my site and no ads so I'm not sure. Perhaps they are a/b testing this?

I'm pretty sure I did not have ads until today either, it stands out quite clearly. Maybe it only happens on 'high traffic' days or some other criterion but this definitely blind sided me.

Perhaps it's based on the content of the page and whether they have ads that tie into the content?
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