It's not a bait and switch - that's hyperbole at its finest. It's just something you don't like that you weren't notified about but still optional.
Disqus bait and switch, now with ads
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Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads
#42I use disqus on my blog for comments. I just checked and I'm not getting what he's getting, and I do have one post that gets ~40 views per day. Weird.
Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads
#43I think Disqus is a great service, and I suspect that this business model will work fine for them, but it's obviously not ideal for everyone.
The economics of hosting comments are interesting -- there is real engineering effort in doing it well; there is product value to some degree of aggregation (spam & bot detection, etc.); the operating expenses are real especially at a Disqus-style scale, but it's not clear that many people would pay even a small subscription fee.
Makes me wonder about the viability of either a federated (not fully p2p, but "local" aggregators), either with or without actual coordination between members of the federation on spammers, e.g.. I'd probably swallow the cost of hosting comments for a few thousand "neighborly" sites, if it meant i had a good commenting system with no commercial interruptions, and be happy to subsidize "good people".
Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads
#44I have to disagree even as someone relying on Disqus in a few different ways.
First off, they did provide notice. I received an email about this at all the addresses I have an account under. Maybe the the author didn't and that sucks but this seems like an edge case and he is one of the exceptions, not the rule.
Second, you can turn this feature off which brings me to my next point. Even if they do decide to change this can you really blame them? The thing is we're all using the service for free and on top of it they're willing to share revenue with users. I mean we can't just expect every free service to never monetize. Could they have done it differently? Sure but lets not give in to the temptation to be armchair CEOs here and proclaim that we know that a different model would have worked better for everyone. I give Disqus the benefit of the doubt that they did their homework and decided that this is the best way for them to monetize and still do right by their users.
I use Disqus on my personal blog and I use it as part of an app I'm quite passionate about. In my app (link is in my profile) I use Disqus in much the same way Tumblr does where you enter your short name and your public pages can have comments. As someone using them in these two different ways I empathize with the author especially when it comes to my app as I don't want the ads associated with anything I'm personally doing but at the same time I'm not blaming Disqus either. I use them, in both cases, as an alternative to rolling my own. Their platform is far richer than anything I could do so even if they didn't allow opting out its still a win for me.
In the end this outrage is unnecessary. Disqus made no secret of this, reached out to us, provided a way to opt out, and even offered to share revenue! On top of that they're still a totally free service that's offering us value. The author himself says his blog will no longer have comments because of this. Why? I'm sure he can create a commenting system himself but obviously Disqus is delivering value in a way that's pretty tough to replace.
Come on guys, its one thing to not like these ads but to not use Disqus in protest really isn't hurting Disqus as much as it is the person who stops using them in most cases. They definitely acted in good faith on this one and we need to stop acting like every free service on the web owes us the service we want, how we want it, when we want it. This isn't a charity we're talking about here, its a web startup. I follow jaquesm's blog and I agree with most of his thoughts but I can't get behind this one.
Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads
#45"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).
Why would you ever believe a company that says it exists to make you happy? Companies exist to make money, that is literally true. There is no other purpose. It just so happens that making people happy is often a reasonable way to make money, but if making people happy doesn't maximize profits, then eventually something else must be done.
Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads
#46I wouldn't know, I've redirected all the disqus hostnames to 127.0.0.1
This has saved me the bandwidth otherwise wasted on ppl's idiotic quips and now, ads.
Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I think the ‘you are not the user, you are the product’ meme should die. It does a dis-service to the complexity of the situation and it masks some much more serious issues with online monetization models, and online privacy in general." http://jacquesmattheij.com/you-are-not-the-customer-you-are-... Meta: I went googling for this article, know I'd read it, but not where. I found the coincidence of the author quite…
I never expected to see that make the jump from 'end user of a service' (say twitter, facebook, google) to 'end user of a plug-in' or SAAS product. Silly me, I guess I should have seen it coming.
You don't think Disqus is offering a service? Do you know what the last S in SaaS stands for? This comment makes no sense.
Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads
#48"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…
My feeling is that the HN community tends to try and focus on unique and specific details. This quote has become a cliche and doesn't add that much to the conversation.
Like many cliches it is proving itself as being true again and again.
So one reason that it (maybe) doesn't add much is that everyone knows it is tue, but doesn't want to think about it.
Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads
#49I have an aversion to hosting 3rd-party functionality on my sites for this very reason. They do not work for you, they do not answer to you, and their motives are usually quite different than yours. Thus, don't be surprised when they act to satisfy those motives in ways that you may not entirely agree with.
To me it depends. Something like Disquis where they were giving it away for free I agree. However if it is a for-pay service where you are exchanging money for service, they have some incentive to do right by you, so that your money does not go elsewhere.
Good point, but keep in mind that if they're a business, then the ultimate goal is to make money. It's kind of like the formula prescribed in Fight Club which refers to whether or not a car manufacturer will issue a recall: the decision will most often be based on which result will net greatest economic yield. If the profits from doing X are more than the expected losses (say, due to customer attrition), then that's a good "business decision".
Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads
#50"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.
You can still be the product if you're on the free end of a freemium model. LinkedIn is an example.