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Perplexity got ads

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Re: Perplexity got ads

#141

Post by wholinator2 »

__rito__ wrote: post #136
nomilk wrote: post #120

What are the advantages of Perplexity over, say, ChatGPT? I use three LLMs atm (ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok), and have a decent sense for which is better at different tasks. For example, when asked about questionable web scraping ChatGPT and Claude give answers regarding ethics, whereas Grok gives more direct, technical response. What is Perplexity better than other LLMs at?

Perplexity has been the most accurate LLM product, and sans hallucination till date. It is also the fastest. It also has inline citation, but other products do, too. But at one time it was the only product in market to offer that. That's why I stick with Perplexity.

Well just depends how hard the questions you ask it are. If I'm getting help with graduate physics it can certainly combine near-miss sources into a mishmash hallucination. Granted, the sources can be useful but they're pretty exclusively things I've already found via google. I think only one has it returned a novel, useful source

Re: Perplexity got ads

#142

Post by marcosdumay »

rz2k wrote: post #115
coder543 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hundreds of thousands of people" are paying $20/mo for it, according to the CEO.[0] That seems like a very respectable place for such an early product to be. It is extremely far from "no one". [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWPmu_rKxJo&t=185s

I wonder if cross-examined on that claim, that he would clarify that they have hundreds of thousands of Pro customers. Something like: It’s easy to get lost in the weeds of how much Individual subscribers paid, but that is an accurate characterization of the number of Pro Perplexity subscribers. The point is, I have a Pro Perplexity subscription for a year, because my ISP was offering year long access for free. I thi…

> I like the idea of Perplexity supplying citations, but it seems more like it is parallel construction than citing how the model came up with a particular answer.

It's an LLM, throwing whatever text the model says you'll like best. It's amazing that they can hack it to provide links, but if you are expecting it to have a "thought-line" with "traceable research sources", you are just falling for the hype.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#143

Post by scarface_74 »

55555 wrote: post #129
FiddlerClamp wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, if you're willing to pay for an ad-free service, I suspect you're far more valuable to advertisers than any reasonable amount you could pay to be exempt.

Correct. A US google user's average value is $60 USD/month and ofcourse this is scaled up by those willing to pay who could be worth $200+ USD/month. (Napkin math)

That number is way off

https://thenextweb.com/news/heres-how-much-money-you-made-go...

Re: Perplexity got ads

#144

Post by [deleted] »

pembrook wrote: post #123

Big surprise. It’s almost as if internet 1.0 shook out the way it did for a reason, and for all the complaining about ads, fast forward 25 years and consumers still fundamentally refuse to pay for search. It’s the same reason the phone book was also free and ad supported pre-internet. I don’t know why we can’t accept this reality and why we need to masochistically flog ourselves every time this is proven true over an…

[deleted]

Re: Perplexity got ads

#145

Post by marcosdumay »

KMnO4 wrote: post #127
imposterr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean Perplexity Pro? That thing they tried and found that no one was willing to pay for cuz users say they want paid options but then jump boat to the free things always? https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/faq/what-is-perplexity-pro

What's up with every AI company having a $0 plan and a $20 plan? I would pay for a lot more of these tools if they were $5 (obviously with less capability than a $20 plan), but I don't use any one enough to justify nearly $300/year (post tax).

That's because payment processing and customer support take almost all of the $5, if not more than it.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#146

Post by Spivak »

scarface_74 wrote: post #137
chrisweekly wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet Kagi is doing well, and I'm very happy to pay a few bucks a month to be their customer instead of their product.

Kagi has around 200K subscribers. I wouldn’t call that “doing well”. Edit: that should be 29K subscribers

Do you mean 20k? I doubt they 10x'd growth since January. For a bootstrapped business whose end-goal is sustainability that's doing great. When you don't have shareholders breathing down your neck for exponential returns the calculus changes.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#147

Post by devsda »

pembrook wrote: post #123

Big surprise. It’s almost as if internet 1.0 shook out the way it did for a reason, and for all the complaining about ads, fast forward 25 years and consumers still fundamentally refuse to pay for search. It’s the same reason the phone book was also free and ad supported pre-internet. I don’t know why we can’t accept this reality and why we need to masochistically flog ourselves every time this is proven true over an…

> for all the complaining about ads,

There are couple of main complaints about ads:

1. Too many of them plastered all over in least expected places.

2. All that is done to privacy in the name of accurate profiling and targeting.

3. Malicious and misleading ads.

Should we accept that ad based industry can't survive without resorting to any of the above ?

Re: Perplexity got ads

#148

Post by Tostino »

Spivak wrote: post #135
chrisweekly wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet Kagi is doing well, and I'm very happy to pay a few bucks a month to be their customer instead of their product.

You won't ever get big with this scheme but you can be sustainable.

There should be more people striving for sustainable businesses IMO.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#149

Post by scarface_74 »

Spivak wrote: post #146
scarface_74 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kagi has around 200K subscribers. I wouldn’t call that “doing well”. Edit: that should be 29K subscribers

Do you mean 20k? I doubt they 10x'd growth since January. For a bootstrapped business whose end-goal is sustainability that's doing great. When you don't have shareholders breathing down your neck for exponential returns the calculus changes.

Yep typo - 20K - fixing.

I always thought Kagi was still the old Mac focused company that enabled independent software makers to collect payments from customers.

I didn’t realize that the old company had been out of business for years until I heard the founder interview on the Talk Show podcast

https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2024/12/24/ep-416

Re: Perplexity got ads

#150

Post by throwaway314155 »

dtromero wrote: post #125
nomilk wrote: post #120

What are the advantages of Perplexity over, say, ChatGPT? I use three LLMs atm (ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok), and have a decent sense for which is better at different tasks. For example, when asked about questionable web scraping ChatGPT and Claude give answers regarding ethics, whereas Grok gives more direct, technical response. What is Perplexity better than other LLMs at?

Inline citations. I use perplexity all the time to find HackerNews or Reddit threads on certain topics, or conduct baseline research on topics. It will return the standard LLM answer but with inline citations which I can then use to verify or explore further.

Have you used ChatGPT with "internet" access enabled (the globe icon)? It can and does cite its sources and is surprisingly accurate and useful.
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