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“Your frustration is the product”

daringfireball.net

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Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#331

Post by pixxel »

troad wrote: post #249
MarkusWandel wrote: post #91

Just a crazy idea, but could it be that they don't dogfood their own stuff? I have Ublock Origin Lite on by default (RIP full Ublock Origin) and a lot of sites look clean . I'm often not even aware that if I send a link to an article via Whatsapp or whatever, it may reflect badly on me that I send such an ad-overloaded mess to them. I just don't know the mess is there except sometimes by accident. I watched someone g…

> Just a crazy idea, but could it be that they don't dogfood their own stuff? I am so convinced that this is the case. They're using their own product using some max-level sub that removes all the annoyances, and don't realise how unbearable the default experience is. Speaking of the NYT: previously, I used to bypass the paywall, and I simply got the article with no nonsense. Now I subscribe, and every single day I g…

[dead]

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#333

Post by naravara »

compiler-guy wrote: post #112
naravara wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or someone can invent an ad supported business model that isn’t abusive. A lot of print magazines, like Vogue or even Field & Stream, are like 60% or more full page ads. But if you’re reading something like New Bride magazine you’re probably actively shopping for wedding dresses and flowers and such, so the advertising ideally works as part of what makes the magazine valuable for the reader and the advertiser. The re…

He also has no shareholders except himself. So the only person he has to please is himself, and if he is wrong, the only person who suffers is himself (and, I suppose, his family). This very direct, very personal connection to the web business doesn't exist in most other sites.

He also has no ambitions towards being a billionaire, he just wants to make enough money to sustain a mostly upper middle class lifestyle and keep his business going.

I think a lot of online publications could be modestly sized businesses with a very respectable annual revenue range in the tens of millions or even hundreds of millions, but they erode their own brand value chasing tantalizingly higher numbers that SEEM in reach but actually aren’t.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#334

Post by pkilgore »

schneems wrote: post #295
wouterjanl wrote: post #291

I believe one of the reasons I keep coming back to hackernews is the absence of ads and the near complete focus on content. Shout out to those who work in the background to keep it like this. It would be interesting to hear from dang or other insiders how evident it is that this website is adfree. At some point there must have been someone who probably raised the idea that money could be made by injecting an ad or a…

Pedantic point: YC has ads, they are just blend in much better and are delivered in the same medium. Hiring posts (definitively) and tech posts (maybe) by YC companies. The whole product is one big ad for a venture fund. Its generally well done and unobtrusive. So kudos to them for that it goes relatively unnoticed.

In other words, we're still the product at HN: the customers are just not advertisers.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#335

Post by Aurornis »

jes5199 wrote: post #323
Aurornis wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the people who run news websites mostly don’t know where their ads are coming from, have forgotten how the ad system was installed in the first place, and cannot turn them off if they try I think this might be selection bias in your customer base. I've had some friends who worked at a local news outlet. The ads on their website were a big deal and they had a full-time position dedicated to managing internet adverti…

yes perhaps only the big players have this problem

Other way around. Only the very small players have this problem.

For big players, ad revenue is a big part of their business. Not a forgotten corner of their website.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#336

Post by Eric_WVGG »

ratatougi wrote: post #320
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hi, I'm a dev who was working in journalism around thirty years ago and still has some connections. The entire industry is run by actual journalists, it's one of the few industries where people who know how to do the job still rise to the top. Unlike most other industries, where the top brass are MBAs who don't actually know how to do things like build airplanes or write software or what have you. Which is honestly g…

Can you suggest some websites used to read RSS?

I use the Reeder app on iPad. NetNewsWire and Feedbin are good alternatives. I’ve never had a particularly good experience on web apps.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#337

Post by bandrami »

abrookewood wrote: post #327
bandrami wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh Lord you need to take on some non-tech companies as clients if this surprises you. I've had clients who forgot they had a website and thought that monthly hosting bill was just for something to do with the back-office Internet connection.

That is insane.

It was a janitorial temp company and they didn't really care about computers. Whoever had been their IT guy before me had made a pretty neat website that would let clients book cleaning staff and give them a birds-eye- view of upcoming staffing needs. It was marginally better than their existing phone and email based system but not enough to make them change it, and over years of saying "let's try it next quarter" eventually everybody forgot about it.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#338

Post by btbuildem »

jes5199 wrote: post #324
btbuildem wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I may, what was your vision? What were you aiming to replace the ads with?

it was a single monthly subscription to a bundle, and the clever part is we would measure time spent on each site and divide up the money proportionally, so the site you spent the most time reading would get paid the most. Our founder had the idea that this would incentivize higher-quality content. We never got enough paying subscribers to really pull it off

Interesting approach! I feel like this is a hard space to break into, because of the friction -- both having to convince content hosts to opt in, and consumers to subscribe.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#339

Post by manarth »

Kye wrote: post #329
bluGill wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cable didn't start ad free. It started because some valley communities couldn't get a signal at all so the put one community antenna on high ground and ran a cable to houses to get normal broadcast tv with ads to each house. a few ad free stations came latter.

I spent a long time thinking CATV on the back mean Cable TV, not Community Antenna TV.

Huh, and I thought it was short for "Conditional Access TV" – i.e. you needed a subscription of some sort.

TIL.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#340

Post by 47282847 »

kgwxd wrote: post #326
VertanaNinjai wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there are some details missing here, but asking for more detailed or tailored feedback makes it seem like he cares and was willing to hear you out. Sometimes people are in their own industry for so long that they forget what their industry and tools look like to outside eyes. A simple menu to him could’ve been overwhelming for you as a quick example.

If the response is an exact quote, the tone is "you must be stupid." It doesn't convey caring and wiling to hear things, and if they can't understand that before sending it, it makes perfect sense that the product sucks, and it will only get worse.

It’s not the tone. It’s how you perceive the tone to be. Be careful, especially in a culturally diverse and international environment. Plenty of cultures cringe when they receive overly friendly phrased words, as it will not sound honest and curious to them but condescending and fake (in this context it may be perceived as sarcasm); whereas others will experience and mean it as straightforward openness.

Communication is hard. Even harder in writing. A usually working approach is to assume friendliness.

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