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

91–92 of 92 posts

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

#91

Post by kcodey » Wed, Aug 15, 2012, 5:32 PM UTC

onedev wrote: post #74

kcodey wrote: post #6

Think of it like FM radio. It's free for us to listen but we have to sit through advertisements. XM and sirius said hey, let's have people pay to listen, so don't have to make them sit through ads. Basically just a different biz model. That model can work though because you don't necessarily need critical mass to have people consume your content. (Yes to a certain extent you do) But the critical mass needed for the n…

But they're also SATELLITE radio. That is a huge value add over traditional radio service. I don't think users were only paying for sirius/XM because the services didn't have ads. It was because the products were technically superior.

What is the huge value added over traditional radio? That it's not FM? In terms of quality you mean? I thought when it first came out that their big pitch was no ads. But don't get me wrong, I also think satellite radio is better because of programming, sound quality, AND no ads.

Although I think they are running ads in some markets... Guess they couldn't survive on the no ads model and are going hybrid?

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

#92

Post by shurane » Wed, Aug 15, 2012, 11:44 PM UTC

r00fus wrote: post #70

dasil003 wrote: post #60

I'm a bit surprised the comments here are so overwhelmingly critical. I think there's a legitimate point here, which is that the users paying money is not a silver bullet. It's not as if paid services don't make decisions that end up screwing users one way or another, not to mention the fact that subscription fees and ads are not always mutually exclusive (witness cable TV, newspapers, etc). In fact Twitter toed the…

My only potential gripe with App.net is that they can't protect their users after the company is acquired. The Instagram/Sparrow problem combined with tendancy of almost every company to kowtow to the advertising industry is a valid concern for me.

They should follow an IRC or Jabber model. Anyone can host an IRC/jabber server. Maybe App.net can make an industrial twitter server to be hosted on windows, *nix, etc.

But of course, that's not what App.net is going after. That is what I think would be a lot better. Or maybe an industrial Facebook-ish server, too. Would be helpful to run in-house in giant organizations, I bet.

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