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nice quote when they talk about Facebook DHH: "... begging for advertising crumbs which these companies are essentially doing..." Really odd perspective to ha

• runevault 17y ago
  When you introducing advertising, you have two sets of users, the advertisers who are your income stream, and the users who you need to keep around to make the advertisers happy. If you have directly paying users, you only have to worry about making those users happy, and you know you have something people really can't do without easily, because they are willing to pay their hard earned money for it, since many people value money more than time, or so it appears based on the popularity of free services.
  • axod 17y ago
    If users didn't find advertising useful, they wouldn't click on them. So the two forces aren't opposing.
    • deleted 17y ago
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    • mquander 17y ago
      Well, that's just not true. When I don't have an ad blocker, I click on ads just by accident once in a while, since many are so intrusive. Also, ads are often tremendously misleading, and will try their hardest to fool you into imagining that they are useful without actually being useful; that's how they make money.
      • axod 17y ago
        I disagree. Lets say for the sake of argument that people only clicked on ads by accident. Then no clicks would convert, advertisers would pull the ads, or drastically reduce payouts. Advertisers only pay, when advertising works - eg converts to a sale/signup/etc
        • telemachos 17y ago
          You seem to have ignored a key part of the parent's argument: ads often mislead people. So the fact that they make a sale doesn't show that they are 'useful' for a reasonable definition of useful.
          • axod 17y ago
            There are so many adverts that "often" really needs to be backed up with hard data.
            • telemachos 17y ago
              Our worldviews seem so completely different that we're probably talking past each other. Case in point: I don't know how to respond to someone who requests data to establish that advertising is based on manipulation. You may as well be speaking Martian to me. (My immediate response - after sputtering - is, more or less, "It's advertising. Look at some.") Let me stress, I'm not saying this as a put-down or any kind of argument in proof of anything. I'm simply trying to express in words my jaw dropping when I read your response.
              • axod 17y ago
                Advertising is just "information". :/ and information 'manipulates' people who consume it. But I'm not sure why you consider that a bad thing. Probably about half the posts on HN are 'adverts'. They are posts that have a message, urging us, the readers, to consider this information and possibly act on it. That's an advert. Your previous point "Ads often mislead people"... News often misleads people. People often mislead other people. It's not unique to advertising by any means.
• aditya 17y ago
  Because when someone pays you directly, you're offering them something they value and would pay for rather than invading their brain with ads that they don't want to see?
  • axod 17y ago
    It works for some things. But charging users money to use facebook/twitter/most websites just wouldn't work.
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    • mquander 17y ago
      There's no good fundamental reason why it wouldn't work. The only reasons are cultural (people like getting things for "free", especially on the internet) and technical (you have to dig out your credit card, sign up with it, and trust Facebook not to screw you, in order to pay them a dollar a month.)
      • axod 17y ago
        I disagree. The reasons are more straightforward. If there's a choice between a paid website, and a free website, the free one will win out. And advertising means you can offer users something for 'free'. So lets say google switched to charging users for access to their search engine, a competitor would just popup that was 'free', and everyone would use that instead.
        • mquander 17y ago
          Well, I agree. That's what I meant to say when I referred to the cultural reason; since free alternatives always appear, people always expect a good free version to be available, and are even more hesitant to pay. However, I don't think that's a good place for us to be. Firstly, it remains to be seen whether it's technically sustainable; if ad blockers continue to become more mainstream and more sophisticated, ads will start bringing in less and less money. Secondly, I think that many non-ad-blocking users are making a poor choice when they choose an ad-supported free version, because it's very hard to evaluate the costs to you of having ads on content. It puts a mental burden on you, wastes your time, and may (invisibly to you) cause you to make poor purchasing decisions later. Those are all real costs, but it's impossible for you to put a dollar value on them.
• alayne 17y ago
  DHH has talked before about his opposition to ad-based businesses. It is bread crumbs on a per user basis. That means you need a huge number of eyeballs to profit. Building a system so large and popular that it gets that many users is difficult and there is a lottery factor. On the moral side, people don't like advertising. That's the seamy underbelly of Google; they are constantly playing this game of how much advertising pain will people endure for their free services. You know, maybe stoplights could flash some adsense ads relevant to the types of passing vehicles to cover infrastructure costs. I don't want to live in adsense world.
  • axod 17y ago
    It's a niche viewpoint. I do want to live in an adsense world, as do most users. They find adverts useful. >> "DHH has talked before about his opposition to ad-based businesses. It is bread crumbs on a per user basis. That means you need a huge number of eyeballs to profit. Building a system so large and popular that it gets that many users is difficult and there is a lottery factor." I think basically, it's 'harder'. It's a harder problem to solve. But really, you can setup a profitable website in the right niche earning good money from advertising easily without requiring large number of eyeballs.
  • armandososa 17y ago
    People don't like advertising? I think it is an unfair generalization. People love free stuff and are willing to endure advertising because they love free stuff. The charge upfront idea is great for some business but let's be honest: if every website did that and the whole internet was behind a paywall the web would die.