4 ms·

Yes, I've read about the stress. And yet. If Lars will mail out that disk to somebody, somebody may well just pitch to a bunch of VCs, build a fresh web interf

Yes, I've read about the stress. And yet. If Lars will mail out that disk to somebody, somebody may well just pitch to a bunch of VCs, build a fresh web interface and bury it all in ads. Couldn't Lars do that himself? The plastering it all in ads, I mean. As somebody in another comment said correctly, the age of online altruism is dead. We have our ideas who killed it, we mourn the passing of an age, but we can't change it. (OK, just ignore this if the ads are already all over Gmane. I wouldn't know, I adblock...)

dspillett 10y ago
> Couldn't Lars do that himself? The plastering it all in ads, I mean Perhaps he doesn't think the money is worth the admin time involved. He's still have to deal with take down requests and DoS attacks, and also have to deal with advertising companies too on top. He may also prefer not to see his creation go that way under his watch. I would suggest a better option would be to throw the content of the disk at a public hosting service if any of those who offer free hosting for public data sets would be relevant, or alternately put it out as a torrent until the content is sufficiently well distributed. I'd be happy to throw a chunk of bandwidth at the initial seeding effort as I'm sure would others. > the age of online altruism is dead (re: plastering it all in ads) Just because it is difficult to maintain the old ways, doesn't mean all us old timers are willing to take part in propagating the new ones that we don't like! > I wouldn't know, I adblock An example of your "online altruism is dead" fact. "You can pay for it with ads (that I personally won't see so don't expect me to contribute)". As more and more people block ads you have to get more and more crafty to make money out of them which makes the whole business just that little bit more shady with each passing day. As per my first two points I can certainly understand him not wanting to go in that direction, as I'd never volunteer for it myself.
- Practicality 10y ago
  Whatever happened to the pay service model? I am actually happy to pay for services like this. Even if every user only paid $1/month it would probably cover most of the costs.
  - dspillett 10y ago
    The vast majority of people don't want to pay and many of those that might are still put off be the little bit of extra effort/risk (enter credit card details?, sign up for an account?, ...) and will go look elsewhere instead. And if if the money would be enough to make the enterprise worth while that is not his main point. He was doing it mainly as a fun side project to help others and it simply isn't fun any more. Maybe it could make enough money to make it worth while in a purely time/income based benefit analysis but he still would rather stop as it isn't enjoyable to him at this stage and if even he wanted to spend that much time/effort to make that money perhaps he has other projects he'd rather spend the time/effort on. If the service truly could be made a going concern in that way he'll no doubt be inundated with offers to take over and try running it in that fashion, so you'll see the new pay service appear in short order.
  - rocqua 10y ago
    Free triggers a completely different response than 'stupidly cheap'. Cheap still requires paying money, which is a barrier just for the act. Moreover, there is the fallacy that something free has an infinite value/cost ratio. (fallacious because you should look at value - cost)
  - taejo 10y ago
    I'm a huge fan of gmane, but I mostly use it by it showing up in Google results. I wouldn't feel like it was worth a subscription, and while a 50c charge per thread would probably be a fair reflection of the value for me, the friction would be way too high.
  - khedoros 10y ago
    There are a lot of sites (dozens, maybe) that I would be willing to pay $1-$10 a month for, except that I'm not willing to sign up for all of them individually, and not all of them are willing to sell me their information/services at a price that matches the value that they provide. It's not worth my time to manage each of those subscriptions on its own, and there isn't really a good way to manage them centrally, from the same interface. The money is almost certainly worth it, but the time involved almost certainly isn't.
jlgaddis 10y ago
It's been tried. AdSense dropped Gmane, for "reasons". Some Amazon Ad program (I forget the name) was tested, but the ads weren't relevant at all. Lars wrote a blog post about this, if you're interested.
- cronjobber 10y ago
  Thanks
  - joshstrange 10y ago
    Here is the blog post https://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/2013/07/26/monetising/ https://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/2013/07/26/monetising/
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

dspillett 10y ago

> Couldn't Lars do that himself? The plastering it all in ads, I mean Perhaps he doesn't think the money is worth the admin time involved. He's still have to deal with take down requests and DoS attacks, and also have to deal with advertising companies too on top. He may also prefer not to see his creation go that way under his watch. I would suggest a better option would be to throw the content of the disk at a public hosting service if any of those who offer free hosting for public data sets would be relevant, or alternately put it out as a torrent until the content is sufficiently well distributed. I'd be happy to throw a chunk of bandwidth at the initial seeding effort as I'm sure would others. > the age of online altruism is dead (re: plastering it all in ads) Just because it is difficult to maintain the old ways, doesn't mean all us old timers are willing to take part in propagating the new ones that we don't like! > I wouldn't know, I adblock An example of your "online altruism is dead" fact. "You can pay for it with ads (that I personally won't see so don't expect me to contribute)". As more and more people block ads you have to get more and more crafty to make money out of them which makes the whole business just that little bit more shady with each passing day. As per my first two points I can certainly understand him not wanting to go in that direction, as I'd never volunteer for it myself.

Practicality 10y ago
Whatever happened to the pay service model? I am actually happy to pay for services like this. Even if every user only paid $1/month it would probably cover most of the costs.
- dspillett 10y ago
  The vast majority of people don't want to pay and many of those that might are still put off be the little bit of extra effort/risk (enter credit card details?, sign up for an account?, ...) and will go look elsewhere instead. And if if the money would be enough to make the enterprise worth while that is not his main point. He was doing it mainly as a fun side project to help others and it simply isn't fun any more. Maybe it could make enough money to make it worth while in a purely time/income based benefit analysis but he still would rather stop as it isn't enjoyable to him at this stage and if even he wanted to spend that much time/effort to make that money perhaps he has other projects he'd rather spend the time/effort on. If the service truly could be made a going concern in that way he'll no doubt be inundated with offers to take over and try running it in that fashion, so you'll see the new pay service appear in short order.
- rocqua 10y ago
  Free triggers a completely different response than 'stupidly cheap'. Cheap still requires paying money, which is a barrier just for the act. Moreover, there is the fallacy that something free has an infinite value/cost ratio. (fallacious because you should look at value - cost)
- taejo 10y ago
  I'm a huge fan of gmane, but I mostly use it by it showing up in Google results. I wouldn't feel like it was worth a subscription, and while a 50c charge per thread would probably be a fair reflection of the value for me, the friction would be way too high.
- khedoros 10y ago
  There are a lot of sites (dozens, maybe) that I would be willing to pay $1-$10 a month for, except that I'm not willing to sign up for all of them individually, and not all of them are willing to sell me their information/services at a price that matches the value that they provide. It's not worth my time to manage each of those subscriptions on its own, and there isn't really a good way to manage them centrally, from the same interface. The money is almost certainly worth it, but the time involved almost certainly isn't.

jlgaddis 10y ago

It's been tried. AdSense dropped Gmane, for "reasons". Some Amazon Ad program (I forget the name) was tested, but the ads weren't relevant at all. Lars wrote a blog post about this, if you're interested.

cronjobber 10y ago
Thanks
- joshstrange 10y ago
  Here is the blog post https://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/2013/07/26/monetising/ https://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/2013/07/26/monetising/

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]