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would you rather have banner ads? they have to make their money somewhere. as long as they're not rewriting existing affiliate links, this is about as unobtrus

would you rather have banner ads? they have to make their money somewhere. as long as they're not rewriting existing affiliate links, this is about as unobtrusive as it gets [edit: rewriting the links directly, instead of using a third party that necessarily obfuscates the url would be less obtrusive, but the principle is still the same]

csomar 16y ago
>> they have to make their money somewhere I'm not against Posterous making money online to provide me a free service. However, they should be transparent and clear about it. When I sign up, I want to be notified about this. I'm going to create a blog, publish posts, make readership and stay a good time there; so I want to know whatever thing happens in my blog and not only be surprised about it when it happens. Point 2 is that they didn't have a clear strategy how to monetize themselves (which is crucial since nothing runs for free) from the beginning. Come on, but this is like saying "Get your free domain here" and then telling you that the domain is free, but only if you pay for the hosting :(
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Yep. And for all the handwaving about transparency and 'going forward' there is no real offer of a solution for what they've done to date, in other words, they did it and intend to continue to do it. If they're serious about this they'll switch the feature off for all accounts up to the moment of modifying their terms of service, and make sure that new signups are properly informed. This so called apology seems to mix up the meanings of the words 'unobtrusive' and 'sneaky'.
jacquesm 16y ago
Of course posterous has to make money somewhere. But they should clearly spell out in the terms of service of the free product how they intend to do that. And they should allow people to opt out of this, either by going for a premium product or by switching it off on an account-by-account basis. And given the nasty way in which this was introduced the default for all old accounts should be OFF, new accounts know presumably what they're getting in to after the terms of service are modified to reflect reality. Nobody wants to withhold income from posterous, it's just that this is about as bad as it gets when dealing with the trust of your users. I'm personally pretty pissed off about it, I did a speech here in NL not that long ago comparing Ning and Posterous and presented posterous as a very good alternative without any of the nasty tricks that Ning has used over the years to lock in their users. I wished I could eat my words now.

csomar 16y ago

>> they have to make their money somewhere I'm not against Posterous making money online to provide me a free service. However, they should be transparent and clear about it. When I sign up, I want to be notified about this. I'm going to create a blog, publish posts, make readership and stay a good time there; so I want to know whatever thing happens in my blog and not only be surprised about it when it happens. Point 2 is that they didn't have a clear strategy how to monetize themselves (which is crucial since nothing runs for free) from the beginning. Come on, but this is like saying "Get your free domain here" and then telling you that the domain is free, but only if you pay for the hosting :(

jacquesm 16y ago
Yep. And for all the handwaving about transparency and 'going forward' there is no real offer of a solution for what they've done to date, in other words, they did it and intend to continue to do it. If they're serious about this they'll switch the feature off for all accounts up to the moment of modifying their terms of service, and make sure that new signups are properly informed. This so called apology seems to mix up the meanings of the words 'unobtrusive' and 'sneaky'.

jacquesm 16y ago

Of course posterous has to make money somewhere. But they should clearly spell out in the terms of service of the free product how they intend to do that. And they should allow people to opt out of this, either by going for a premium product or by switching it off on an account-by-account basis. And given the nasty way in which this was introduced the default for all old accounts should be OFF, new accounts know presumably what they're getting in to after the terms of service are modified to reflect reality. Nobody wants to withhold income from posterous, it's just that this is about as bad as it gets when dealing with the trust of your users. I'm personally pretty pissed off about it, I did a speech here in NL not that long ago comparing Ning and Posterous and presented posterous as a very good alternative without any of the nasty tricks that Ning has used over the years to lock in their users. I wished I could eat my words now.