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This argument has no basis, those websites don't have to die, they have to think of an alternative business model. Some have already transitioned to crowdfundi
by bigbugbag 10y ago
This argument has no basis, those websites don't have to die, they have to think of an alternative business model.
Some have already transitioned to crowdfunding (see patreon, the dice tower getting funded on kickstarter,...) micropayment, subscriptions.
But this case of "your failed business model is not my problem" is not to blame on adblockers alone but also on dwindling ads revenue among others reasons due to facebook driving prices down. When facebook investor story time will come to an end the whole web advertising ecosystem might crumble on itself.
- chc 10y agoWhen a site as big as Wikipedia has to spend a large chunk of each year begging for handouts, I have trouble buying your suggestion that alternative business models are generally viable.
- bigbugbag 10y agoThis counter argument would be valid if wikipedia model had failed but it actually manage to fund the project for 10+ years. The day the usual website will receive 12 to 20Billions views a month and occupy 10TB of disk space, then we could use wikipedia as a representative example. Until then wikipedia should not be used as an example of how well the usual ad-supported website would fare with an alternative revenue model. IINM wikipedia has chosen a business model not based on ads which successfully funds the project for about 10+ years.
- chc 10y ago> The day the usual website will receive 12 to 20Billions views a month and occupy 10TB of disk space, then we could use wikipedia as a representative example. Until then wikipedia should not be used as an example of how well the usual ad-supported website would fare with an alternative revenue model. Yes, that was my point — Wikipedia is probably the absolute best-case scenario for a free website that isn't supported by ads, and they're still panhandling. The usual ad-supported website would fare much, much worse, and would probably just stop providing its service to the world.
- hulahoof 10y agoWikipedia most definitely does NOT require the donations they ask for every december to continue day-to-day operations. In fact, they can survive quite comfortably on the standard donation rate they receive each month outside the December drive[1]. [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising_reports#Fundraising_fiscal_year_2015-2016 https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising_reports#Fun...
- Angostura 10y agoOK, I prefer reasonable ad-supported to subscription.