7 ms·

So, cease existing?

• Touche 10y ago
  No, get another business model that is sustainable.
  • ori_b 10y ago
    How much are you paying sites that aren't advertising supported right now? How many more sites are you willing to pay at that same level? Right now, as far as I can tell, advertising supported sites are out-competing sites that directly charge users, meaning that users prefer not to pay. That makes leaves advertising as the most sustainable model.
    • TheCoreh 10y ago
      What stops them from offering both?
    • mook 10y ago
      A model out-competing another doesn't make it sustainable. Overfishing an area would make it out-compete another that doesn't, but that would be the exact opposite of sustainable.
    • michaelmrose 10y ago
      Some sites are involved in actual transactions that don't involve eyeballs and fractions of pennies these will be fine. Simple sites designed to promote the spread of genuinely useful information can be designed to use microscopic resources and operate on little money these will be fine. Some sites provide neat services people are willing to pay for these will be fine. Some sites represent the online presence of organizations with significant budgets these will be fine. Much of what remains isn't worth much and if no viable means of support can be found I guess they shouldn't exist. Honestly 1/2 of the modern web could go away and not much would be lost. It's only a crisis if your livelihood depends on making a bunch of crap nobody in their right mind would pay significant resources to support.
      • ori_b 10y ago
        Ok. So, now you're talking about shutting down half the web. Do you believe that's realistic?
        • CaptSpify 10y ago
          Not who you are replying to, but I do! What sites are so essential that we couldn't replace them?
          • ori_b 10y ago
            Google is an example of an ad-supported site that would be rather hard to replace. And, apparently, they make a ridiculous amount of money per user, so replacing advertising revenue with user payments is going to be expensive -- they'd have to charge you $277 per month, if you believe this: https://mondaynote.com/the-nytimes-could-be-worth-19bn-instead-of-2bn-8ab635bc6262 https://mondaynote.com/the-nytimes-could-be-worth-19bn-inste...
            • dTal 10y ago
              That would imply that I am rendering $277 worth of value to Google each month. I would happily receive that in cash and eschew all Google services, which I mostly try and do anyway for privacy reasons. Where do I sign? Cuts both ways.
              • ori_b 10y ago
                Well, the value you give google is the average probability of purchasing products. I'm sure that if a large number of companies were able to cut $277 from your average aggregate monthly spending in exchange for a guarantee that you were buying their products, they'd be signing up. Perhaps some sort of subscription service that you couldn't opt out of. You can try doing that as a startup.
            • CaptSpify 10y ago
              I would agree that Google search would be hard to replace, but I think it could be done, and probably done better. But one site is not worth keeping a crappy system in place, IMO.
• franciscop 10y ago
  Maybe! It's just an option that abusive advertising should not have started, and now that there's a fight back they complain. There's also the option that abusive advertising/malware is ruining it for benign advertising (if that exists). What is certain is that we won't get anywhere unless we stop pointing fingers and start working for a solution. It is also a matter of preference I'd say (actually preference vs annoyance). I install adblock to everyone mainly for the malware+abusing; I wouldn't go to such lengths otherwise. AFAIK I did it with the default "allow non-intrusive ads" checked.
• analog31 10y ago
  Yes. I know that sounds harsh, and I don't expect it to reach such an extreme. But at least in principle, offending people to the point where they disrupt your entire industry and you cease to exist, is one of the many risks faced by any business -- particularly in media and communications.
  • kijin 10y ago
    Exactly. One thing we often seem to forget is that no business has a right to exist indefinitely. When market conditions change, and your competition isn't doing anything obviously illegal, any damage done to your business is your own responsibility. Just because a business is suffering doesn't mean that anyone else needs to bail them out. Car companies don't sue oil companies when high gas prices hurt SUV sales. It's part of the risk of doing business.
• loco5niner 10y ago
  Yep! If they are acting that badly.