::scr Paying for It

[Simon Batistoni]

On 02/05/02 12:33 +0100, Simon Wistow wrote:
>  
> > > So you say "hey, you'd really like this article on salon. I've given
> > > you a sublogin. My username is "muttley", and you can use "hitherto"
> > > and the password "excellent". It'll let you in for a couple of days.
> > 
> > That'd be such a pain to do, and does not account for posting to mailing 
> > lists :-)
> 
> 
> But both of thoses method prevent me from searching out new material -
> if everything's behind passworded portals then I'm not going to be able
> to search for it.
> 
> People keep trying to map the web to physical media but that defeats the
> point. The web is not just some sort of electronic document store that
> allows get at a vast quantity of information quickly. It's more than
> that. 
> 
> As I've said before, I think we've fucked it, fumbled the ball, dropped
> a clanger, screwed it all over - we have a paradox.
> 
> Good sites gets lots of hits. Hits cost money. So they start charging.
> Then they just become electronic magazines pretty much nullifying their
> point because all they are is just an online document store like the
> academic journal archives you can subscribe to.

But this isn't really a fumble - how else would things work, unless
the workers unite, the bourgeois pigdog rulers are overthrown, and we
make money obsolete?

Sites cost money to run. Money has to be earnt back. Now, advertising
might fill this niche, but unfortunately, where in the past, in other
media, advertising was bought on faith, and people hoped that the
ambient effect of being exposed to a product would sell it, online,
everything is measured in clicks.

This (and I'm conscious that this list contains people who have done,
and still do work for online ad companies) is the single big fuck-up
that we've made with the web. Advertising just doesn't work that way.
Human beings don't work that way. 

Companies don't pay for a TV commercial based on how many people leapt
up from their chairs and ran screaming to the nearest corner shop to
buy a can of coke the instant they saw the ad. Some people might argue
that this is only because the metrics would be too hard to gather, but
that's missing the point.

I'll buy something or respond to something based on subliminal brand
awareness months after I saw the ad. And if advertisers and agencies
were honest, they'd stop measuring banner effectiveness on
click-throughs. In fact, it would be interesting to see if anyone
could turn the market around and innovate with paid-for-up-front
banners *that you can't click on*.

Erm, that was a large ranty detour. Sorry.

Right now, advertising doesn't work. So how do you pay contributors,
designers, landlords, web hosts?

> We want the web to be accessible to everyone but by doing so we force a
> situation where all that was special about the web isn't there anymore. 

You've lost me here. I see the argument that "if the web was 5 people
the bandwidth costs would be manageable", but it doesn't really wash.
If the web was 5 people, it'd be boring as fuck.

There will inevitably be tiers of the web. There will be a big,
commercial core, where people pay for subscription services, to read
things by well-known writers. It will be mainstream. Little of it will
interest most of us.

Some smart publications will have a mainly subscription model, but
will excerpt interesting articles, run teasers, give away some
articles in the hope of attracting readers. Perhaps they'll allow you
to access archived articles that are 6 months old, or a year. There
will be interesting content.

There will also be the places there have always been. The personal
websites full of interesting little anecdotes. The whacky academics
with a hobby of blowing stuff up in microwaves. The labours of love
that made the web what it is today, and which still do. 

I still like the term "hinternet" that was explored on (void) last
year, as a way of describing these little places, outside the
commercial sphere, that will continue to entertain and amuse people.
What was special about the web *is* still there, alongside a lot of
stuff that isn't special.

Very little of what I read, of what gets posted to scribot for example
(http://www.astray.com/scribot/) is on large, commercial sites.
Certainly, of the stuff that does, I give up on it before I'm 50% of
the way through because it's turgid journalism churned out by a
schmuck who's doing it for the money, and doesn't give a shit.

The places I read regularly, that are consistently good, I would have
no issue with paying for. And yes, I'd like to be able to share things
with people, but it is possible to build mechanisms to do this. And if
they find the sites I "lend" them to be consistently good, chances are
they'll pay too.

It's either that, or make advertising actually pay its way online.