<story><title>A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter</title><url>http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120813/00081620002/fee-based-twitter-is-no-more-ideologically-pure-than-ad-supported-twitter.shtml</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mibbitier</author><text>You&apos;re assuming that advertisers never meet users needs.&lt;p&gt;If I&apos;m selling you a bike, and I also tell you about a good deal on bike insurance you can get, then I&apos;m advertising at you. Maybe I get a cut of the insurance premium. BUT, I&apos;m also adding value for the customer. It&apos;s a mutually beneficial transaction.&lt;p&gt;I know it&apos;s blasphemy to claim that advertising is sometimes pretty damn useful around these parts, but the fact is, it is useful for users just as much as it&apos;s useful for companies in search of revenue.&lt;p&gt;edit: Has no one here ever clicked on a sponsored result in google? If not, bear in mind you&apos;re the exception rather than the rule.</text></item><item><author>eykanal</author><text>Following the model from the article:&lt;p&gt;In the fee-based model, the needs of the following must be met: (1) the company, (2) the users.&lt;p&gt;In the ads-based model, the needs of the following must be met: (1) the company, (2) the advertisers, (3) the users.&lt;p&gt;By removing the advertisers from the equation, a &lt;i&gt;lot&lt;/i&gt; of resources are freed up to address the needs of the other two parties. It&apos;s kind of strange to say that &quot;the company&quot; is a party being serviced in this manner... they&apos;re asking for cash, and people are giving it to them for a service. Yes, they have needs that require resources (think administrative assistants, HR, sales, etc), but these people all exist to help service the user. To that extent, the majority of the company is now existing to create a better experience for the user. Their argument is that this is significantly superior to the model where a significant portion of the company exists to service advertisers, and not benefit the end user.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ghshephard</author><text>I disagree with you - but I&apos;m not downvoting you because I think you bring up an interesting point.  The problem, though, is the advertising on buy.com, monoprice.com, amazon.com and even google.com is actually quite useful for me.  Sometimes even the ads on dpreview.com are interesting.  The issue here is intent - on these sites, I am looking to buy products, product reviews, or (in the case of google) searching for something that might be product related.&lt;p&gt;On my social networks (Path) - my intent is to see what my niece is up to, what my friends are doing, and what my mother&apos;s latest project is.&lt;p&gt;It is not (and never has been) to &quot;Find a Female Friend in Redwood City&quot;, or, &quot;Check out the Kmart Special&quot;.&lt;p&gt;It is this disconnect between intent and ad-presentation that makes the pollution of the twitter feed so offensive.</text></comment>
<story><title>A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter</title><url>http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120813/00081620002/fee-based-twitter-is-no-more-ideologically-pure-than-ad-supported-twitter.shtml</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mibbitier</author><text>You&apos;re assuming that advertisers never meet users needs.&lt;p&gt;If I&apos;m selling you a bike, and I also tell you about a good deal on bike insurance you can get, then I&apos;m advertising at you. Maybe I get a cut of the insurance premium. BUT, I&apos;m also adding value for the customer. It&apos;s a mutually beneficial transaction.&lt;p&gt;I know it&apos;s blasphemy to claim that advertising is sometimes pretty damn useful around these parts, but the fact is, it is useful for users just as much as it&apos;s useful for companies in search of revenue.&lt;p&gt;edit: Has no one here ever clicked on a sponsored result in google? If not, bear in mind you&apos;re the exception rather than the rule.</text></item><item><author>eykanal</author><text>Following the model from the article:&lt;p&gt;In the fee-based model, the needs of the following must be met: (1) the company, (2) the users.&lt;p&gt;In the ads-based model, the needs of the following must be met: (1) the company, (2) the advertisers, (3) the users.&lt;p&gt;By removing the advertisers from the equation, a &lt;i&gt;lot&lt;/i&gt; of resources are freed up to address the needs of the other two parties. It&apos;s kind of strange to say that &quot;the company&quot; is a party being serviced in this manner... they&apos;re asking for cash, and people are giving it to them for a service. Yes, they have needs that require resources (think administrative assistants, HR, sales, etc), but these people all exist to help service the user. To that extent, the majority of the company is now existing to create a better experience for the user. Their argument is that this is significantly superior to the model where a significant portion of the company exists to service advertisers, and not benefit the end user.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wpietri</author><text>Advertising &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt; add value when it transmits novel information that would be hard to get some other way. But it usually doesn&apos;t.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s mainly an arms race to distort natural market outcomes. Coca Cola doesn&apos;t spend over a billion dollars a year advertising because they want to make you aware of some new fact. They just think they can make much more than that billion back by manipulating you.</text></comment>