Home
Ads and a Continuum of Evil?
July 7, 2006
| Filed under: Random Thoughts
My friend Mick sent me a MySpace message today. The message itself was not in the email which MySpace sent. Instead I needed to go to MySpace site and login. The process was made quite difficult and of course I saw a plethora of horrid ads in the process. As a user, what did I NEED to do to see the message? Just go to my MySpace page and there it is… Mick’s comment. The process evidently forced me to login, and did not make that process easy, just so that MySpace could make some moola from ad impressions.
I started to think that the ad-supported software universe can be seen as a continuum of ‘evil’. At one end of the spectrum is MySpace where the content comes from the users. While the advertisers want to be where these users are, they don’t want to be associated with what they are saying so the pages are polluted with low-revenue, ‘run-of-network’ casino ads.
At the other end of the continuum are the adware companies that know too much about me.
Its quite difficult to build a business on ads without becoming ‘evil’.
Like what you're reading? Subscribe to my feed.
July 7, 2006 | Filed under: Random Thoughts
My friend Mick sent me a MySpace message today. The message itself was not in the email which MySpace sent. Instead I needed to go to MySpace site and login. The process was made quite difficult and of course I saw a plethora of horrid ads in the process. As a user, what did I NEED to do to see the message? Just go to my MySpace page and there it is… Mick’s comment. The process evidently forced me to login, and did not make that process easy, just so that MySpace could make some moola from ad impressions.
I started to think that the ad-supported software universe can be seen as a continuum of ‘evil’. At one end of the spectrum is MySpace where the content comes from the users. While the advertisers want to be where these users are, they don’t want to be associated with what they are saying so the pages are polluted with low-revenue, ‘run-of-network’ casino ads.
At the other end of the continuum are the adware companies that know too much about me.
Its quite difficult to build a business on ads without becoming ‘evil’.
Like what you're reading? Subscribe to my feed.
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.morle.net/mt/mt-tb.cgi/196
Comments
Hey Phil, I don't get any ads in the login for MySpace, but I hate that I have to login each time. Maybe for kids who share computers or go to net cafe's it's an issue. Although a 'remember me' box would work too!!
Posted by: Mick at July 12, 2006 10:56 PM
Post a comment
Movable Type 3.31 Everything here is my personal opinion.