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[andrewducker]

[Poll #1442941]

Comments

Not related but...

[recycled-sales.livejournal.com]

It's log, log. It's big, it's heavy, it's wood.
It's log, log. It's better than bad, it's good!

Re: Not related but...

[andrewducker]

I wondered how long that would take :->

You win a no-prize!

Re: Not related but...

[recycled-sales.livejournal.com]

Ren and Stimpy was a work of joy. I might actually still have a video somewhere, except without a video player to play it :(

[simont]

My answer to the last question, I suspect, would depend on how many other people still did read news websites. If they all disappeared behind paywalls and lots of other people paid to subscribe and discussed the articles a lot on places like LJ, then I imagine I'd feel the absence considerably more due to constantly missing out on whatever it was everyone else was talking about. (Though whether that'd inspire me to pay is another matter.) If they disappeared entirely, I'd probably miss them less.

I don't block ads because I've never quite been bothered to, but I can't imagine feeling any guilt if I did. For a start, virtually none of the ads I see on the web are for anything I'd ever even want, and those that are are for things I generally buy from someone I'd already decided on before that; so the benefit to the advertiser from showing me the ad is negligibly different either way. More importantly, I don't feel morally bound to allow myself to be irritated for other people's profit: advertising is annoying, and people will naturally resist being annoyed if they can, and that's simply one of the factors that advertisers should be taking into account when they choose what, where and how to advertise. Spinning the enduring of adverts as a moral duty of the consumer is a position which allows advertisers to externalise that particular cost, so that they have less incentive to find ways to advertise that are less irritating rather than more.

[andrewducker]

and this is why I asked about text-ads. I don't object to seeing text ads, I just hated the flashing image ads. Sadly it doesn't seem to be something that AdBlock makes easy to do - if it did I'd have it set so that text ads still appeared.

[daisyflip.livejournal.com]

This. Anything that blocks my view of what I'm reading = fail. Anything unobtrusive, I tend not to even notice.

[red-phil.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Flashing animated ads are bad.
as are:
Pop ups
pop unders
Ads that pretend to be something they are not eg. system warnings

Also some websites should think of the user more than they do when placing adverts. Somewhere noticable but not actually getting in the way of the real information on the site is best but seemingly some site designers can't manage that.

New Scientist is getting bad for ad placements.

[broin.livejournal.com]

"then I imagine I'd feel the absence considerably more due to constantly missing out on whatever it was everyone else was talking about."

And that's a very good reason I think they'd fail. Word of mouth is gold online, and preventing people from sharing (digg! tweet! post to facebook!) will kill a site.

[recycled-sales.livejournal.com]

I'll make a proper post later, being as I'm working within the very industry you're talking about (both as an employee of a newspaper & as a designer of ads).

[broin.livejournal.com]

In the near future, I think news sites will mostly stay the same, and continue not to make much money. Journalists will be fired en masse, and good riddance to most of the lying, ignorant, fad-obsessed swines. There may be a future for some journalists to help train and coordinate grassroots blogging/reporting.

Papers will all be free. The business of newspapers isn't necessarily to charge for news, after all. It's to match advertising and consumers.

Paywalls won't work. Paywalls tend not to work. Micropayments definitely won't work.

Local news will improve.

[andrewducker]

I think news sites will mostly stay the same, and continue not to make much money.
I think part of the problem is that they're actively losing money - lots of it.

Part of the problem is the decent reporting is expensive - sending reporters to foreign countries is particularly expensive. Fad-based, reporting of celebrity nonsense is the cheapest and easiest kind to produce - and thus more likely to proliferate IMHO.

Of course, I'm willing to accept the possibility of my total wrongness when it turns out differently :->

[broin.livejournal.com]

You're absolutely right - they tend to lose money. That could be because they're advertising poorly. I listened to a great podcast recently about how much Craigslist took from newspapers - papers should have been all over free listings.

Maybe The Sun needs to split in two, in order to capture two demographics (the sexist and the racist?), which could be more easily targeted.

Or sites could provide an easily customised, organic page, much like Amazon's 'recommend this'. Here's the news you want, 15% new stuff, 5% ads.

Apart from The Guardian, few newspaper websites have really engaged with what the web can do, so you're left with a webpage that still vaguely looks like a newspaper, and reports stuff the same way. And they're still not great.

Look at http://www.irishtimes.com/ for an example of crappy design. Layout's awful, functionality's poor. Terrible site.

[andrewducker]

The problem being that moving to free listings would have cut into their paid listings income. I wonder if that still exists any more.

I know that a large amount of the trouble the Guardian is in is that they own Auto Trader, and that's not pulling in much cash any more.

I'll be intrigued to see what we have left in five years time.

[broin.livejournal.com]

"The problem being that moving to free listings would have cut into their paid listings income. I wonder if that still exists any more."

Well, no. There used to be billions in listings. Now between Craigslist, Gumtree, Freecycle, AFF and OkCupid, there's only a few hundred thousand. But the papers have almost none of it.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Embarrassingly, I don't actually know. I'm generally bowsing in Firefox 3, and I think that automatically blocks most but not all pop-up windows, but nothing else, but I'm not sure.

I'd block all animated ads if (a) I got round to it and (b) didn't feel mildly guilty at getting content for free from sites I actually care about.

[andrewducker]

Firefox blocks popups, but nothing else.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Advertising is the enemy. If your business model depends on it, there is a moral imperative to ensure that your business model fails.

(But I think I'm fairly extreme, on this issue)