Agylen

Jeff Barr tells the story behind the recent Syndic8 fiasco and what he learned from it:

What have I learned so far? First, be careful about slippery slopes. Once you take on a particular form of advertising, the next one doesn’t seem all that bad, but before you know it you are doing things that you wouldn’t otherwise do. Second, consider alternatives to the ad-supported business model. Lots of people seemed to think that I could have raised funds in this way. Perhaps, perhaps not. It is clear that trying to create something that’s large and self-sustaining requires more attention to the business end than I was capable of giving it. Third, respond, and respond fast when you make a mistake.

I’m following this with great attention, since I’m about to launch a web service that will mainly be supported by ads, assuming it can be supported at all.

I don’t think you necessarily have to consider alternatives to ads. It’s not hard to find ad programs, like AdSense and BlogAds, that can be ethical as well as lucrative enough to pay for the bandwidth bill. At least, that’s what I hope.

And you don’t need to be a genius to see that “pretty decent, articles about mortgages, insurance, and so forth” are just a scam. So, drawing a line in the sand should be easy. I will never believe that Matt Mullenweg and Jeff Barr weren’t aware of this. In the end, as Jeff half-admits in the title of his post, it all comes down to greed, which is a human sin, after all.

Since I don’t believe in capital sin and the consequent capital punishment, I’m happy that Google reinstated Syndic8’s PageRank and search result pages.