Hmm. I'm biased here, and actively hoping you're wrong. I perceive a spectrum where you seem to be seeing a strict dichotomy. I mean, yes, residential neighborhoods are usually advertising-free. But many interactions happen in the town square, which isn't. It shouldn't have an *oppressive* amount of advertising, and that scale does make a difference, but the presence of commerce is certainly quietly there. (Admittedly, I have no clue how much advertising is standard on LJ, since I've always been a paid member; for all I know, it might be oppressive.) It isn't obvious to me which spatial metaphor is most apt, given LJ's odd mixture of diarizing and community interaction.
But like I said: I'm biased, and this is food for thought -- fairly scary food at that. I mean, I have to monetize CommYou *somehow*, and absolutely from the word go -- I can't afford to run the system if it isn't bringing in enough money to at least pay me a salary in the reasonably near term. Given that LJ's original shareware sort of model has at *best* a very shaky record in the mass market that I'm targeting here (a few big successes, a lot of utter failures), I'm more than a little nervous about depending on it.
So I *hope* you're wrong. My plan has been to have advertising, albeit at a very low and highly targeted level -- far less than the ambient advertising already present in Facebook. (Essentially using Gmail as my model.) I don't *think* that is going to drive away the bulk of the audience; heaven knows, a significantly larger advertising presence doesn't by and large seem to have driven most people away from Facebook itself. But we'll see: this is certainly one of the aspects of the project that I am most concerned about, and one that I'm lavishing more than a little fretting on...
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Date: 2008-03-19 03:09 am (UTC)But like I said: I'm biased, and this is food for thought -- fairly scary food at that. I mean, I have to monetize CommYou *somehow*, and absolutely from the word go -- I can't afford to run the system if it isn't bringing in enough money to at least pay me a salary in the reasonably near term. Given that LJ's original shareware sort of model has at *best* a very shaky record in the mass market that I'm targeting here (a few big successes, a lot of utter failures), I'm more than a little nervous about depending on it.
So I *hope* you're wrong. My plan has been to have advertising, albeit at a very low and highly targeted level -- far less than the ambient advertising already present in Facebook. (Essentially using Gmail as my model.) I don't *think* that is going to drive away the bulk of the audience; heaven knows, a significantly larger advertising presence doesn't by and large seem to have driven most people away from Facebook itself. But we'll see: this is certainly one of the aspects of the project that I am most concerned about, and one that I'm lavishing more than a little fretting on...