So I’m not personally a fan of our new micropayment experiment, but I also feel that experimentation is far and away the best way to figure out what works. I also think that it’s essential that Hubski figure out a a way to pay for its expenses because right now, we’re enjoying the hospitality of a handful of dedicated volunteers serving us all out of the kindness of their hearts and as great as they all are, we can’t expect them to continue forever.
I’ve been knee-deep in the business of aggregators for a while now and am a reasonably clever person, so I know that this is harder than it looks. But I’ve been knee-deep in the business of aggregators for a while know and am a reasonably clever person, and I honestly think Hubski has a better chance than anybody else. To whit:
- Hubski encourages ownership. Your posts are your posts, your relationships are your relationships, your conversations are your conversations and there’s no intermediary between what you share and what everyone else sees.
- Hubski encourages original content. The makeup of the site favors the creation of things as opposed to the theft of things. Because discussions move slowly, “karma” is deprecated and context is important, the repost hit’n’run approach common on Reddit and Digg is much less favored here.
- Hubski favors pseudonymity over anonymity. A member on Hubski is a part of a social fabric whose absence alters the makeup of the site for all who interact with them. Reputation matters more on Hubski. Relationships matter (at all) on Hubski.
In short, members have a stake in Hubski. And while I have no illusions that this stake will make anybody rich, I’m confident that it can be made to pay the bills.
What follows are five ideas, none of which are proven, all of which may be stupid, all of which can be tested… after a fashion. They aren’t mutually exclusive and they aren’t equally lucrative but they’ve all got some precedent out in the world so maybe we could try them out?
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(1) THE SOMETHING AWFUL MODEL. I did some back-of-the-envelope calcs on what Reddit “costs.” I might share them later. Long story short, Reddit is profitable at about $2 per username per year. Something Awful has always used a signup fee to cover costs, pay salaries and disincentivize trolling; act like an asshole and you have to pay your Ten Bux again.
- The idea: determine a sustainable “cost per account” for Hubski and charge members that much as a one-time fee. It needn’t be immediate - I’d probably let everyone operate with full privileges for a month, for example, and then hit them with the fee after 30 days.
- The drawback: people will likely feel shaken down after 30 days unless the fee is nominal. Textra recently went from free to paid and the internet was alight with indignant rage… until everyone determined that Textra wanted 99 whopping cents.
- The test: Well, this one is more of a Survey Monkey thing than anything else. I suggest doing three or four quarterly surveys of the user base to see what Hubski is worth to them. We needn’t know publicly what Hubski’s “member cost” is but it would be useful to correlate member age with member price sensitivity. Ask everyone how long they’ve been on Hubski and what one-time price they’d be willing to pay to keep using it, and ask it more than once. Then consider that survey behavior doesn’t perfectly correlate with actual behavior but hey - it’s data points.
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(2) THE NPR MODEL mk has said he doesn’t want to “beg like PBS” but the fact of the matter is, patronage models are time-tested. As a “thoughtful web” there are likely other sites and services that would be interested in sponsoring Hubski for the exposure to an erudite and drama-free audience. Hubski isn’t 100% pure thought leaders, but as Reddit hemorrhages user base the smart ones aren’t going to Voat. I’ve done pledge drives for public radio in the past and when you have a concrete goal and a concrete way to fulfill it, people make the connection between value received and money required.
- The Idea: show Hubski’s “actual costs” (could be a dummy figure) over time and incite people into paying for it.
- The drawback:
- The test: You know, the fact that my upper left hub wheel and “feed” go to the exact same place. And we’ve got the “you’ve got satoshis!” code built out already; can we turn that wheel into a “health” indicator? And when I click on it, can I see, like a projection of funding going out 12 months in a happy graph? ‘cuz I want to be able to use my funny money to fund shortfalls. And you know what? I want to be able to donate in other people’s names. And I want the option (not the requirement) of showing that I helped keep the place running. Let’s try it with fake money and see what happens.
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(3) THE VALUE ADDED MODEL So at $2 per account per year, it becomes pretty obvious that one month of Reddit Gold pays for two accounts. If one person in 15 buys a year of Reddit Gold, Reddit is profitable. Unfortunately what you get with Reddit Gold is bullshit. However, it demonstrates the Pareto Principle pretty well: you don’t need everyone on board, you just need the ones that are paying.
- The Idea: entice Hubski’s more active members to underwrite the site for everyone else through perks.
- The drawback: Coming up with perks good enough to entice people to pay for something they’re getting for free.
- The test: I noticed that my “interactions” graphs are gone. I suspect they were a casualty of site influx. Put them back… for a fee. Come up with some schemes that aren’t f’n hideous and let me use them… for a fee. Hey - let me inflict my choices on my posts… for a fee. See what that sort of two-level culture does when the distinction is artificial. Turn 20% of the current member base into “patrons” at random and see what happens.
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(4) THE TARGETED ADVERTISING MODEL Something that has always bugged me about Reddit’s self-serve is that Reddit has your complete interest profile. They know what you upvoted, they know what you down voted. They know what subreddits you’re subscribed to, they know which ones you have blocked… yet when it comes to advertising, you get straight, conventional CPM thinking.
- The Idea: determine how successfully Hubski can target ads, while also giving members control over their ad experience.
- The drawback: Ads.
- The test: forwardslash was talking about messing about with Markov chains and the like… I’d like to see Hubski extract my shares and my follows, first and second degree, to get a weighted chain of “interests” based on my behavior on Hubski. Then I want Hubski to use that data to create a query… and maybe give me something off Google Image search or the like. Better yet, show me what it’s extracted, allow me to edit it, and get several searches, then let me pick one out of three that allows me to select my own “ad experience.” If you can make this work, you’ve got an ad platform that blows the doors off anything else available… well, more on that in a minute.
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(5) THE SELF-CURATED ADVERTISING MODEL Building on the above, targeted advertising is better than scattershot advertising… but it’s still advertising. And it’s something I’m not in control of. If you give me three choices of the ad experience I get, I’m engaged. But if you give me three choices of the ad experience people see on my posts, I’m even more engaged. Better yet, rather than serving me ads give me the option to buy my own ad experience on a monthly, quarterly or yearly basis. Anticipating that you’ll make 50 cents off my CPM this year? Let me buy out of all ads for a dollar. Let me buy my friends’ ads. Let me buy pretty pictures instead. Hell, let me sell a marketplace of “things that aren’t ads” to put into your “ad network.”
- The Idea: take the above one step further and increase engagement.
- The drawback: Ads.
- The test: continue the fun and see what comes of it.
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I switched from days to overnights yesterday. I’ve had two or three one-hour naps but I’m definitely sleep-deprived. As such, I’m sure there are stupid ideas here and I invite anyone and everyone to shoot them down. I also invite anyone to build on them or suggest something entirely new. We all benefit if we can make Hubski self-sufficient in a way that doesn’t suck for everyone, and there’s nobody better at figuring that out than Hubski members.
I would pay money for Hubski. That's all. I don't want schwag I don't want shit I don't care about special skins or special subloungues or special drinks or special IRC. Some of these things I would consider perks and some of them I would never bother with. I don't want a special status I don't want shit to brag about, in my mind, contribute, or don't. Don't contribute so you can have an extra special super garlicky gold star.
Just let me give you my god damn money, it's only gonna be like 10bux anyway.
And please for the love of god make everyone pay for it on sign-up. Even 30 days past. But make everyone do it. Barrier to entry.
Are you so poor you can't afford 10bux to pay Hubski? There, you've got 30 days to endear yourself to the community enough that someone else'll do it.
I have to agree with you. Status isn't terribly important to me - I would donate simply because I like this website, and a donation button might do surprisingly well.
The issue I see with the subscription is it's a freaking subscription. I could only really see the regulars paying for one without a second thought. When I came here from elsewhere, I would have been immediately put off by the idea that it would eventually cost me money to use this site. Hubski is slow to grow and pull in users, so this may make that even worse. The regulars would all buy one, and then where would we be?
- The regulars would all buy one, and then where would we be?
Sitting free from spammers and drive by goons? Don't get me wrong. I don't like the subscription idea either. I think people should give of their own free will. However, that financial barrier to entry does have one nice perk.
But not just free from spammers and drive by goons, also free from new people that might grow our community and improve the conversation.
People move on and don't stay in one place forever. At least some of our regulars will eventually move on for whatever reason. If we don't have enough new people replacing them, this place will stagnate and shrink. I don't want to see that.
I, personally, wouldn't have stayed for a second after I had seen that it would eventually cost me money when I was a new user. Now that I've been here for a while, I'll gladly pay, but I wouldn't even do the 30 day trial if on day one I was told this was going to cost me.
Well, but it doesn't have to cost you.
You're actually a perfect example. Your account is 33 days old and you say you would gladly pay, but you wouldn't have when you started. (Now, you may have lurked before - but lurking's free for everyone, still, I guess.)
The thing about a 30 day trial is you don't have to opt in if, after 30 days - of participating - you decide you aren't into it. And yeah, you could still lurk and read content if you wanted. You just couldn't comment or post.
Sure we could have people who just make new accounts every 29 days, too. But the committed users would do exactly that, commit.
But my point is that I wouldn't have stayed around this long if there was the threat of eventually having to pay. I never would have even finished making my account after I saw that. I would never have started hanging out here, I would have gone to one of the many other content aggregation and discussion sites.
Exactly. It's not the platform itself, but it's the threat of payment. Too many things are thrown at us "for only $19.99 a month" - perhaps it's a social thing, but people are immediately wary of something if they've gotta pay for it. Especially if it's something on the Internet.
>they can get somewhere else for free
I really have to agree with this. Hubski is a great community, but it's still small and content trickles in pretty slowly. I'd like to spend more time here as the conversations, as far as I've seen, never derail into memes/puns/inside jokes, etc., but I can only check it once a day. If setting up an account came with a 30 day trial period, I wouldn't have bothered and I'd just have kept spending time on reddit/looking for free alternatives.
To expand on spam. An option, that I'm fairly sure would be unpopular with mk judging by his comments, would be rate limiting free accounts.
It doesn't prevent free users from participating, if anything it encourages more thoughtfull posts and provides a better opportunity for people to learn who they would want to buy memberships for. It also encourages heavy users to suppot hubski.
I feel like having ads on hubski would severely undermine the experience the hubski team wants us to have -- ads would make hubski look more like a conventional social aggregator, i.e. reddit, i.e. easily digestible content that panders to the lowest common denominator, instead of the awesome website with quality posts and discussions that go on in hubski. Not to say that it wouldn't work, it's just that I've noticed that the interface is very much so designed in order to encourage thoughtfullness and I feel like it ads would detract a lot from it.
That said, hubski needs money. I commend you for giving a lot of alternative funding models, but I'm interested in hearing your thoughs on the model currently being tested.
Edit: In my mind the NPR model would be the best alternative (listed here) to hubski's the model that's being tested now. A close second would be the value added model, which is pretty much the NPR model with benefits for people who donate (thus encouraging more donations).
I think that Hubski focuses too much on "look" (which is hideous). The functionality of Hubski would work just fine with ads. Granted - the current layout isn't the best for ads but ads suck fundamentally so no layout works well.
I also think ads are on the way out, which is one reason why an approach like this - where things are heavily targeted - is worth pursuing. Any internet marketing expert right now will tell you the only thing that works anymore is Facebook ads, and those can be targeted ridiculously tight - talking "women 18-20 that like techno and are shopping for purses within 3 miles of zipcode 90210."
Heh, facebook ads are very very aggressive. At a certain point there was a way to target one person.
Anyway, I actually don't find hubski hideous. It definitely takes some getting used to, but so does reddit (and look at it's popularity!). After that I started finding it quite lean and streamlined. These are opinions though.
Curating ads is a pretty cool idea, but I can't say I support it when there are alternatives like NPR's model. Besides, most people use adblock/ublock and I doubt that many would go through the trouble of disabling it for hubski.
Given my 'druthers, Hubski would look a lot like Protopage - in other words, however I want. We've already got "themes" and so long as we aren't inflicting themes on other people, there's no reason my hubwheels need to look like your hubwheels. If I want traffic lights and comic sans and I'm willing to pay $2 to have them, take my money.
The thing about doing ads in this particularly targeted fashion is that it wouldn't work with anybody's ad network. Hubski would have to write its own. In writing its own, it would be immune from adblock, just like Facebook is. Yeah, you can kill the sidebar shit no problem... but the actual targeted ads? They're bulletproof.
I didn't know that facebook's targeted ads weren't blocked by adblock. I don't use facebook much though, I only log in every now and then to check for messages and stuff, though, so I wouldn't be able to tell. I don't see what would make an extension like adblock unable to patch those out though, unless facebook was actively using some random placements and/or serving them from a lot of different servers.
I misspoke. It appears they do. Nonetheless, six months immersed in online marketing courses has taught me that nobody is advocating any other kind of advertising at the moment which tends to indicate that they're still the most favored marketing option.
Adblock works by comparing a LUT back in server-land with the page your browser sees. If it sees "ad" it tells your browser not to load it. This has caused Adblock to actually run slower than non-blocked browsers because of the proliferation of iFrames - if you've got six iFrames on your page, Adblock needs to make 6 calls to Adblock's servers. If each one of those iFrames can load a millisecond faster than Adblock can get a response, your page gets served six milliseconds slower with Adblock than without and the difference is cumulative.
Adblock doesn't always work on targeted ads because there's nothing requiring Facebook to tell ABP that such and such is an ad.
It's the LUTs that kill you.
Thank you for this. It's easy enough to pick out the faults of an idea, it is much more difficult to suggest alternatives.
#5 is interesting to me as it is very novel. However, as b_b noted, I think it's going to be a tough sell to advertisers. They are going to want the profile of the people suffering their ads, and they aren't going to be too keen on the fact that the users with money are the ones that they aren't targeting. They probably also won't like that their ads in the light of something negative that should be avoided.
The only ads I like on the web are those of the Deck Network. They are the only network that seems to have respect for their hosts and the host's users.
#4 is out because I don't want to treat people like that. It's just not something I want to reflect on on my death bed.
#3 seems to have some support and interest, and I can imagine positive implementations. My biggest qualm with the value added model is that it favors people with money. I want to reward the donation, but not the means of making it. More on that below.
#2 is totally fine by me, but I don't think it will make enough on it's own. NPR gets a good chunk of its revenue outside of the pledge drives, and I suspect that we will need to couple straight donations with another revenue stream.
#1 is a last resort IMO. I think the big reduction of the user base could be mitigated some if members could buy memberships for non-members easily. However, it would be critical to get the numbers right. The model makes a sort of contract with the users, and that contract limits flexibility further on down the line. Once we decide on #1, there is little chance of going back. Also, we have to give up our dreams for DvH or similar developments in that vein, of which we have a few.
Reflecting on this, and the feedback on the experiment for the last few hours has given me a few ideas, all of which need more gestation. This is something that seems interesting to me at the moment:
Take the bit model, and drop the withdrawal mechanism (and the need for bitcoin along with it), then mix it with #3. Consider that the donation ratio was stuck at 50/50 and the max of $1 per share remained. Badges to give, and other rewards[1] were earned based on the creds that were passed on to Hubski via your account. That is, when you donate via shares, 1/2 the money can go towards your rewards, and 1/2 will go towards other people to then be split between their rewards, and the people they share/circledot.
On top of that, there would exist a 'just take my fucking money already' straight donation option.
[1] I prefer most to have rewards that are apparent to the user only. Rewards I do like include: more styles, a personal TMI page, additional feeds, and things of that nature.
It's interesting to me that you reject 4 and 5 out of hand because "you don't like ads." I think most people don't like ads because they're intrusive, bandwidth-heavy and decrease your agency. No one, to the best of my knowledge, has made any effort to ask what sorts of ads people want and then go with it; it's always been about charging advertisers enough that it's worth annoying your userbase. The tides are shifting on this: Google had to mark their prices down by 20% this year because the effectiveness of Adwords has gone down substantially. The ad industry is going to experience some major changes soon and rather than say "there is no way this can ever be made palatable ever therefore we will refuse to even model it" it might be effective to examine a way to make a noxious something less noxious. You might even be able to license/sell such a system 3rd party.
I also think it's worth noting that your reaction is to "things I think will work", not "ideas I think you should try." I'm not sure about the outcomes of any of these, but I think anything you learn from trying them teaches you more about paying for the site without losing your soul.
Especially since you haven't learned your lesson. Micropayments are stupid and will kill your site. I don't want to see the intrinsic value of a post of mine, particularly when it comes down to "you just spent 20 minutes typing out 2 hours worth of reflections and it's worth less than a tenth of a cent." The very mechanics of your idea are telling me to fuck off and do something better with my time.
Before you do anything else involving "payments" and "social interaction" read the Ariely book. It's not that you haven't figured out how to make it work, it's that perpetual motion violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
- It's interesting to me that you reject 4 and 5 out of hand because "you don't like ads."
mk As a consumer, I prefer services which offer the option of ads or paying. Ideally a one-time payment, but unfortunately website cost is ongoing.
If hubski really needed the money, as a consumer, I'd prefer to see the minimum ads required to pay for it, with an option to pay $n to remove ads, where n is the cost of my traffic (which shouldn't be more than $5–10/year). Just my preference.
- Especially since you haven't learned your lesson. Micropayments are stupid and will kill your site. I don't want to see the intrinsic value of a post of mine, particularly when it comes down to "you just spent 20 minutes typing out 2 hours worth of reflections and it's worth less than a tenth of a cent." The very mechanics of your idea are telling me to fuck off and do something better with my time.
What I am suggesting aren't micropayments, I just explained them like they are, and that can and probably should be removed (this idea is still baking). That is, you give Hubski $10. We have the $10. No one else gets any portion of the $10. But now, in addition to the good feeling it gave you, you now have 1000 hubs.
When you circledot something, you give 2 hubs to the author, and 2 hubs go towards your reward stream. When the author circledots something 1 hub goes to the author of the content they dug, and 1 hub goes towards their reward stream.
No micropayment was ever made. Hubski spent the $10 on a pizza long before all the hubs rolled in.
This is actually a straight donation mechanism, plus the value add, plus the bequething aspect of the experiment.
You donated to the site, and that supports us.
Don't mistake me, these are just my thoughts as of this morning. This needs to bounce around. I simply see it as taking the two positives from the experiment that I see: 1) people feel more selective about their sharing, and 2) good content creators without cash can be a part of the donation reward mechanism; and it removes the bad that comes along with spreading bits of cash about.
That's just it, though - Money elicits powerful emotions as a motivator. As a point of commerce people recognize that some things aren't free. This is why people generally gripe about but put up with ads - they recognize that websites have to make money somehow but that's just the cost of doing business. When you tie the money to their behavior on the site, their behavior becomes transactional in nature, not conversational.
You can't afford me on a transactional basis. You can't afford anyone. You recognize this by allowing me to buy "boops" or whatever heinous word we're using but not requiring them, which just shows your passive-aggressive desire to make them matter but recognizes your fear in forcing them to matter.
If it helps your reflection, I would personally be fine with (and would participate in, if needed) #5, #2 and #1.
I think number one is a really bad idea. There are too many free alternatives, and Hubski, for all its wonder, is not unique enough to warrant paying. Honestly, I wouldn't bother to get a one-time use number for that, especially if it was a nominal fee. I imagine I'm not the only user who would end up leaving. And unless those 30 days were especially magical, I doubt Hubski would continue to grow. I see it becoming the online equivalent of a stagnant gated community.
- I doubt Hubski would continue to grow. I see it becoming the online equivalent of a stagnant gated community.
It costs $5 to get an account on MetaFilter. It seems to be working for them. They've been that way for a long time. Heck, people even donate to the site after paying the entry fee.
I'll admit I don't have an account there, but I could see it happening. The issue I've had with MetaFilter isn't that they want money to join, or their community. It's that their comments are a flat list.
I vehemently oppose a financial barrier to entry (1 & 3).
I grew up poor. Sixty percent of the US is blue-collar, and fifteen percent are in poverty. Not to mention the rest of the world. How many people in Ghana would we be excluding, because $1 in the US is like $100 there? A financial barrier literally says, only people with money and the people they like can participate. Even $1 is out of reach of a great many people, for practical or ideological reasons.
There are services where financial membership is appropriate, but I don't think an intelligent, insightful community like hubski is one of them.
If the goal is solely money, I really think we'd get more from a donate button than a fee. If you require a fee, a lot of people who would donate $100 will just pay the $1 fee and figure that takes care of their support. I don't have evidence of that, but it's a pretty strong hunch.
If the goal is to improve the community, there are filters we could implement to do that. I don't think filtering for rich people is one of those.
I'm impressed that you went from "$2/account/year" to starving children in Africa. I'd point out that we could charge everyone 20% more than we need to and endow the Rob05C Equal Access Ghana Fund so that 1 in 6 people get in free, but it seems like your "vehement" opposition to even testing the idea makes the discussion moot.
These weren't put up as far as "what I think." These were put up as far as "what could be non-destructively wargamed." I figured that was more helpful than DAE HATE RICH PEOPLE.
I didn't go to "starving children in Africa." $2/mo is "I'm an adult making a decent living and I can't afford this" in much of the developing world. The average yearly income in Ghana is about $500.
And yes, I do oppose testing it. It would be difficult to get accurate data on who was excluded in such a test, and tempting to believe your incomplete data wasn't.
I am from India, another poor country. For an average guy, $2 is valuable. I know people who live on less a $1/day. However thats 'average', remember it's a county of billion people.. In India, if you have internet, then you can surely afford to pay $2/year.
I too am am from India. There majority of indians are on facebook and whatsapp. they give a damn about discussing things with strangers. I have brought reddit gold for myself in the past, I have donated to several cough filesharing sites like cinema obscura and torrentday. $2 is about 120 INR... about 20 cups of cutting tea from a roadside vendor or about 12 cigarettes. If you go to a fancy coffee shop, this is the price of one coffee. So it is cheap... the only thing is that we are not used to paying for services.
However, the value of sites like hubski, reddit etc is about the content that gets created. If, as others are suggesting, the site allows only paid users then the content that could come from some random user would be lost. It will become a small and boring club and ideas will become stale.
Look. I don't want to fight. The fact of the matter is Hubski is a website which means you need a computer and internet access to get to it. That computer might be granted, rented, borrowed, whatever but regardless, this isn't the Sally Struthers set we're talking about here. As with most of the Western Web, the majority of the participants have enough disposable income that prioritizing a nominal fee isn't an issue. A shower at a truck stop costs $2, FFS.
Besides which, whatever the price is someone has to pay it. If it costs $2/user/year and most users can't afford $2/user/year, either one in five users better be paying $10/user/year or everyone gets to suck down two thousand ads per year each..
That's about 5 ads per user per day. Hardly the end of the world. But then, we're talking about a nothing fee. Spin it out further: Let's say you make $100k a year. .4% of your annual income is $33 a month. That's three times what Pando charges - that makes it expensive, but not crazytown expensive.
All this "vehemence" and disdainful language combined with the plea to poverty is just... distasteful. And rude. I grew up the son of two grad students in Breaking Bad country. I can throw down with the Rit dye and government cheese with the best of them but I haven't because it's beside the fucking point.
The money has to come from somewhere. Someone has to pay it. They likely need some sort of incentive. This was supposed to be a discussion about possible methods to test, not an excuse for you to paint me up as Scrooge McDuck.
- All this "vehemence" and disdainful language
I'm sorry. I picked an arbitrary synonym of "strongly." It wasn't meant to be offensive to you or anyone.
- for you to paint me up as Scrooge McDuck.
I didn't say anything about you. I was expressing my opinion on an idea, not about any person or people.
- it's beside the fucking point.
I mentioned my past because it was exactly my point: for the greater part of my life, I have been in a position where such a fee would have been too much.
- combined with the plea to poverty is just... distasteful. And rude.
My feelings, and argument, is that what seems like a nominal fee is untenable to many people. You're telling me my position itself is 'rude' and 'distasteful.' I don't know what to say to that. I'm sorry you find that opinion rude, but it isn't meant to be, and it isn't meant to offend or insult. I do feel it's a valid position, and I don't think it's hateful to the wealthy to defend those who aren't (among whom, my past self).
Honestly, it feels like you're telling me I can't have strong feelings on an idea without offending you personally. You've repeatedly taken things I said, and interpreted them as things I didn't say, and had no intention of implying. I do apologise, it wasn't my intention to insult or attack you or anyone. From your words, I'm honestly not sure how I can hold or express my opinion without insulting you; and I don't know what to say to that besides, 'I'm sorry.'
I appreciate the apology. I take it with the full meaning intended. So when I point out where things went off track, please take as why I was offended, not why I am offended because this is the sort of thing that behooves us all to be on top of.
I went out of my way to distance myself and my feelings from any of these proposals. For example, by advocating ads as a method of monetization I do not personally want ads. There's no "me" in any of this. Your reaction, on the other hand, was not only deeply negative but also deeply personal. You advocated against fees because you "grew up poor." You doubled down by aligning your former poverty with the experience of the majority of the country. Rhetorically, you said "I align with X and my opponent does not." In other words, your phrasing and your language used the moral authority (not the logical authority) of poverty and put me in opposition to it.
Logically, you took a number I had thrown out as an example and then misrepresented it. You then applied that number to an audience that has no verifiable or anecdotal presence in the theater of discussion. I presented a number from Reddit for the sake of argument. You took that number, used it as a concrete value, multiplied it by 12 and applied it to an extreme outlier. You made a reductio ad absurdum case against a reasonable hypothetical, which assigned me the position of unreasonability.
Finally, you took an a statement in which I was attempting to explore all options through research and dismissed them out of hand with "I don't have evidence of that, but it's a pretty strong hunch." In effect, you were arguing that all of my statements were invalid because your truthiness counted for more.
So. I put out some ideas as ideas. Your phrasing
1) Required me to defend a position I hadn't taken
2) Forced me to justify numbers I hadn't used
3) Disputed facts with emotions.
Now that we're talking reasonably, your argument boils down to "My feelings, and argument, is that what seems like a nominal fee is untenable to many people." Fine. Great. My feeling is that I said "nominal." I didn't say what "nominal" was, and I also said that the point of the exercise was to determine the alignment between "what Hubski costs" and "what people are willing to pay for it." I didn't say "$2/year is a nominal fee" I argued for the exploration of what a nominal fee is.
And here's the important take-away: I'm not telling you your position is rude and distasteful. Your position is that "nominal" may not actually be "nominal." No argument with that, not even a point I was making. I'm telling you that your presentation is rude and distasteful. It struck me as such. I'm not telling you you can't have strong feelings on an idea. I'm telling you that when your strong feelings are used to form a personal attack, however inadvertent, the recipient of that attack will feel attacked.
And it was clear I felt attacked. And when I answered your attacks with facts, you doubled down ("...which would still be a rather hefty price if it's .4% of your annual income"). it wasn't until I de-escalated things that we got back to a semi-neutral ground.
I rarely offend people by accident anymore. It still happens. When it does, there's a good chance that when I talk about it with the offended party, I discover they're accidentally offended a lot of the time. I'm occasionally offended by people who didn't intend to offend me. They usually offer up some sort of video explaining how people like to take offense at things, which they've found because they have this sort of discussion a lot. The bottom line is none of us benefit from accidentally pissing each other off and it's worth the effort to at least keep the offense in the deliberate category.
My first response was a clear-cut indicator that I'd been offended. I hoped it would lead to a discussion like this. How will you avoid offending me? How will I avoid offending you? By trying hard not to and by working to resolve it when it happens.
That's life.
For the record, I'm a big fan of #2. I have been the guy answering the phones for NPR pledge drives and what I find is that people love to donate and feel like they're supporting something they value, not just for themselves but for others as well.
I'm not sure what a Hubski pledge drive would entail or if it would even need to exist, but I'm sure we could figure out a way to make it relatively non-invasive, interesting and even fun.
Thirded. I'm not a fan of this whole bit/hubs transaction model, I would only ever provide a transaction to the content submitter if it was original and outstanding and all I'm interested in is being able to give you all money to keep this site going. Anything else, to me, is unnecessarily complex but I understand that my opinion is not in the majority and not at all representative of running a site with many, many users.
Given that opinion, #2 is the option I support the most and it would make me feel better just being able to donate the money than getting bits/hubs/whatever. However, I also support veens idea of Hubski2Hubski gifting for donations. That's an interesting idea.
Seconded. I spent a couple of evenings answering pledge calls for CJSW and everyone was very happy to donate.
Maybe something cool to throw into the mix: what about gifts from other Hubskiers? At the radiostation, the hosts gave away some of their own cd's and things that they thought were awesome. What if we tie a small gift exchange into this? E.g. if you donate more than $50, $10 of that will be used to fund shipping of a small gift from one Hubskier to the next. This way, people who don't / can't donate money could make artwork or donate a good book to another Hubskier.
I like it too. My favourite radio station, Intergalactic FM, has a "monthly struggle for survival" progress bar. It's nice to see a visual indicator of the community's efforts to keep the site funded and there might be some interesting things Hubski could do to make it engaging.
I'd be interested in something were every quarter (every month? every other month?) Hubski does a donation drive to reach some amount to keep the site stable. It would be cool if a certain portion of each donation went to a community-chosen charity as well. At the beginning of every cycle a funding goal is announced and people can nominate charities for Hubski to sponsor for that funding cycle. Kind of similar to how Humble Bundle tie purchasing video games to optionally supporting the site and supporting a charity.
I'm always partial to giving my money directly to a site. I guess you could say I am in favor of ideas 1-3.
Idea 1 makes sense, but if out of the blue we changed from the current free model to this. Wouldn't people feel the need to justify the one time payment? I understand the value of this community, but someone outside of it looking to come in would look in and say "it was free, now it's not. What has changed that warrants this charge?"
Idea 3 is sort of an extension of idea 2. As mentioned I think it would a fine name to refer to anyone who enters this models "Patrons." Give a few worthwhile perks and leave it at that. Also, not sure of how good an idea it is, but maybe allowing people to donate on top of it? I know there isn't some defined price model of how this works, but if people want to donate a dollar, or something smaller than the price of the perks they could do that? Maybe set up a system of donation where any amount can be donated, but after a certain threshold you get certain perks as a patron?
- Idea 1 makes sense, but if out of the blue we changed from the current free model to this. Wouldn't people feel the need to justify the one time payment?
"Traffic grew enough that we needed to buy more cloud space."
Sorted!
- Also, not sure of how good an idea it is, but maybe allowing people to donate on top of it?
Again - these aren't be-all, end-all, one-and-done solutions. These are ideas that I think could be wargamed, much as the current BTC experiment, in order to gain some insight as to what's viable and what isn't. If several ideas are viable, and if there's interest in several different models of benefaction, then members should be provided by several different options for underwriting the site.
In that case:
I think a system in-between idea 2 and 3. Like I mentioned before allow people to donate any amount of money to Hubski, but after a certain threshold grant them this "Patron Status." So let's say the patron status is set at $15 (just a clean random number). That is a pretty high number for the status, but what if we allowed donations to accrue? You donate $5 one week, and $5 another. Those two separate donations go towards that $15 patron status. Once you reach the status you have it, and as long as you donate $15 dollars by the next calendar year you can keep the status, or if you prefer let it fall off. All the numbers and time frames are placeholders and could be changed to anything, but the premise is the:
- accept all donations
- Patron status after certain amount of donations
- allow donations to add up rather than paying for patron status all at once.
I like the idea of letting your donations accrue to get a patron status. If I had two suggestions to make to branch out from that it'd be . . .
1) Set a minimum donation amount to save mk and co money and hassle. A bunch of $1 and $2 donations here and there might cost too much transaction wise and be more of a hassle to deal with than they're worth.
2) Keep patronage anonymous. I don't think other users should know who is and isn't a patron, lest people start expecting special treatment.
I think all of these are solid ideas but ultimately very boring. That's what I like about bits for boops, it's at least an interesting look at the problem and an attempt at a novel solution. I think hubski should lean on their lack of funding and not force a revenue model so long as they don't really need one, and based on the fact that they aren't begging, they don't seem to need one.
That said, I think taking apart the problem can help a bit with finding that more novel solution. So...
Until yesterday Hubski had one kind of capital - social. Everyone got one vote per comment or post which they could always choose not to use. Yesterday mk introduced that sweet, sweet bit capital and those are the two I want to focus on.
The goal, as I see it, is to create a mechanism that turns social capital into bit, or financial, capital but doesn't allow bit capital to become social capital. That is, hubski and its community should be paid for their contributions, but shouldn't be required to pay to contribute.
There are two parts to that puzzle, getting the bit capital and distributing it. The easiest way to get our bit capital is through advertising, though this doesn't adhere to the second part of our mechanism as we're allowing individuals to buy access to the community (social capital) for bit capital. The gated content model has similar problems but instead of posting a message to the audience in exchange for bit capital, you're just allowing access to the audience in general for bits. In some ways this is better, but in some ways (to me) it's worse.
Your value add model is an interesting one and it's worked successfully in games for quite some time. The basic gist to the video game version is to open the platform as a simple, but complete, space where you gain access to more functionality through time. You can bypass the time restrictions through money. Take Team Fortress 2 for example. All of the weapons in the game that have effect on actual game play can be unlocked through actual game play, or you can spend a few bucks and buy the weapons now. Such a system could easily apply to hubski where you earn gold tokens through the slow acclimation of social capital, or you can buy them in bulk with bit capital. This is one of the more interesting systems for me, but creating such a system would take a lot of time and consideration.
Getting back to the puzzle, I think this bits platform offers an interesting foundation for the solution to the problem but ultimately seems to come a little short. While it's a solid way to move capital around the site, it feels like it bonds the social and financial capitals too tightly to one another. My suggestions all revolve around putting a bit more distance between the two. If, for example, you had bits you would suddenly see a golden hubwheel next to the blue one. A vote on the golden wheel notches up the blue but also adds bits. A vote on the blue acts as regular. Similar mechanic but more granular control.
The other idea is a social marketplace. Every week, month, quarter, whatever, the doors of the social market are shuttered and can be opened again after a minimal contribution. This might not be necessary but in this thought experiment offers the initial bit income. Once the market place is open, individuals can ask for social favors in return for bit capital. For example - if I wanted to host a story writing contest, I could offer 500 bits to the best author. If I wanted to have a cities skylines tournament, I could charge every entrant 100 bits and payout 10,000. If I wanted to see the tightrope priest less often I could start a kickstarter style bit project and get better servers once it reached 1,000,000.
There are gaping holes in this idea but I think it could build well off of the current bit exchange program. It's likely too complicated for what hubski prefers, but I like it.
I really like #2. Having the "progress bar" on the top left corner of everyone's screens would surely incite some incentive to donate. No ads, no personal information collected (which a lot of people worry about) and most importantly it's optional so no one has to pay monthly or yearly fees.
Another good idea would be to show how much money is spent on you as a user. That way it incentives the users to donate enough to cover their costs. If that number was shown I also think that anyone who donates would either donate that number or more, very rarely less since it's probably a few cents to a dollar.
>to show how much money is spent on you as a user
thumbs up
I'm most intrigued by idea 5, but then, I have an affinity for incentive-based models.
"Want your posts to be ad free for others? Click here"
The downside of that is that it makes the site less attractive to potential advertisers, as one can imaging that the most popular posts, from the most popular users, are the ones most likely to be ad free. In that case, attracting quality ads to makeup any shortfall could be difficult. Generally, however, I think that idea is brilliant, as it presents a clear carrot-and-stick for each user.
Yeah isn't #5 a bit like letting websites that can afford it load faster? Eventually no one uses the slow ones. Those of us who care most about the site will have ad-free pages, attracting more followers/views than the ad-heavy posts, in a sort of death spiral.
I don't know how much hubski's server costs are, but I bet if they just opened a damn coinbase and said have at it, they'd get enough money to not think about this for three years. And who knows what new options will exist then.
I'm a fan of options 2 and 3. I'm the biggest fan of option 2 and I know I'm not the only person who has expressed interest in donating. I've seen the question come up a few times in the month and some odd change I've been here .
Like I said yesterday, I'd be more than happy to give every cent I'm currently giving to NPR to Hubski and then even a bit on top of that and ask for nothing in return. I value this site that much.
The only catch that I can think of, and this would be the case no matter what funding model Hubski goes with, is that I'd prefer a way to donate anonymously.
Swag in general works better in reinforcing affinity. This is why it's often given as a pledge gift.
Hubski also has an (acknowledged) problem, swag-wise: the logo and colors were designed by mk when he was a teenager. There's nothing about Hubski's current look that makes you want to slap it on your Trapper Keeper. Another reason I think (3) has some legs - un-uglying Hubski would certainly increase my affinity for it, and increasing affinity drives conversion towards payment.
There's been a great number of angles approached as far as the funding goes. It appears that each plan will have its own impact on Hubski and how it functions.
I'm beginning to believe that one option stands out as least-likely to warp this cool community. It'll be the one to disrupt relationships and inter-connectivity the least.
Hubski is the fertile soil, in which relationships, relationships built around ideas, grow. We walk away from Hubski finding value in the exchange of ideas.
One must first come and build his/her own Hubski experience before the value is clear. A person must invest time and energy and build relationships first.
I'm thinking of option 2 as a place to start.
Depending on where the swag comes from the affinity may resolves itself. Nevertheless to continue on one must appreciate the angle as far as each one understands. But connecting the dots between different realities should be added to. The good and perhaps the best one we have ever seen best in the business from most people i know agree that it's so. Carry on I say.
As you're talking about skateboards, I'd like to add a few words in it. I want to go for an endless ride to the downhill tracks with my skateboard. Consider I'm going for a race with my community. I'm feeling hesitant on choosing the right deck. Help me suggesting one. Thanks!
I'm new here, so sorry in advance if this isn't a good idea for the community.
What about a lottery? Maybe monthly, or bi-yearly? Anyone who donates is entered if they choose. The site could do different prizes, like swag, maybe award a few gold, let people choose an icon for the day, ect. Prizes could be virtual to keep costs low. It's basically the donation model, but with some rewards that don't encourage spam / pandering.
So my thoughts.
1. I don't like ads. They look ugly and people will block them. Also, advertisers prefer sites that have content that is quickly digestible - so that the user will quickly load another page and thus another ad. I don't want that kind of pressure on hubski. I prefer the more thoughtful, long-form discussion that we have now over some quickly digestible memes.
2. I don't like the subscription model. To quote goo:
- The issue I see with the subscription is it's a freaking subscription. I could only really see the regulars paying for one without a second thought. When I came here from elsewhere, I would have been immediately put off by the idea that it would eventually cost me money to use this site. Hubski is slow to grow and pull in users, so this may make that even worse. The regulars would all buy one, and then where would we be?
- People move on and don't stay in one place forever. At least some of our regulars will eventually move on for whatever reason. If we don't have enough new people replacing them, this place will stagnate and shrink. I don't want to see that.
I, personally, wouldn't have stayed for a second after I had seen that it would eventually cost me money when I was a new user. Now that I've been here for a while, I'll gladly pay, but I wouldn't even do the 30 day trial if on day one I was told this was going to cost me.
The subscription model will scare away new users before they get the chance to see how great this place is. It would have scared me away.
3. I like the idea of the NPR/Wikipedia model. I would pay, and I'm sure that many others would as well after they begin to get involved in the community. If there were other "value added" things, that would also be pretty cool. I also like the "reddit gold" idea of being able to gild a well written comment or post and give someone that subscription to these added perks for a brief amount of time. This would be my preferred model from a user's standpoint. The question is: will it generate enough revenue?
I think that a "hubski gold" model will be more effective on here than on somewhere like reddit. Reddit has a lot of users (but not all) that are just there for entertainment and then fuck off. Hubski has a more thoughtful and discussion oriented user base that cares more about the site. Many redditors wouldn't care where they got their cat pictures from, as long as they get them. They aren't invested in the site. Hubski users are invested in the site and the community. We have friends here. We are more likely to want to support our home.
I feel like we consider badges to be Hubski gold, and they're free. Just my $.02 on what the perception has seemed to me. I guess the difference is that there is no special r/lounge or anything, but otherwise, the point of Reddit gold has always seemed to me to be to highlight a comment that another user finds particularly poignant or so on.
I have my own problems with the "gold" phenomenon in that sometimes gilding is used not really because the comment being gilded is so great, but basically to reinforce a discussion. A comment that is gilded gets more attention. If you are arguing someone (on Reddit or I guess here) and have the money to throw around, you could easily just gild or have your throwaways gild a few comments of yours that support your viewpoint, and because they are gilded, they are going to look like more valuable comments to readers. As a result I theorize these comments would 'naturally' accrue more upvotes and attention even if they're not actually better or more grounded than their opposition.
That doesn't mean that we couldn't monetize them. As amouseinmyhouse said:
- Your value add model is an interesting one and it's worked successfully in games for quite some time. The basic gist to the video game version is to open the platform as a simple, but complete, space where you gain access to more functionality through time. You can bypass the time restrictions through money. Take Team Fortress 2 for example. All of the weapons in the game that have effect on actual game play can be unlocked through actual game play, or you can spend a few bucks and buy the weapons now. Such a system could easily apply to hubski where you earn gold tokens through the slow acclimation of social capital, or you can buy them in bulk with bit capital. This is one of the more interesting systems for me, but creating such a system would take a lot of time and consideration.
If you're going with advertising, plan 5 definitely sounds like the best way. if ad revenue is N per page view, allow members to pay N to see no ads, pay N+1 to replace it with one of my own, N+2 to buy the space off of the N+1 guy from before.
another benefit is that if ads become part of the social experience, it would discourage adblock. on that note, if you do go with ads, put a pretty please disable adblock message behind that displays to adbock users, I'm sympathetic to those requests and if a page's ads are not annoying and it's operators are deserving of the revenue in my opinion i'll whitelist the website.
As described, I love the targeted ad model, particularly if hubski can remember my interests and preferences for me, so I can mine my own data for myself.
I'd like the ability to make it a push platform, rather than passive monitoring. I'd like it to be a two-way communication, in an explicit intentional way. It would be nice to work this in seamlessly. Reddit has sort have but not really done this, Yelp is a recommendation service with a social aspect. Well, given their extortionate business model, it's sort of an antisocial thing. But we are a society of consumers - of necessity - and we all love to talk about the things we like to consume, read and watch.
I think it would be a mistake to turn that into hubski's mission - but as an adjunct to something that should happen anyway - solid, in depth conversations about those particular things, things the creators and marketers really should be here talking about themselves - I think it should be possible to monetize/recognize/valuate. I can't think of any example of this being done; not in any way that works. That may be that it's difficult, but I wonder if it's just that marketers are so used to talking at us, without considering any feedback other than sales.
That, and the numbers themselves would be interesting. I'd love to see an open-source repository of those sorts of numbers and discussion of what they mean. That would be worth considering a tradeoff of privacy.
I think the PBS model is interesting as a means by which people could contribute to the site. There are any numbers of ways this could be done - but let's say for example I find an interesting thing, make a cool thing or draw a wonderful picture. Perhaps I could put it up for auction to benefit the site. This might be a better way for low-income persons to contribute, but there's also more sense of participation and contribution.
I agree, I have no issue with ads and obviously targeted make better sense for all sides.
I don't like subscriptions because then we lose our pseudonymity (eg hubski knows who I am from my credit card details. It's a key reason I've never bought a Reddit gold).
General donations might be better but then you can't link it to a reward, which some donators require.
I have absolutely no idea how much it costs to keep Hubski running. It would be interesting to find out more about the expenses and goals. I'd give money NPR style. I don't want to see an add when I'm browsing but I'd let a video run when I logged in. I'd rather just give money.
A membership fee would chase away many new members. It's impact would mostly be on the youth and those who don't have a pot to pass in. Many people urge new members to lurk but I worry a fee would incentives less initial lurking.
The extras model is fine, I'd pay it, but only to support the site.
I'm not opposed to pledge drives. The good ones, done well (NPR is a great example) manage to somehow leave you in a "feel-good" state of mind as you are handing over your money or even as they are in the process of annoying the hell out of you by interrupting the service you're there for. Even if you're not giving money it's hard to have anything but a minimum of benevolence if the product is truly loved. Everyone understands you have to pay the bills.
It would be wildly interesting to have the accounting books of a site hosted and read-only anytime by anyone in conjunction with a donation or some other model. Like 'keys to the kingdom' everything. As long as we're tossing out wierd and possibly terrible ideas...during drives, anyone could actively see how much more is needed and see where the 'ask' from previous years went. Could really drive donations of users liked what they saw.
But saying "Your comment was worth $4 to me" is just a means to the end of saying "This comment was worth something to me." We could keep the method of acquiring these badges anonymous so no one knows if you paid for them to give or earned them beforehand.
I personally like the Something Awful model.
This is like what pinboard did before it cost yearly. I would certainly pay to use something like this, since it would pretty much stop a lot of Spam, Harassment, LQP, and Trash at the door. However, I would suggest that rather than letting users use the site for thirty days, perhaps allowing anyone to read it, but requiring money to sign up for an account and post/comment.
If this were implemented, I would gladly pay for my current account.
Allow user tips and transactions with other users and take a percentage cut. That's the best model because people who are broke like myself and can't afford the $X or opportunity cost involved with giving payment information to test a new site out that doesn't give me a chance to make my money back just wouldn't be worth the sign up process because of the paywall.
I don't see the problem with having the option to give someone bitcoin for providing a good comment and taking time to creating good original content and having a share of the BTC go to Hubski. I don't think this will cause people to start memeing and using easy jokes because I don't think people would pay money for those. The times I would send people BTC on reddit through changetip was only when they provided an in depth answer or took time to create a well thought out post that created good discussion.