[thelist] End of the Free Content Ride?

[Daniel J. Cody]

Carole -

Quick question about your survey, from a purely newbie standpoint on
some of the sites(designiskinky, k10k, linkdup, moluv, pixelsurgeon,
surfstation) you mention... As you stated, they're mostly independant
content producers. designiskinky seems to me, for the most part, to be a
number of people who worked together on a website sharing information
about the design biz. it caught on, and more people became aware of it
etc.. i guess what i'm wondering, besides why would people pay a
subscription for it and the other sites, is why did they choose now as
the time(if they indeed did choose it, if they didn't then this is a
hypothetical question i guess) to ask for subscription type fees? all
things being equal that would make payment necessary, would people -
especially independant websites - be considering a subscription type fee
if Salon, for example, still provided all its content freely?

Even a 12-18 months ago, it seemed that if you even mentioned charging
for content that had been provided freely, people flipped out. It was
like the mortal sin of the Web. Now it seems to be the, "Well, if
everyone else is doing it, why not me?" kind of attitude. I even saw a
weblog(can't remember which) that was fairly respectable and considering
charging people for access!

It's not that I'm either/or, in fact I agree with CNN charging for
video/audio, but not plain text, just interested.

Thanks,

.djc.

carole guevin wrote:
> apologies - I've added - mini-survey on the left column title -
> http://netdiver.net/whatsnew.php - tx.
> .c
>
>