The New York Times has an article today titled Can Reddit Grow Up?, which looks at Reddit’s attempts to add advertising to the site and what that might do to the culture.
Of course, some redditors claim this would produce a wholesale exit of users. Overall, though, the discussion could be plucked from our history without many edits.
Does monetizing the Dope signal doom? Or is it a necessity to make it live on if Ed retires?
What an odd notion, that things — especially those vaguely disapproved of by sober, responsible people — have an ultimate duty to grow up.
As if OK, fun’s fun, but now it can be Responsible Fun.
As if the Young Republicans had co-opted the Hippie movement. and introduced shirts and ties and short hair. ‘See, you can be just as rebellious by conforming and working within the constraints of the system. Just in a socially acceptable way. Now you accept the Powers that be, and be sensible.’
*“All things change,” and Reddit is “powerless like the pebbles being swept up in the fast-moving river,” wrote Yishan Wong, the company’s chief executive, *
Dust in the Wind, my friend, Dust in the Wind…
The idea of allowing advertiser to make fake posts would be even more antithetical here than it would be there. Look at the advertisers we have. They’d be peddling the very ignorance our site is designed to get rid of.
As for Reddit and Redditors, I think they would be more receptive to actual ads, not deceptive shill posts. That’s what would make me leave more than anything.
Eurgh.
There are a few cosmetic companies that have created usernames that make it really obvious that they are representing their company. And they post in /r/makeupaddiction from time to time, but they make it really clear that they are representing the company. They sometimes offer sneak peaks at new products, ask for feedback, provide a way for users to get in touch with them to discuss issues.
If someone tried to do advertising as a fake account, I think it would be sniffed out pretty quickly.
You really think so? I have seen some really clever work (my wife is in advertising) done online. The work that impresses me is not actual ads, but more gentle posts designed to gauge reactions. Imagine being an intern with 8 hours each day to implement your marketing research.
ETA: Imagine you are designing a campaign for a grill manufacturer. You enter threads discussing grilling and after establishing a presence, ask, “has anyone here tried the Weber Newgrill?” You then look at responses. Kinda like a focus group, but quick, dirty, and free.
You say that, but I know this one weird trick that was discovered by a mom in <POSTER_HOMETOWN_HERE> that the cable companies don’t want you to know about!
That’s not advertising though, is it?
Researching the market is the first step. Nobody (where my wife works) is posting online, “you should really buy X”. Instead they are starting conversations about “X” and studying what discussion ensues. Which, to me, is a little creepier.
I didn’t read the article as suggesting that fake posts would be secretly inserted. It seemed clear that the ad threads would be clearly labeled, with perhaps the only difference that they may be allowed to stay on top. Interesting that anyone immediately jumped to the notion that ads would be designed to trick them instead of generating conversation.
That’s irrelevant to the real point of my question. Does anybody believe that the Dope can go on forever as it is? Kicking and screaming and demanding that we be someone’s charity case is not a good long-term solution.
The goal of every online service that is not behind a paywall is to introduce advertising. Since sidebar ads are ignorable, blockable and largely ineffectual, the only path is akin to “product placement” - inserting the ads right into the content stream, as indistinguishably as possible.
Why not? The real costs are modest (many forums have no cost beyond commercial server bills) and an optional subscription basis probably comes close to making the system revenue-neutral if not mildly profitable.
Now, if you’re going to argue that the only long-term validity comes through being profitable enough to interest a major media company, you’re proposing something quite different.
My belief is that the Dope will vanish when Ed retires - and he’s my age.
There’s no plausible scenario for the Chicago Sun-Times to keep it going unless it produces revenue. Ed always claims that it runs in the black, but we all know of a zillion enterprises that made money but not enough money for anybody to care about once its passionate advocate leaves.
Everywhere I look, I see companies trying to monetize sites that have the superficial mien of being free and open. People who think the Internet is free and will stay that way are kidding themselves.
The only upside is that Ed’s a writer. I plan to keep writing as long as my brain works and that’s true for most writers. Maybe he’s willing to put up with the nonsense for another 20 years. I wouldn’t, though. Why should we bet that he will?
It can survive the loss of Ed if the Straight Dope itself can survive the loss of Ed. I personally think it’s more likely that the demise of newspapers in general will kill the column, and that this will happen before Ed shifts off the mortal coil.
Tell that to ChicagoReader.com, which has the Straight Dope prominently displayed on its header.
All due respect and homage that direction… the Dope may have outlived its need. Thirty years ago, it was much harder to ferret out answers to these strange questions and global oddities. I can’t think of a column in the last decade that was much past deep internet research; all a name researcher brings to the fray is the ability to get a little more respect from knowledgeable sources. I’d guess offhand that 2/3 or more of the questions in the first three books are relatively easy to answer with Google these days.
Not that there aren’t deeper mysteries that require a dedicated and superintelligent individual to find, focus and explicate… but there aren’t many. Fewer yet if you exclude the esoteric fringes of scientific advancement.
But there’s no reason the community can’t continue indefinitely. If something like this exchange still exists in 20 years, it will be Cecil’s real legacy, something I’d consider on the level of Victorian era “explorer’s clubs” and other associations to grapple with the mysteries of the day.
And how is that different than just participating in the thread? What if I want to know if anyone has tried the Weber Newgrill because I’m thinking of buying one? I’d post the same question, right? So as long as the participation in the thread is merely conversing about the topic, there’s no harm, no foul. And they’re doing it already.
When they start hard advocating, or when they start displaying actual ads as embedded posts, when they start making their animated ads embedded in posts, that’s when it takes annoying to a whole new level.
From the quote you provided:
Trying to make it look like a regular thread and not an ad. Okay, I’ll accept they just meant the ad would be a thread, not a separate block, but would still declare itself Estee Lauder and openly promote.
Seems the kind of thing to drive away users. I don’t know, as long as they are overt and people can tell they are looking at corporate content, I guess it’s easy enough to skip if you want to. It may even be less annoying than pop ups and autoloading audio/video ads. It’s probably the wave of the future.
One question: how does the site propose to keep the subreddit from being overwhelmed by product placement ads that are stickies at the top? Estee Lauder wants one, then Mary Kay, then the next one, and the next one? Sell exclusive slots? Otherwise, a person has to wade through a dozen ad threads to get to interesting content, now that would drive people away.
Are there any active online bulletin boards that aren’t someone’s charity case?
That’s a fair point. Would someone else be able to take over the Straight Dope editor slot when Ed leaves? Would anyone want to? Would Ed let them?
Well, the bulk of the board has nothing to do with the column except some vague sense of theme of “fighting ignorance and annoying each other to death”, so theoretically, the board wouldn’t miss the loss of the column. However, the column is largely the only reason the board is maintained, and the owners don’t have a strong incentive to keep the board active even with the column. Without the column, there is even less incentive (i.e. no Ed to make it happen).
No, it’s marketing. A surprising number of people really can’t tell (or at least describe) the difference. Advertising is a facet, a product of marketing - and only that. It’s also only one facet of many, which is why being “anti-advertising” or railing about advertising is pretty much a self-cancelling effort.
What’s being alluded to here is embedded social marketing, where entirely believable shills enter discussion threads and carry on completely normal exchanges that happen to be driven by marketing efforts and focused on both promotion and analysis. No, it’s not “advertising” in the traditional sense. It’s social coercion.
This reads like something from the days when it was purported to cost $100k to have a web site built and implemented.
I could duplicate this board in two days of work, on a commercial server costing no more than $100 a month. The only cost above that $1200 or so a year would be any stipend paid a core cadre of moderators.
That hardly takes a major media entity to manage and run.
I didn’t say it was expensive. I said the owners don’t have motivation to maintain it.
You say you could duplicate the board - well, several people have, over the years, set up their own boards and invited members from here over there. Some people migrated, some people read and posted on both (here and there). So yes, someone could set up a board, structure it like the SD, invite the active SD membership to join, and probably duplicate much of the look and feel. But it wouldn’t be this place.
Not if it’s done in competition or parallel; that would just divide the participation, if not the actual population. But if CR lets the board go (away, or just to hell), there’s a solid cadre of people here who could and probably would lead the exodus to SDMB2.
A little care, and it would be “the same place.”
I don’t see what CR brings to the game except very modest funding, which is replaceable.