“6% of Web Users Generate 50% of Ad Clicks“

That would suck. Very much. And you’re right. I was a bit young and dumb when the “bubble burst” but even then I knew that something was going to happen; all that positive influx of funds to the technical sector had to stop somehow. I didn’t dip my feet into that game, and I’m reluctant to do so now in any case.

The point here is that all of these things: MySpace, SU, Digg, LJ, and etc. are free to mostly free services that serve the purpose to “enhance” an online experience, not shackle it. Most of them have embedded banner ads or GoogleSearch ads that I more frequently ignore than not. But someone *is* clicking them, or MySpace would have shut down very recently. With the new policy of AOL (limited free tools, but not service), it would seem that this is the way ISPs will work in the future, and all of it would be based on ads. So someone, somewhere, is clicking and it must be enough to keep Big Business afloat.

The negative is that Joe Coder would be out of a job if his particulare MemeFactory closed down. The positive is that there are so damned many of them out there that he could (probably) easily get a job at another. Or create his own. And honestly, would that be so bad?

Reddit, Digg and Stumbleupon all compete for the same slice of your attention but they each have a different value proposition. Digg is good for tech news, Reddit is good in case you can’t find enough US culture war reading material on your own and SU does a variety of things some very well (I have a few friends whose links I browse) and some badly (their groups are crap). I’ve ditched Reddit and Digg actualy and just use SU.

Myspace seems like a vast blackhole of time. Sometimes I walk up to the edge and peer into the abyss but I always find myself pulling back. It seems like the internet equivalent of a bustling high school hallway. However I’m fully aware that there are people who use it and love it and are getting something out of it. Different strokes.

I still use Technorati though, but it’s of limited use. I suspect Technorati gets the bulk of its traffic from bloggers checking their own technorati rankings.

So to sum up I don’t think the overload effect is only really a problem if you try to do it all, but that’d be crazy.

The point is, yes, you can ignore ads, and easily. But companies are relying completely on ad revenue, so if nobody sees the ad, these companies don’t have income. So at some point, maybe you will have to sit through a three minute block of commercials when you launch Windows.

Perhaps you’re a bit jaded, Mr. Edelman. I mean, I’m twenty-five I’m not of the current genre of techbrats in my own demographic, nor am I a wizard, as technophiles before me seem to be. I’m an enthusiast. I do notice the number of embedded ads and secondary plugins for the various browsers, but is this a bad thing? You don’t have to use them and they are exactly as you said: a voluntary package to enhance the web-browsing system.

In all, considering the alternative, I’d rather have the possibility of a pop-up I could block, or embedded ads I can ignore, as opposed to launching Windows and watching a three minute block of commercials indicating that Vista is sponsored by Pepsi, Toyota, and ABC’s Lost (Wednesdays 9:00 pm, 8:00 central).

(And at this point I’m just biding time until you ban me for being too meta )

But I hadn’t heard of LibraryThing before this post. And many other of the services listed here. That kind of says something too, though. How well are these people targeting users who would use them or benefit from their use? I’m pretty net-friendly, though by no means an expert, and yet those services haven’t reached me yet. And there are “four zillion” of these…