Deep inside the shallow consumer …

I would attribute most of the popularity of internet to the fact that the contents are free. But there have been a lot of efforts to start charging for contents. Today there are a good number of web magazines charging subscription fee. In theory this makes sense, as there are customers who want a good browsing experience free from the irritating ads and pop-ups.

Even I was in the notion that no one would pay money for watching a TV program without ads. Infact some ads are even fun to watch. But this opinion changed as time passed and now I hate watching movies in TV just because of the ads. The same could be applied to internet also.

But there is a subtle difference between internet and TV. Internet lives by linking – Hypertext is the one that forms the core of the internet. Lets say, I start charging for my blog … mmm… moderate fee of $1 per month… Now people linking to my blog will rethink their decision as not all of their visitors can visit my blog as mine is a paid service. Then obviously my referral visitors would be reduced and there would be a anti-network effect ( “Hey … Did you read that interesting article that a mummy has been found with golden panties ?” “Oh interesting. Can you forward it?” “mmm… It’s a subscription service … May be I will tell about it in nutshell …”)

So going for a subscription model has its own handicaps … Think about subscribing for a magazine just to read a single article! (This problem could be solved by micropayments, which I will write about as a separate column later). Not just subscription … Even micro payments may not be perfect … My mom browses peacefully now but still speaks hastily in the telephone though the telephone charge is very minimal… Same would happen with metered browsing even if we are charging in cents… (I ignore broadband charges, which is more like a cable TV rent)

So whats the solution? We want to go for ad-free browsing but we don’t want to pay even a cent for the ad-free content… Well… If I know the solution, I can be the next Sabeer Bhatiya(hotmail), Pierre Omidyar (ebay) or Jeff Bezos(amazon).