18 comments

[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 46.8 ms ] thread
"I love verifying my email address." Sigh... I know, man. I know.
Yeah, that one is the best so far probably.
Hmm, I wonder what the solution to this could be.
Not having an email account?
Meh, I call BS on some of this. I've def lazyed out on deleting my account because I couldn't find the button on the site.
But did that make you a returning customer, or did you still just abandon the site?
It was thinkvitamin, I'm still a member paying 25 a month.

Also the same situation on 1and1...

Actually I should do something about that.

If you'll pay me 20 a month (and give me the account info), I'll delete it for you.
>I'm really glad all these ads are keeping this site in business.

You know what would suck? Paying for Gmail and Facebook.

Why would it suck? What's wrong in paying for the product?
It's an email address and a personal website. How expensive should it be to have a quality version of both?
A few years ago I'd have agreed with that, but recently I changed my mind: why not pay directly for things you like? Ads on the web a scourge, they really do make the whole experience of using a site worse for the customer. And they can't really be a good deal for advertisers either. I can't remember the last time I ever clicked on an ad, and I definitely never purchased anything after clicking on a banner. Ads are a scam business. Sure, Facebook and Google are basing their business on it, but how long until this house of cards finally collapses?

However, alternative models are scarce. Subscription-based sites mostly don't work. Donation-based models can be somewhat successful, but only with huge user bases and even then they'll never be as financially successful as the ad-based fantasy businesses of Facebook et al. I think a karma-based economy is worth exploring. For example, if everyone allocated an arbitrary sum each month to spend on services they like, then we would just need one or more payment services that distributed this sum among all the sites you gave "karma" to in a given month.

"Why yes, I'll give you offline access to all my Facebook info"

Isn't that said by millions of (real, non-geek) people every day?

This couldn't be much less funny.
Look, I know it's gauche to admit that you laughed at something on the internet, but the "modal dialogue" one got me fair and square. I LOL'd, Hacker News.

I LOL'd.