Pissing Off Your Users For Money
from the fun-fun-fun dept
Two stories about desperate companies who aren’t creative enough to figure out ways to make money without annoying their users. First comes the news that Salon and MSNBC are starting to use new, ridiculously more intrusive ads on their sites. In many cases you won’t be able to view content until you click through the ad. Do advertisers really think this will help? You’re going to have a ton of pissed off and confused people looking at your ad. I’m not sure that helps for building a good brand name. As for the content sites that use the ads, again, you’re pissing off your readers, by making the reason they use your site less compelling. Then, the moment we’ve all been waiting for: a major record label (Vivendi Universal) has said that all of their CDs will soon have copy protection. Ah, Edgar Bronfman still doesn’t get it. He’s just pissed off a ton of his customers. That doesn’t seem like very good business sense. The fact is that the geeks will still figure out a way around the copy protection, the pirates will still figure out a way to pirate the music, and the people who get screwed are your everyday CD buyer who just wants to listen to the music they bought on their computer or MP3 player.
