The idea is Quora offers a premium subscription – Qurora+ – that offers ad-free browsing of the site for $50 a year USD. Since the idea of people paying for content is something of an online unicorn, I wasn’t sure this was going anywhere, but I thought I would try.
This new editor is feeling like Wordpress is trying to empty Lake Ontario with a bucket. It’s a futile gesture, but maybe it’s the gesture that counts? It’s like the world is craving no more sequels to movies, but when you give them something original, they don’t show up. Wordpress, you’ve got a fight ahead of you.
Over the last few months, I’ve noticed the costs of AWS rising steadily I really hit an inflection point: High cost of AWS hosting, dwindling or nonexistent ad revenue, slower and slower Wordpress, and less blogging period. I’m not deserting this blog by any means, I guess I’m just being pragmatic about it
This whole HTTPS and Google’s push to encrypt (or weaponize depending on your perspective) is back on people’s lips again. I’m a little late to the party of course, since I have been out of the country so many times in the last three months that blogging has been a distant thought. With all of this talk, I’m left to wonder if the uproar has any merit.
With the recent support for Ad Blockers in iOS 9, many have been discussing the ethics of blocking advertisements on the mobile platform (and elsewhere). Up until the end of September, ad blockers were the #1 applications on Apple’s app store. The discussion about these has continued after Marco Arment pulled his ad blocking application named Peace. I wanted to offer my perspective on this.
Today I’ve been thinking about the constant conflict between writing blog posts and commenting on blogs (or other types of sites). When is the line crossed from a simple comment to that of a full-blown blog? When should we tell people that comment on our sites that they should take it to a blog? I’ve pondered these ideas in the past as I’ve faced Dave Winer’s particular outlook on this topic.
When I joined the writing team at MovieViral in late 2013, I had aspirations of writing about the other topic I enjoy: movies. My interest was twofold; Get some experience writing for a larger site, and eventually work toward earning money for that work. For a time, the writing was difficult to keep up with, but I persevered. Eventually, the site would sell to a new and, British, group. In return for supporting them, they would steal from me. Let me explain.
Today, I’ve introduced a theme change to this blog, and I hope you like it. As you can probably tell, the look and feel here are far different than the last design. Over the next little while, I’ll be working out the smaller issues and making an effort to clean up the overall look. But, for now, please take it for a spin and let me know what you think.
As a publisher of multiple sites (and a reader, no less), I’m keenly aware of the struggle faced by the need to reach users, but the cost of doing it. If what we do doesn’t somehow lead back to our site, is this something we could ever embrace? With the recent announcement of Facebook Instant Articles, I’ve been thinking about this more. Is this a great development for publishers, or the start of a new, dangerous path for Facebook?
I talk about whether it makes sense to move to HTTPS, even if your site doesn’t sell products or take in user data.