On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 5:12 AM, D. Glenn Arthur Jr. <[email protected]> wrote: > Silicon Shaman <[email protected]> wrote: > [...] >> One of the big things with companies is getting data on users, taking >> consumer surveys and that kinda stuff. >> >> So here's a thought, suppose a company that does paid surveys pays DW for >> the right to put up a fancy poll on a public community page, which the users >> fill in and in exchange get paid for their time and effort in points [or > [...] > >> .Good idea, bad idea? thoughts? > > Bad idea, though less bad than many other ideas I've seen > on the web. > > Long explanation after I've slept a little, unless somebody > beats me to it... > > Short version: AFAICT from feedback to LJ news posts, much > of the *J audience likes feeling like customers and dislikes > feeling like they're the _product_, whether this is a gut > level reaction or fear that if big companies are the customers > then the site is no longer serving its users first ("two > masters" and all that), or both. While your proposal would > not be selling individual "eyeballs" to corporate customers, > it would still a dangerous, or at least suspicion-inducing, step > thataways in the eyes of a significant portion of the user > population.
One of the reasons that this would trigger the two-masters problem is because it would be a service offered to corporate entities that was not offered to regular users. This would be seen as favoritism to the corporate entity, because they got to do special things. Making a service like this available to all users at an appropriate charge would avoid that. Granted, it might be a charge out of the range of most users, and most users might not have a need for it, but it would no longer be a special service offered only to business customers. --Azz _______________________________________________ dw-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.dwscoalition.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dw-discuss
