Nerdvana

I get the whole free thought movement, “Information wants to be free.”, and I understand that the greatest part of the internet is the free exchange of information. The problem is, in a capitalist society there’s no such thing as a free lunch. The mantra is actually “Information wants to be $19.95”.

There are major discussions out there about monetizing twitter, monitizing flickr, monitizing blogs (yes, blogs are webservices. If you do any amount of reading on the internet make a careful note of the sites you read, a good portion of them are blogs and providing you with content is a service…web-service) and how it can be done. There are conversations on the good side and the bad side of this topic. I’m not going to discuss the good side of the topic here as there are plenty of other people doing a better job of this than me.

I would like to address the folks on the negative side of the topic. Stop whining! There’s a bunch of discussion flying around about how Chris Brogan wrote a sponsored post for Izea. Now that he’s done it for money can you trust him? OF COURSE YOU CAN. His opinions are his own and if you think he would jeopardize his readership by stating anything other than HIS OPINIONS for financial gain you never had much faith in them to begin with.

Why do people read people like Chris Brogan or Loren Feldman, or Jeremy Shoemaker? Why are their opinions important? Because they get social media. They understand how it works. How did they get that level of knowlege and understanding? Through experimentation, education, and trying things out. People complain because they make a few bucks for promoting a product and being completely transparent about it. Suddenly that makes all of their opinions null and void, it’s rediculous.

People are also complaining about the new text ads in google’s image search. Taking a look at them they aren’t so bad. They aren’t any worse than the ads in your gmail and they are content relevant. The development, storage, and hardware involved to make this service possible isn’t free. Yet these same people complaining about it are the same people who complain when the service is down or acts up. What do you want for nothing? It’s not like you have to watch a 1 minute commercial between each page of the search or something equally intrusive. It’s a simple bar of text ads on the top.

People complain about the ads in youtube videos. Come on! The list goes on and on. The fact is, the internet isn’t free. Someone takes their time to provide the content you enjoy or rely on every day. If they put a donation button out there people would complain about that as well. This is a fluid medium that is still trying to figure itself out. Instead of complaining and stating why it’s wrong or making blanket statements like “it’s poisoning the internet” perhaps you could provide some solutions.

The money that is made by these “sponsored posts / service” go back into bettering the service. If people continue to shy away because companies/people are trying to make these things self reliant the internet is going to turn into a ghost town. It was the financial gains that made the internet possible. If people weren’t making money from it it wouldn’t exist, simple fact. People are quick to make a judgement without knowing all the facts and that’s both dangerous and sad. Controversy starts over the topic and everyone’s an expert on the subject.

Disclaimer: I am an Izea employee, my views and opinions are my own and do not reflect those of the company I work for. I am not being compensated for this post.