The Dark Side of the Web: Praying for Perspective or Prospective Prey

Besides a catchy title what the hell does it mean? My thoughts today aren’t religious or spiritual, but instead are focused on the distribution of information through modern web media channels. By “praying for perspective” I’m writing about our ambitious need to consume all manner of information and in particular web media. This need is driven by several overlapping psychological and behaviorial motivators, of which I’ll describe a few: state, curiousity, and perspective.

Who’s behind the wheel?

You are.
We share an instinct to stay informed and in touch with loved ones, friends, trends and less popular social memes. Beyond this fundamental social instinct many look to the web out of another primal need: curiousity. We improve our understanding of novel topics or assist our memory with details we once knew. Beyond the social need of belonging, and our natural curiousity is a quest for truth. The type of truth that can only come from critically comparing a wide variety of views on challenging social issues and philosophies. A semantic divergence of billions of nuances branch out from the the word truth. We each have a moving definition for this short word. For myself truth is what is. For others truth is what was, or what will be. For more rigid minds (not necessarily rational), Truth is absolute and others must submit to one version of reality. To others truth is a word of little value because of it’s failure to transmit a clear meaning.

So why all glum, Mr. Dark Side of the Web?

Popular web businesses acutely understand the needs of belonging, curiousity, and perspective. And no matter how good intentioned these folks are, while they are building their startups and businesses they’ll face a question: How can the business best exchange visitor and content creator* attention in order to increase revenue? There’s an upper limit to ads that each of us will tolerate. Any ads over that limit result in lost or non repeating visitors. There’s also a comfortable level of privacy that we require. Targeted ads are fine, as long as every business in the world doesn’t have a full catalog of my tastes, friends, and contact information.

Consider for a moment what fraction of your attention is diverted by placement ads, interrupt ads, embedded ads and bill boards (my hypocrisy^). Now multiply that fraction by your life time. That’s how much of your life was sacrificed by the inefficiencies of ad powered information. The web hasn’t yet found a better path to fund “free” information flow.

Alternative monetization channels

There are tools like ad blocker available, but then you’re basically robbing the site owner of the content value they provide. That’s something any good capitalist can’t stomach. Can we imagine a more efficient fuel to diminish the attention tax? We could create a massive pay portal based web. You log on from anywhere, visit any site, and it can negotiate a tiny fee from your subscription. If we desire information without ads we should have the ability to opt out. By removing the ad middle man from the equation we could have a more efficient information network. I’d love to hear about your ideas, as my next push in creating a web business is founded on building fully hackable, distributed social tools.

Notes:
*= Most web browsers are creating some form of content. What are social web sites without people, and how much of the web is no longer social?

^= don’t forget to visit Ars Vox for all your epublishing or blog to ebook needs. Aakin’s a good friend, so any referral to him is more than just an ad, I’m doing you a favor by introducing you to his skills. Also my first shake at a web business is built on targeted ad model, Victus Media.

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  • Leland

    Hey Mark. Interesting post… my comment focuses in on your comment about “Alternative Monetization Channels”.

    I have recently been reading a Ph.D thesis “Consumption of Virtual Goods” by Vili Lehdonvitra, inside of which is laid bare the motivations behind buying “Virtual Goods”. Herein lies a good basis for understanding why people use Ad-block plus, and how websites can find alternative ways to make money from their communities.

    The fact of the matter is, advertisements waste our time. The more intrusive they are, the more time they waste. As you most likely already are aware of, time is directly correlated with money, based on the relative value of money for each individual reader. When that time wasted reaches a certain threshold, it becomes prudent for us to seek a way to completely block out the wasted time.

    Following this point, we see that nothing on the web is free. Even going to a webpage with absolutely no advertisements still costs us something. Our time. Currently, the only motivation for us to spend this time is content. However, there are many other virtual worlds besides traditional websites and blogs that have already begun to harness other motivations that can be created within a virtual space.

    Before proceeding, let me outline the possible motivations for someone consuming a virtual asset, which can be a game item, an article on a blog, or a video on youtube.

    Motivation 1: The virtual item has a utility value. It allows me to accomplish something I previously could not do within the real world, or a virtual world. An example of this is information on a website. After reading that information, I have a better understanding of the world, and can accomplish goals that I previously could not accomplish.

    Motivation 2: The virtual item has some sort of Emotional or Aethetic value. Many Youtube videos tap into this motivation. Seeing a beautiful video is in-of-itself a motivation for spending time.

    Motivation 3: The virtual item improves my self-identity or social status within the virtual world, or the real world. An example of this is Blogging, where I spend my time blogging in the hopes of increasing my real world value (sometimes).

    Where a virtual space is any “community” or “visual area” that can be created inside of a computer. This includes websites, the desktop, inside of games… everywhere.

    Take a look at Habbo Hotel. This game has learned to harness the motivations underlying our virtual consumption (of which reading websites is one aspect) to a much deeper extent. Let's do a small comparison:

    Techcrunch.com (website)

    Motivation for readers to visit the virtual world:
    -Information with high Utility value
    -Limited possibility of increased social status through making comments and/or providing tips to the website

    What is monetized:
    -Nothing is directly monetized. Advertisements make money on the website as an outcome of people spending time consuming the websites content. The monetization is seperate from the systems of content and social intercourse within the website. This makes it easy to avoid the monetization (advertisement) altogether… because, as ad-block has shown, since the monetization and the motivations for people coming to the website are completely seperate, one can be completely isolated from the other.

    Habbo Hotel:

    Motivations for users to visit the world:
    -Increased social status through relationships created inside of the virtual world, possibility of transferring to the real world (based on who you meet)
    -Emotional and/or aethetic qualities of the virtual items that increase based on the history of each item a user might be wearing. (some items are very old, and have had famous owners, increasing their inherent value).
    -Utility value of some things allows some paid users to access different facets of the game world and to perform unique actions that have value because of the fact that they are not available to the majority of members. (private access to special rooms and such)
    -The ability to empower one's self-identity through rare items and unique styles. Ability to reflect real world values in the virtual world. (and don't discount this fact… many goths would be happy to pay 20$ for the “goth” clothing in order to reflect their real-world social values in the virtual world)

    What is monetized:
    -Motivation for increased social status is directly monetized by requiring greater and greater amounts of money for increased rarity of items and uniqueness. It is also indirectly monetized by items that are only available temporarily, allowing people to establish themselves as a “veteran member” of the community through ownership of a unique, limited time offer virtual item.

    -Motivation for self-identity is monetized through large selection of styles (all which must be paid for of course)

    -Motivation for emotional/aethetic value is directly monetized through users having to pay more for more beautiful things. Additionally, emotional value is monetized through users paying a monthly cost to hold onto their “space”… like paying a rent to keep holding onto a prized house for example. The house represents all of the time i spent with my friends talking inside of the house, so it has an emotional value to me. Monetized monthly… habbo hotel is very smart :)

    -Motivation for utility is handled by habbo directly monetizing the ability to perform actions and games within the virtual world.

    As you can see, the problem with most websites is that as of yet there exists no system to directly monetize the alternative motivations that people can have for using them. In habbo hotel, a “ad blocker” would be useless, because the monetization is built DIRECTLY INTO the virtual items and properties that users have motivation to see/use.

    In conclusion, moving forward, websites must involve their readers much more heavily and increase their interaction with their community in order to harness the motivations that people have for spending time, and money (effort) on virtual goods (goods including the articles and news that a website produces). This will eliminate their reliance on a parallel, easily blocked monetization system such as pure advertisements.

    This will be rectified shortly by my company, I assure you. :)

  • http://www.victusspiritus.com/ Mark Essel

    Leland, first off massive props for the in depth and well thought comment. I've been trying to connect virtual goods with our sense of value. The expression of our interests and the desire to shape and mold realities even virtual ones, transcends the value of “real” currency. At first I considered virtual goods somewhat skeptically. But now I accept that they are just as real as vanity purchases or style signals we exhibit from other real world clothing or goods.

    I'd love to hear more about your startup, certainly since it relates to a great need and if satisfied could very well shape the future of the web.

  • Leland

    Mark, I deeply appreciate your interest in my ideas. We are all looking for others to hear our voice, right? It's great when someone calls back. :)

    Information about my startup will be pouring out in the near future when we start our closed beta (within one to two months). I would be happy to share.

  • http://www.iamronen.com iamronen

    Hello Mark,

    You are talking about human nature – which is a vast and beautiful and rich domain. Can you imagine having this conversation outside the confines of capitalism and money?

    It feels to me like an injustice to humanity in general, and more importantly your personal humanity to limit your experience in this way!

    :)
    Ronen

    p.s. you have done a terrible injustice to the word truth in this post!

  • http://www.victusspiritus.com/ Mark Essel

    I'd love to be corrected on your take on truth. I've found it to be a
    cause of much misunderstanding when communicating but respect that we
    each have personal truths and meaning. What is your take on the word
    and its value?

  • http://www.iamronen.com iamronen

    It is more in my heart then it is in my mind… it's not so much a static/finite end result, rather a process of discovery and evolution … which may explain why it is both such a heated topic and why there are so many interpretations and passionate wars fought in its name

    Commenting on a blog does not fulfill my desire to listen and be heard… it is too limited a medium…so I won't pursue this further here … I do hope that one day we have a chance to continue this face to face

    … But I have been playing a game on twitter – quoting from a book I've been reading that actully does dare to describe truth … I am nearing the end of this experiment (as the book nears it's end)… after which I will be publishing a post that is a more fluent aggregation of all the twitter updates … so, if you wish, I'll drop a comment here when that gets published :)

  • http://www.victusspiritus.com/ Mark Essel

    That would be wonderful.

  • Leland

    iamronen , you comment has illustrated to me how deeply other's minds can work then my own. Thank you for that insight.

  • http://www.iamronen.com iamronen

    as promised … please be warned this is no walk in the park – as to be expected when wading into something like 'truth'

    If you want personal context start here:
    http://www.iamronen.com/2010/05/about-reading-l…

    If you want to jump right in:
    http://www.iamronen.com/2010/05/reading-lila/

  • http://www.iamronen.com iamronen

    namaste

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  • http://www.victusspiritus.com/ Mark Essel

    Bookmarked for when my mind is ready, thanks again.