I logged into Slashdot this morning and saw this note:
This strikes me as an excellent balance between the different kinds of contributions to a service. I didn't mind the ads before on Slashdot, but I can imagine some would happily buy their way out of the ads. If I did mind the ads, however, I'd far prefer to contribute my way out of seeing them, rather than paying my way to this same end.
There's a potential lesson in this for others, including Twitter in its ongoing business model evolution. Cash is not the only value a user can offer. In fact, sometimes cash might be the least valuable thing a user can offer, if she is someone whose content would draw paying customers to a service.
And then there are the lurkers, those who read Slashdot content but contribute nothing beyond readership and may even block ads such that they provide no monetary compensation to Slashdot. Even lurkers should be embraced, as Linus Torvalds recently wrote me (speaking of open-source "freeloaders"), because of their potential:
The fact is, a freeloader is a freeloader. They are neither evil nor good per se and neither add value nor take it away--but they very much are a potential tester and contributor. So they all have the potential for becoming something more.
Slashdot's pay-by-contributions model strikes a useful balance between customer and contributor, leaving open the option for lurkers to become something more. It's not the only way to reward contributors, and not the only way to treat customers, but I think it's a big step in the right direction.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
SourceForge recently reported results for its second fiscal quarter of 2009, and seems to have finally found its rhythm. The company, which for years tried to split its time between software (SourceForge Enterprise, purchased by Collabnet in 2007) and media (Slashdot, ITManagersJournal, Linux.com, etc.), and struggled to tell a coherent story.
As its most recent results suggest, however, SourceForge is beginning to find consistency as a media company, as demonstrated in its year-over-year growth in key areas:
- Ad Network revenue increased 84 percent;
- Premium product revenue grew 100% to $1.0 million;
- Media uniques grew 9 percent to 36 million;
- Revenue per thousand page views increased to $9.59 from $9.36, while page views increase 2 percent.
While SourceForge hasn't seen double-digit growth in most areas, it has seen consistent growth across its product line. This is good news for the company and, in turn, for its product portfolio which makes up a significant part of the open-source online community. Take away Slashdot and Sourceforge.net, for example, and open source would suffer.
It's therefore encouraging that the company has seen three trends in its fiscal 2009:
- Revenues from ad networks has grown;
- Revenue from standard Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) banner ads has shrunk
- Revenue from premium, custom interactive ads has grown.
Even as the market contracts, SourceForge has grown. In part it is demonstrating the execution of a winning, Google-esque business model: provide serious informational content in a lively forum and target ads to the audience that gathers to consume it.
But it's also showing that old brands can revive themselves if they focus on their core competence. SourceForge (then VA Software) was never a successful software company, and diluted its media brands by pretending to be such. Now that it can focus on delivering compelling content and intelligently advertising to its readership, it's doing much better.
Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.
One Slashdot user is blaming his ThinkPad for an inability to use Slashdot error-free. Dude, you should have got a Mac. It works flawlessly with Slashdot.
In fact, as an interesting sidenote, my Mac browsers (Firefox and, on occasion, Safari) work with an increasing array of websites. Yes, Firefox and Safari have always worked with 98 percent of websites, but I would occasionally stumble across one (like Delta.com's print-a-ticket page) that didn't work properly with one or the other. Those poorly designed pages seem to have grown up, or perhaps the browsers have been improving compatibility.
Either way, there are fewer and fewer websites that don't work fully my Mac-friendly browsers. Those that don't (tv.arsenal.com, as an example) have to do with sites using Microsoft's proprietary media software. But I suspect these sites will eventually realize the cost of locking themselves and their users into a proprietary browsing experience isn't worth it.
MySQL has placed itself in the middle of a rising furor over its allegedly diminished commitment to open source. To be fair, it has only itself to blame.
It all started with a disgruntled ex-MySQL employee, Jeremy Cole. Cole declared that MySQL's sky was falling because it was to be releasing certain parts of the next version of its database as closed-source software. Marten Mickos responded that he had misunderstood (when, in fact, he had understood very well), it went to Slashdot (where it was of course misconstrued even further), and we're left with a somewhat tepid defense by Marten in the comments section of Slashdot to the self-addressed question, "Why is MySQL now producing some proprietary software?":
The reason is that we have an ambition not only to produce FOSS [free and open-source] code, but also to be a profitable business that can exist for a long time. Each time we make more money, we hire more developers to develop GPL code.
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Traffic Sources for The Open Road - All Time
(Credit: Matt Asay)Last week I had two stories Dugg and two stories Slashdotted. The difference in traffic is striking. Digg delivered three times the amount of traffic as Slashdot did. Granted, my stories hit Slashdot in an off-peak time, but it got me thinking: Is Digg the future of web traffic? The tyranny of the mob, as Slashdot's Rob Malda once called it?
If so, I'm concerned. I like the traffic Digg gives me, but I also like the editorial function that Slashdot provides. I have no clue how something becomes popular on Digg - I'm constantly surprised by the types of stories I get Dugg. But I know how to get something Slashdotted: Deliver something that Rob Malda finds interesting.
Certain kinds of stories are more likely to be Dugg: anti-Microsoft screeds, pro-Linux (and especially Ubuntu) and Apple posts (See below). To get Slashdotted, an article needs to chart new territory, even if in these old paths. That's because Rob knows what is new and interesting, and what isn't. Digg doesn't. It's just a crowd (Read: Lowest-common denominator).
Again, I'm not complaining about the traffic. I would simply like to have the crowdsourcing power of Digg with the editorial oversight of Slashdot. Impossible?
... Read more
In a meme reminiscent of Nick Carr ("The cult of the amateur"), Rob Malda of Slashdot fame has riffed on the fallibility of Digg's model:
"...[W]ith sites like Digg, it's the wisdom of the crowds or the tyranny of the mob. You never know what you're going to get."
Some will call this sour grapes on Malda's part. I, however, think he has a point. I don't look to Digg to tell me what's important or newsworthy. It really does reek of a cattle call for she who makes up the silliest headlines or, worse yet, coordinated news "attacks" by groups that know how to goose the system.
... Read moreRob Malda, aka "CmdrTaco," founded Slashdot 10 years ago as a way to share online stories with a small group of close friends.
This month, as Slashdot celebrates its 10th anniversary, CmdrTaco is doing the same thing, except that now his group of friends has swelled to 250,000 readers each day and millions of page views (and 5.5 million visitors per month).
Malda has become a bit of a kingmaker, though this has never been his intention. Slashdot can give a company a massive launch to a new project or can dig it a public-relations hole from which it is hard to extricate oneself.
I spent a half hour talking Malda today, trying to plumb the secrets of how to get "Slashdotted" and to decipher Slashdot's effect on the technology world. In the process, it became clear that Slashdot has succeeded precisely because it exhibits the principles of successful open-source and Web 2.0 companies, including an unyielding focus on the customer experience.
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