I'm not sure what the alternative is. You can pick up a newspaper for 20p,or a "quality" newspaper for 50p (UK rates). Would I pay 50p a day to browse a news site? At the moment, no, because I can get my news for free elsewhere, with similar political alignment. I feel like I would pay something for really, really good curation and aggregation of news I'm interested in. But not all the time.
It seems subscription is the only alternative to free and I don't want endless subscriptions to news (be it tech news or what's going on in the world). Because it all adds up. I want to be able to buy stories/news etc. ad hoc as I do/did a newspaper rather than being committed to a month subscription where I may not take advantage of it all the time.
Spotify is an example of a service I use frequently but probably don't use it every day and as such I sometimes unsubscribe from it. I'd love to be able to subscribe to it when I'm using it. Say 25p/30c a day (or less ideally).
Sure it may end up coming out costing me more than a monthly subscription but some months it wouldn't because I don't use it all the time.
I'm all for paying for content but all these subscriptions add up.
AWS has got it figured out, to a degree - more so than media companies. Charge for usage.
Given everything amazon has on offer in the way of machine learning etc. is their algorithm for promoting items you might want to buy as simplistic as "I see you bought a pair of running shoes! Perhaps you might want another pair of running shoes?".
I'm currently in the process of withdrawing myself from social media.
I pulled the plug on Facebook and Instagram this weekend, not that I was a heavy user of Instagram anyway and Facebook a light to moderate user. (it sounds like I'm discussing a coke habit here). What I will find frustrating is that in my social group - and I'm sure I'm not alone - Facebook appears to be the central tool for organising one's life.
Everything is organised on Facebook. Social events, parties, last minute "Does anyone want to go for a drink?" requests, discussions and meetup arrangements on my side hobby of homebrewing. I fear I shall become something of a social outcast, particularly as many friends I have, I don't have their mobile numbers as all contact was made through Facebook messenger.
This is one part of the reason that I'm pulling away from Facebook in particular. Facebook has almost two billion users and the internet as a whole has roughly 3.5 billion users.
How one corporation having that much data willingly supplied - where they live, where they work, where they've been, where they currently are, among everything else - by so many people is, frankly, a disaster waiting to happen. I want no part of it. I've given them enough data over the last couple of years. No more.
And on a less tin-foil hat angle it is a huge distraction that, aside from the social life organisation aspect, serves no good purpose that can't be provided using other means (email? phone calls? meeting face to face and sharing your selfies in person?).
I've also withdrawn from Instagram and plan to start developing in VueJS or EmberJS rather than React. I'm not officially boycotting Facebook, I'm just choosing not to use their products.
It seems subscription is the only alternative to free and I don't want endless subscriptions to news (be it tech news or what's going on in the world). Because it all adds up. I want to be able to buy stories/news etc. ad hoc as I do/did a newspaper rather than being committed to a month subscription where I may not take advantage of it all the time.
Spotify is an example of a service I use frequently but probably don't use it every day and as such I sometimes unsubscribe from it. I'd love to be able to subscribe to it when I'm using it. Say 25p/30c a day (or less ideally).
Sure it may end up coming out costing me more than a monthly subscription but some months it wouldn't because I don't use it all the time.
I'm all for paying for content but all these subscriptions add up.
AWS has got it figured out, to a degree - more so than media companies. Charge for usage.