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Pipecode source released

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Thanks (Score: 3, Interesting)

by dustin@pipedot.org on 2014-05-05 12:14 (#1CM)

Thanks for sharing your hard work Bryan. Does pipedot have a strategy for paying for hosting pipedot.org when it gets more popular?

Re: Thanks (Score: 3, Informative)

by bryan@pipedot.org on 2014-05-05 17:22 (#1D4)

Likely an optional subscription (around a dollar per month or so.)

As a reward, subscribers would get certain "heavy" features activated like an IMAP email account and extra storage for the blog.

Re: Thanks (Score: 1)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-05-05 20:36 (#1DB)

Just thinking out loud here, brainstorming, really:

Paid subscribers get to see more than the first 20 comments? I'm not sure IMAP email (I've already got one) is a huge benefit. Or like the Android app model: paid subscribers see no ad banners. Not sure if it would everywhere, but at b3ta.com paid members get a little icon next to their names, which becomes a bit of a status symbol over time. I think they also offer different icons per year, so if you wanted the polar bear you had to be a member in '06 or something like that. Or the icon reflects number of years as a paid member? Maybe the email notification of responses to your post is a paid feature or something? By the way, $12/yr is a decent price point.

Re: Thanks (Score: 3, Interesting)

by canorris@pipedot.org on 2014-05-06 09:46 (#1E1)

"Paid subscribers get to see more than the first 20 comments?"

There are fundamental problems with a payment/monetisation strategy such as this one, which seeks to directly derive payment from others for the posting content of the contributors to the site.

Of course any monetisation of the site is trying to do the same thing, but it's a little less direct than outright charging people to read what others have written.

So far I've trusted Brian to put together a very tidy site here, and I actually trust him to make some decisions about how to monetise, if indeed that's a direction he wants to go in.

Re: Thanks (Score: 1)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-05-06 18:53 (#1E7)

There are fundamental problems with a payment/monetisation strategy such as this one, which seeks to directly derive payment from others for the posting content of the contributors to the site.

Of course any monetisation of the site is trying to do the same thing, but it's a little less direct than outright charging people to read what others have written.
You've got a good point! So what do you recommend?

Re: Thanks (Score: 1)

by canorris@pipedot.org on 2014-05-07 10:53 (#1ET)

I know it's not easy, and I appreciate that you were brainstorming, as am I...

If the objective is to cover server and modest staffing costs then non-intrusive text-based ads with a subscription model to remove them does seem like the tried and true model to follow. Of course I'm no expert, so perhaps the revenue stream from such ads is insufficient.

Certainly, what I see on the internet at large is that when a high volume site (such as Slashdot) resorts to highly obstrusive, inline video/auto play ads, and other such BS, then it's a sign that the owners are trying to squeeze as much money as they can from the platform. So for their needs, text-only ads probably isn't "enough" money to make them happy.

If PipeDot is about building a self-driven community then I think those objectives will be fundamentally opposed to any major effort to monetize. Whether through obtrusive ads, or what I would call "agressive" subscription models, like the one you suggested. And again, what you suggested isn't bad, I just think it goes against the spirit of a community site that's built on community contributions.

At the end of the day (and I'm still brainstorming) the world seems rather topsy-turvy to me these days. With Facebook paying so much money for WhatsApp (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26266689) I can't possibly fathom how a user of an instant messaging program can be priced at $35..

So I'm sorry zafiro17 (and other readers) I've no solutions in hand...

Re: Thanks (Score: 2, Interesting)

by canorris@pipedot.org on 2014-05-07 11:02 (#1EV)

PS: Sorry to self-reply, just something to keep in mind, is that I've been following Bryan(#1)'s comments about the site, and as I understand it there is a bit more to pipedot than meets the eye. He is talking about the codebase being able to connect to other sites running the codebase, to distribute stories and comments, and topics. Such an idea is really exciting as I think it fundamentally defuses the issue of monetisation. On top of this the source is open.

So perhaps in future what we will see is a plethora of sites running pipecode, each with a particular focus or topic. They are all linked, so a user can tweak what they see, or what is brought to their attention.

None of the sites would be particularly large, so the site/system can't be "bought out" by commercial interests.

The drawbacks would be around whether the sites are able to grow large enough to establish communities of their own. This will be the absolute kicker, since what makes communities form is difficult to understand, and even harder to control (look at "failed" efforts like G+) so really this is just going to have to be a "wait and see" situation.

It's a great little/big experiment and I am looking forward to following along. I don't know how many of the comments Bryan gets a chance to read, but I'm sure he'll post a follow up here if my musing/thoughts are absolutely wrong: I'm just responding to other posts I've seen him make, and I may have misunderstood things.

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2014-05-09 03:23 Interesting +1 songofthepogo@pipedot.org

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