I noticed a regrettably silly blog posting yesterday from Alex Eckelberry, accusing Snopes.com of "pushing" Zango.
To be sure, Snopes was pushing Zango: in exactly the same way that it continues to "push", oh, let's see, umm, QuickBooks, the Oreck Air Purifier, eBay, a call spoofing service (served up helpfully by Google), and an e-tutorial service for kids who aren't doing well in school. In other words, Snopes.com serves ads, and makes money from those ads. Presumably that money helps them cover the costs of running the site, and provides a bit of an income on top. (Actually, from Snopes' 2700 ranking on Alexa, I'm guessing a pretty nice income. Good for them.)
If anyone truly objects to this arrangement, well, it's an ad-supported country, and I'll fight to the (metaphorical) death for that person's right to be silly about this and lots of other things. I, for one, find it well worth my while to put up with a few ads, to take advantage of the service that Snopes offers. (Like Alex, I have friends and family who require me to take advantage of it pretty regularly.)
Alex is right about this: Snopes shows ads to make money, and Zango's advertising has helped lots of sites like Snopes do precisely that. The implication is that people find Zango's online catalog of games, videos and tools (including SpamBlockerUtility) to be reasonably compelling and interesting, and they apparently think it's worth putting up with some ads to get access to it. In other words, the content economy that Zango has been preaching for the last three years is working. I'm not quite sure that's the point Alex was trying to make, but – oddly enough – he makes it very well.
It really is as simple as that: content in exchange for advertising is a business model that's as old as newspapers, as new as Google, and as common as television. Nothing to see here folks. Move along.
