With Posterous shutting down at the end of April, I’m starting to see more discussion around paying to access social networks instead of having them free and full of ads.
Squarespace, App.net and (soon to be launched) PostHaven are leading this front, with hopefully more services on the way.
While these pay-to-play sites will never match the popularity or revenues of their “free as a bird” counterparts, they will never have divided loyalties between their users (or clients) and some random advertiser.
Not having to worry about a company prostituting my personal information to a random advertiser is soooo refreshing!
Note: Not to mention not worrying about how the company will keep the lights on as new users will help contribute towards its financial success instead of being an expense.
While every site/service can’t be free (as people wouldn’t be able to afford it), hopefully the pay-to-play Internet services will inspire their free rivals to provide ad free options (like Evernote and Vimeo.