[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia struggles, Mozilla set for life?

[David Goodman]

I had an interesting discussion this evening with a senior sales
executive for a major commercial publisher, who was totally amazed
that we did not accept advertisements, as in his view everyone wanted
to maximize income and financial support and the money the staff could
be paid--as his company did.

that of course is why he is there, and i am here.

consider the

On 10/24/07, Jason Calacanis <jason at calacanis.com> wrote:
> On 10/24/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Mmm. Which side do we sell advertising to on [[Abortion]]? If you
> > don't blacklist you'll get screams; if you do you'll get screams,
> > whoever you pick on.
>
> Actually, you can easily turn off ads on a per page basis. At Mahalo
> we turn off ads on controversial pages on a regular basis (think:
> school shootings). Also, Google turns them off as well as best they
> can.
>
> So, really a non issue.
>
> > In an attempt to maintain (appearances of) neutrality, we'd have to
> > spend quite a lot of effort controlling who gets these advertising
> > slots on contested topics; that's going to eat into the profits quite
> > quickly. It's not a simple matter of "and now, open the money pipe"
>
> Actually, it just might be that easy. What if we opened it up in
> stages and get feedback along the way:
>
> Step one: 100% optin advertising where the user has to turn it on.
> Step two: put ads on search results, or give folks the option to "Use
> Google to search wikipedia" with the ads going to Wikipedia--so again,
> opt in.
> Step three: if steps one and two do well, PERHAPS put ads on pages by
> default. In fact, Wikipedia could run ads up until the point it raised
> $50M and then turn them off and live off the 3-5M that would turn over
> in interest!
>
> Step one is a total no brainer... i can't think of one reason to be
> against OPTin advertising.... can anyone?
>
> best j
> ---------------------
> Jason McCabe Calacanis
> CEO, http://www.Mahalo.com
> Mobile: 310-456-4900
> My blog: http://www.calacanis.com
>
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-- 
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.