[Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

[Ray Saintonge]

Gerard Meijssen wrote:

>Hoi,
>I do not know if you observe when people watch watch television, but 
>people go to the toilet when there is an advertisement break. People 
>tape a program and fastforward the ads. The notion that ads provide 
>information is vastly overrated. Advertisements are typically ignored.
>
Very few ads are clever enough to keep your attention.  Most are 
trivial, and repeated too often.  As the TV market becomes more 
fragmented, the TV stations are not able to give the advertisers the 
reach that they previously expected.  As the public shifts attention 
from TV to internet the advertisers aremore keen to get into that 
market, but the internet audience is a lot less complacent about 
advertising than the TV audience.

To an extent some big ISPs probably viewed the net as an opportunity to 
package a service with a product.  There is a whole entertainment 
industry that would love to start creating profit points on the 
internet, but with a public that wants to upload as much (if not more) 
than it downloads the prospects for big profits look bleak unless the 
industry can have its way with net neutrality.  One of the things that 
we and a few other sites like YouTube and MySpace have addressed is a 
desire for the public to participate in the content.  The result is 
every bit as good as what the high-priced production companies could 
produce, and a lot cheaper.  Those who haven't grasped this should get 
ready for the second wave of dot-com failures.

Our Board needs to be fully aware of where the economics of the Web are 
going in the next few years.  It would be nice to base our planning on 
the real per capita costs of the internet stripped of content production 
costs.

>There is a website of a friend.. it has Google ads. When I feel good I 
>hit an add knowing that it will benefit my friend. The notion that ads 
>create a conflict of interest is an article of faith, it is not based in 
>how people perceive things in real life. When you are patch is bald, and 
>you want a solution AND you are lazy .. that is when an add helps you to 
>get Miracle-Gro. When you are smart you buy it cheaply in bulk at a 
>local shop and not over the Internet.
>
I don't know if I or you is misunderstanding something, but the 
suggestion that bald people could solve their problem by putting 
Miracle-Gro on their scalps is hilarious. :-D

Ec