Web Biz FAIL

Oh, do you want to actually READ THE GRAPH in this here image? Well, just buy a handy "Pro Account"! Gee, thanks, let me get right on that. Actually, maybe I'll go look at a web site that doesn't actively try to PREVENT me from looking at it.

Attention web site people: it's 2009. Creative Commons happened already. Wikipedia happened already. If you're going to be all Expert's Exchange about this thing, you're going to end up relegated to that ass end of the internet where no one clicks on your search results because you're just using your content as a big link-baiting advertisement.

And actually, it's not even YOUR content! You're just sharecropping your USERS content -- content which, since you just recently started this lock-up, they didn't think would be hidden when they uploaded it. Sure, I'm sure it's legal by the technicalities of the license agreement that no one reads. But it's not how your site used to work, and it breaks the spirit of the implicit contract you have with your users. And it breaks the community's spirit.

I don't get why people with good stuff on Instructables wouldn't just delete their articles and take them somewhere else that doesn't have a lame paywall. Seriously, people, it's your content. Why are you letting someone else try to monetize it... by HIDING it from everyone else?

Here's a not-new idea: Why don't you offer me a POSITIVE BENEFIT for buying an account (like the ability to comment, or rate up/down, or access to contests, or different ways to browse/search the content, or whatever) instead of TAKING AWAY the basic functionality from your site and then trying to force me to pay to get it back. Chances are I'm walking away instead of forking out cash if I can't simply click around and see stuff on your site without nag-dialogs spamming me.

Update: another, less ranty, take at theonda.org/articles/2009/06/19/dont-let-your-mission-bec...