Premium Content
July 9, 2010
Lo, an age ago in Internet time the ScienceBorg was running a poll to see if users (see what happened there? I mean readers of course) would be willing to pay a monthly subscription fee. For access to some sort of so-called Premium Content.
I bet they’ve tabled that for now.
DrugMonkey 
July 10, 2010 at 1:30 am
HAhahahaha. That would be an epic fail! I’m not going to pay for what amounts to good conversation when there are so many other free forums for it. Unless I get a free welcome beer.
Anyhow I hope you keep the blog going wherever. I’ll read it anyway and I’m sure most of your other user-bots would do the same. Maybe it would be even better here without random SBorg politik deviations in the discussion.
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July 10, 2010 at 4:57 am
DM-
What I like about the old locale – SB – was that several good blogs are in one place, and that made the comments section quite interesting, since good bloggers are good commenters. Y’all keep mentioning that the Pepsi thing was just one of MANY problems and the last straw. I don’t know what these were. But I have to tell you that from the front end (ie. from the reader’s perspective) none of these problems were evident, and even the Pepsi thing was just one of those things that one is used to filtering out when accessing advertisement-supported sites. It is quite obvious to the casual reader that the SB bloggers were not implicitly or explicitly supporting the Pepsi content. I think SB readers are savvy enough to make that distinction. So overall, I was surprised by the reaction of the SB bloggers, and hope that now some of you will begin to return to their old digs and get back to the business of blogging.
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July 10, 2010 at 6:16 am
Fee for reading blogs? Seriously? Good to know that won’t be happening anytime soon. It’s also good to see you guys still blogging…whatever the site happens to be.
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July 10, 2010 at 8:01 am
The ongoing train wreck is pointing to just how financially unviable SMG is at the moment. IMO. Desperate times, desperate measures and all that. Who the hell knows? Maybe something like Scienceblogs really *cannot* be financially viable. Everybody hears about the problems of text based information publishing all up and down the scale.
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July 10, 2010 at 4:12 pm
Re text based information publishing–you’re right, it’s a crapshoot always. Because of this incident, maybe ScienceBlogs will regroup and strengthen itself and shed some of its in-group insularity. Or, due to financing problems, it may go the way of Omni, Quest, Linguafranca, Mondo 2000…
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July 10, 2010 at 7:03 pm
“in group insularity”? How so? Where do you strike the balance for a blog collective that does collective things and a random linkfest of unrelated blogs?
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July 10, 2010 at 7:38 pm
Poorly chosen phrase. I meant to convey that some members appeared shocked, simply shocked, that Seed management would do such a thing. Collective innocence, perhaps? I’m guessing the Pepsi blog, and others like it, have been part of the business plan all along.
But here’s the deal. I don’t think you should necessarily leave, unless you want to. No reason not to stay and actively engage with management over future plans to monetize Scienceblogs more securely and sensibly. It’s a great place. But I hope you understand why a lot of professional journalists would decide that a stunt like that pretty much squeezes them out of the picture.
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July 10, 2010 at 7:58 pm
Yes the professional journalists are making their position quite clear. I do understand that. What I find interesting in the detached view is whether there are distinct ethical positions here of equal worth. I hope Janet Stemwedel takes a whack at it when the dust settles.
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