[dwild]

> You might end up having to actually pay a little bit for it, though.

How old are you? I'm from the 90's, I'm from the generation that was on MSN all the time. My parent would have never let me pay for anything online, with no access to credit cards...

There's no ways they would have paid 5$ a month for a social networks, even if "all my friends were on it", which wouldn't be true, just like Runescape in the past.

[TeMPOraL]

Late 1980s. MSN didn't exist at the time. MSDN did, though, and didn't require advertising support, Microsoft was fine with offering it for free.

I didn't mention it in the article, but I do recognize what you said as about the only redeeming thing about advertising on the Internet. Free content is a huge boon not just for the less wealthy, but for kids. I do not have a good idea how we could get rid of ads on-line while not excluding these demographics at the same time. I was kind of hoping someone on HN would have some ideas, but nothing turned up so far.