[forrestthewoods]

I often wonder what the internet would be like without ads. First of all, you're right that it would totally kill sites. Let's say it happens. What's next? I would be ecstatic if sites like BuzzFeed and Gawker died. That'd be great[1]. But it also kills good sites like Stackoverflow. That sucks.

Right now people don't have to pay for content. Almost everything is ad based. Because of this people almost never pay for the really great premium content. Well what if there was no free, good content? Would that lead to more great content? Probably not... but maybe! What if suddenly people expected to pay a small subscription fee to a small number of sites in exchange for great content. That'd be, well, great!

How do you guys think it would play out?

[1] I think they literally make the world a worse place but that's a separate discussion.

[userbinator]

I often wonder what the internet would be like without ads.

It's simple, think of all the completely-non-ad-supported sites you've used, and imagine an internet where those are the only ones around. Basically that would largely be sites hosted by the government, companies (whose profit comes from something else), educational institutions, nonprofits, and individuals.

From my experience, I've seen a lot of great content on non-ad-supported (mostly personal) sites.

Stackoverflow in its current incarnation would likely not exist, but I'd guess something similar would appear in its place. P2P systems might become more popular too. It's hard to say but I doubt such an internet would really be worse than the one we have today - it would just be different.

[thesteamboat]

Wikipedia doesn't have ads -- it follows fundraising/donations model of NPR which is far easier to bake in to relevant content. In a world without ads, this might be a model for Stackoverflow and other largish sites with largish communities.

[sheetjs]

I'm not convinced that StackOverflow is a good example. The economics of this "HuffPo" model (no ad revenue actually flows to the content producers) seem unsustainable in the long run.

[mkr-hn]

I would support this if I believed sites would start paying the people who write for them.

[travoltaj]

Most sites do pay people who write for them. Either they pay the writers, and generate revenue for themselves by advertisements, or if it's an independent website, the website owner gives their time to write the content, in exchange for ad revenue.

If you have to pay to access most sites, the only websites left would be owned by the already wealthy that can cover losses till they're big enough that people are willing to pay for the content.

[mkr-hn]

> Most sites do pay people who write for them. Either they pay the writers, and generate revenue for themselves by advertisements, or if it's an independent website, the website owner gives their time to write the content, in exchange for ad revenue.

Not in my experience. Most offer "exposure" to writers, who go on to die of exposure. Even the sites that pay don't pay much. $20-50 isn't bad for the effort, but you only get it if they accept your pitch.

[DanBC]

It'd be interesting to see a mock-up of Stack Overflow with pay-to-play features.

Search is 10 SOBucks; search using tags is 15 SOBucks; asking a question is 20 SOBucks; reading the answer is another 20 SOBucks.

[GhotiFish]

In your hypothetical world, I would expect some technologies would rise where people contributed drive space and bandwidth to endeavours they care about, and distribute workload. Like a distributed stack overflow.

Like a bittorrent for websites. This needs to exist for wikipedia.

Frankly, if that existed, we would be so much better off, and them immediately after that got implemented, ISP's would go on a rampage with bandwidth clampdowns.

Anyway, I'm not even remotely afraid of the world you posit.

[enimodas]

With a bit of luck peer 2 peer web technology would take of, eliminating server costs, and the server software would be build like free software is build today.

[astrobe_]

> I often wonder what the internet would be like without ads.

It's called the GopherSphere.

[blumkvist]

And what if you live in poor Romania and you don't have money? Or in even poorer Egypt?

There is no model better than advertising. Nothing beats free. Get used to it. It's not going anywhere and such initiatives are futile.

* blumkvist maximizes back the SAS Miner window and laughs.