Cheap bastards March 12, 2001 4:49 PM   Subscribe

from todays' dack.com

"What's wrong with this picture? In a few short weeks Andrew Sullivan's weblog has collected almost $3500 in microdonations. By contrast, Metafilter -- a community site where people feel like stakeholders, and presumably have a greater motivation for giving -- has been stuck at about $750 for weeks. Are the musings of a Catholic gay conservative really that popular? Or are Metafilter readers just cheap bastards?"
posted by lagado to MetaFilter-Related at 4:49 PM (9 comments total)

Nah. Sullivan needs the money to pay off the evil fuckers who inflicted that Shockwave-based monstrosity on him. (It's not even Flash. Yeah, to view the "enhanced" version, you need to install the full Shockwave 8 player and reboot.)

[I featured the site in a "Web's Worst" feature I wrote for a print magazine. He's a journalist with a blog, for pete's sake. It should be an animation-free zone. Instead, it's giftext and whizzies ahoy. Drek.]

MeFi is much more cost-efficient ;)
posted by holgate at 6:12 PM on March 12, 2001


Sounds like Metafilter needs one of those really neat flash / director things of which you speak, holgate. I mean to attract the big bucks and everything. Obviously the whole world is catching on to this new "multi media" thing.

How about Mefi with full-screen interstitials between thread clicks, Matt?
posted by lagado at 7:19 PM on March 12, 2001


I have to admit, seeing that on Dack encouraged me to finally kick in a few bucks.
posted by waxpancake at 9:32 PM on March 12, 2001


Are the musings of a Catholic gay conservative really that popular? Or are Metafilter readers just cheap bastards?

I don't see these choices as mutually exclusive...
posted by kindall at 9:40 PM on March 12, 2001


It's good to see the total moving up again after that initial flurry of enthusiasm. It's now up to $804.50 with an average donation amount of $9.

So far contributions have come from 2% of registered users. I don't know how big Mefi's active community actually is though.

I don't think Matt has set any targets that he'd like to reach but I'm guessing that he'll need a couple of grand per annum to pay for bandwidth and stuff.

posted by lagado at 11:17 PM on March 12, 2001


If I had a job, I would surely give Matt some cash for this site. I'm a freeloader for now.

Also, I don't think Matt ever made any major request for donations to spark people to give.
posted by john at 4:20 AM on March 13, 2001


lagado, thanks for posting this. it's a good issue.
posted by Sean Meade at 7:50 AM on March 13, 2001


I have been planning to kick in every 3rd paycheck, which means it is time again this week. Thanks for the reminder.
posted by thirteen at 8:33 AM on March 13, 2001


If Alexa can be believed, andrewsullivan.com is far less popular than MeFi. My guess is he's getting more money because he's got a big honkin' graphic on his front page asking for money. All Matt has is one little word shoved into the menu marked "donate." Monkey not see, monkey not do.

Maybe Matt ought to put a timer into the MeFi cookie, so once every 2-3 weeks or so it would automatically put that ugly Amazon graphic on the front page. You couldn't miss that.
posted by aaron at 3:31 PM on March 13, 2001


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