CNN mentions MetaFilter (and Fark) August 22, 2006 7:23 AM   Subscribe


FM stablemates are hot. Beware though: a friend of mine once fondled an FM stablemate's bollocks and he was kicked in the teeth for his tenderness.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 7:40 AM on August 22, 2006 [2 favorites]


why do people always posit Fark & MeFi as 'rivals,' or 'enemies?'

I'd lay dollars to donuts there's a significant overlap in membership. It's just a different site for when you're in a different mood.
posted by jonmc at 7:41 AM on August 22, 2006


Nuh-uh.
posted by dame at 7:47 AM on August 22, 2006


That's telling me.
posted by jonmc at 7:49 AM on August 22, 2006


blog traffic rankings are…
posted by tellurian at 7:55 AM on August 22, 2006


Business 2.0? We're being read by middle-managers all across Ohio!
posted by geoff. at 7:56 AM on August 22, 2006


I thought so.
posted by dame at 7:59 AM on August 22, 2006


…affected by a downturn in the economy and ad market will, of course, hurt bloggers
posted by tellurian at 8:00 AM on August 22, 2006


hurt bloggers
AAAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhh
posted by tellurian at 8:07 AM on August 22, 2006


Weird; I tend to think of Fark as 10 to 20 times more popular than this place, based solely on the number of multiple hundred thread comments I see over there, not to mention how much bigger their TotalFark group is compared to our UltimateMeta subscriber level... wait... I've said too much... ctrl-z!
posted by jonson at 8:14 AM on August 22, 2006


Woah - amazing how much margin there is in blogging. The content producers are keeping 60 cents on the dollar. Wow. I gotta get me some of the disintermediation.
posted by GuyZero at 8:21 AM on August 22, 2006


Will somebody please photoshop Matt's head coming out of the neck of that TechCrunch suit?
posted by tula at 8:46 AM on August 22, 2006


stablemate? ... no ... fark is in the barn and metafilter is in the parlor ... on different farms
posted by pyramid termite at 9:10 AM on August 22, 2006


Will somebody please photoshop Matt's head coming out of the neck of that TechCrunch suit?

Also gotta change all those bills to fivers.
posted by brain_drain at 9:11 AM on August 22, 2006


I know fark does 10x the traffic of mefi. It's kind of crazy actually.

And if I ever hit $60,000/month blogging I think it'd be time to charter a flight and have a NYC mefi meetup in vegas.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:11 AM on August 22, 2006


Would you host it at New York, New York just to be appropriately meta?
posted by jacquilynne at 9:15 AM on August 22, 2006


YES!
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:16 AM on August 22, 2006


If you ever setup MeFiPro, charged $10-20/year, and made it worthwhile, I guarantee you'd hit your goals.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 9:44 AM on August 22, 2006


But you'd have to woo Miguel back. He should be able to have a "fireside chat" sub-section on the site where all anyone talked about was fine wine, cigars, and hot Portuguese models.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 9:46 AM on August 22, 2006


I would do a $3-5/month "pro" if I could think of enough features to be worth it. Every time I think of new features I just add them for everyone (favorites, more rss, etc).
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:02 AM on August 22, 2006


jonson writes "I tend to think of Fark as 10 to 20 times more popular than this place, based solely on the number of multiple hundred thread comments I see over there"

Me too. If I say I've read something on Fark in meatspace most people know what I'm talking about. INot so much for MetaFilter. Maybe it's because Fark doesn't have a Cabal.
posted by Mitheral at 10:03 AM on August 22, 2006


He should be able to have a "fireside chat" sub-section on the site where all anyone talked about was fine wine, cigars, and hot Portuguese models.

That would be worth the five dollars right there. ;)
posted by SenshiNeko at 10:03 AM on August 22, 2006


If you ever setup MeFiPro, charged $10-20/year, and made it worthwhile, I guarantee you'd hit your goals.

$20/year/user = $1.67/month/user

$60,000/month / $1.67/month/user = 35,928 users.

Is that a money back guarantee? If I had half a dozen new features for mefi for a few bucks a month, I'd be surprised it more than 1 or 2 thousand (tops!) would sign on.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:07 AM on August 22, 2006


Now that y'all made me look, I've decided FARK is funnier -- and it's free. But neither means better (unlike in real life).
posted by davy at 10:08 AM on August 22, 2006


I would do a $3-5/month "pro" if I could think of enough features to be worth it.

Uuuhhh...boobies posts before the free Mefites get to see them?
posted by NoMich at 10:08 AM on August 22, 2006


The addition of google ads, MeFi Pro revenue, and new members would help get you to where you're going. I think you're right that 1000-2000 members would sign up for Pro, but this process (of generating much greater revenue) would also mean shifting the focus of the site to be more consumer oriented (like charging for AskMeFi questions, additional chat capability, photo/file sharing).

There are plenty of avenues for generating additional revenue. It's up to you to decide whether you care to shift MetaFilter's core values to fit that money making mold.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 10:16 AM on August 22, 2006


And now that I'm thinking about it, I would love to see all sorts of new features implemented using micro-investors. Get 20 people to invest $1000 into the site, guarantee 10% return, and that money can be used to hire a professional programmer to rewrite the codes and implement some advanced features.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 10:19 AM on August 22, 2006


"And now that I'm thinking about it, I would love to see all sorts of new features implemented using micro-investors."

That's micropatrons, and it's been done.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:20 AM on August 22, 2006


so this raises the question... how much ad revenue does Metafilter bring in? is it secret?
posted by Hat Maui at 10:22 AM on August 22, 2006


The ad revenue cant be much, because only lurkers and non signed up/in users see them. How many unregistered users look at the site daily?
posted by wheelieman at 10:29 AM on August 22, 2006


Micro-investors make small loans to people and get their money back. Micropatrons (as seen on Kottke) pay money and receive a service. Very different models.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 10:36 AM on August 22, 2006


How many unregistered users look at the site daily?

Only one that i know of.
posted by dash_slot- at 10:36 AM on August 22, 2006


wheelieman, i suspect that the daily non-member readership is a significant number. i seem to remember something about it being a multiple of registered membership, but maybe i'm remembering wrong.
posted by Hat Maui at 10:39 AM on August 22, 2006


Micropatrons Suckers (as seen on Kottke)

I fixed that for you. HTH. HAND.
posted by GuyZero at 10:47 AM on August 22, 2006


SeizeTheDay writes "There are plenty of avenues for generating additional revenue. " suck.
posted by Mitheral at 11:52 AM on August 22, 2006


We've jumped the Fark.

I got nothin'
posted by LarryC at 11:56 AM on August 22, 2006


There are no tech features that are really worth $20-30/yr. The only feature that I'd be willing pay for would be content. I've always thought paying somebody to filter the filter (highlighting great comments and posts) and put out a bi-weekly magazine would be great, but it might not be economically viable considering how much time this would take. You could perhaps aggregate this through a mechanism like favorites but you'd still end up with a great deal of crap. You still need an editor with good taste.

Targeted sub-sections of the blue (politics/sports/books/movies.metafilter.com) could be interesting and pretty easy to do, but it'd just be just more incremental ad revenue unless you took the time to do it right.

The other potential cash cow would be AskMe; people might pay for access to "experts" (in a sense, guaranteeing a good, thorough answer) but then you'd have to compensate those experts. People might also pay for "extra" questions but that would get messy fast.

In the end you can either go after quality or quantity but both would involve some big tradeoffs. Your best bet is still to inflate your ad rates, increase the ad exposure, sell off the site once membership begins decreasing, forget all the whiners, move down south and buy a nice house and some goats.
posted by nixerman at 12:16 PM on August 22, 2006


I'd pay $20/year right now. But I would be happier about it if we got my dream pony, mandatory tags or categories with the ability to block stuff I'm not interested. "Display a, b, and c, block x, y, and z."
posted by LarryC at 12:44 PM on August 22, 2006


I would do a $3-5/month "pro" if I could think of enough features to be worth it.

I'll send you five bucks right now for IGNORE USER and BLOCK INLINE IMAGES.
posted by cribcage at 12:49 PM on August 22, 2006


You might not have to compensate "experts". I suspect people would enjoy being labeled as such; just the opportunity to qualify for expert-status might be incentive enough. The real problem is determining who the experts are, or qualifying how broad their expertise is. Money-scheme or no, I think that if such a scheme could be workable, it would definitely make a great addition to Metafilter.
posted by Humanzee at 12:56 PM on August 22, 2006


The real problem is determining who the experts are
Ahem.
posted by jonson at 1:04 PM on August 22, 2006


I'll give you $50 for INSERT MULTIPLE CHICKEN FUCKING IMAGES INTO PAGES SENT TO CRIBCAGE'S COMPUTER

wheelieman: from memory there are something like 9 lurkers for every registered user.
posted by blag at 1:20 PM on August 22, 2006 [1 favorite]


Thanks for making my point.
posted by cribcage at 1:22 PM on August 22, 2006


cribcage: You can use mondometa to ignore users, it works pretty well. You can also turn off images for metafilter in your browser.
posted by bob sarabia at 1:37 PM on August 22, 2006


Seconding MondoMeta. I accidentally turned it off last week and found myself saying "Holy shit, what's with all the political and YouTube posts today?"
posted by LarryC at 2:02 PM on August 22, 2006


More discussion regarding revenue here.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 2:24 PM on August 22, 2006


But you'd have to woo Miguel back. He should be able to have a "fireside chat" sub-section on the site where all anyone talked about was fine wine, cigars, and hot Portuguese models.

Dammit, my hidden agenda's showing!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:32 PM on August 22, 2006


Please cover that up. The googly-eyed agenda thread is down below.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:37 PM on August 22, 2006


I didn't get an agenda for this meeting. Does anyone have a spare one?
posted by blue_beetle at 3:45 PM on August 22, 2006


I'll send you five bucks right now for IGNORE USER and BLOCK INLINE IMAGES.

Shush, you. I'm worth more than $5.

I'll give you $50 for INSERT MULTIPLE CHICKEN FUCKING IMAGES INTO PAGES SENT TO CRIBCAGE'S COMPUTER

*slips blag a Jackson*

Please cover that up. The googly-eyed agenda thread is down below.

No pun intended.


Fark is ok. I probably load it once a day. What it seems to have going for it (for me) is a critical mass of users - however sophmoric some may be - that submit a never ending crapflood of links. Mechanically it's like the philosophical opposite of MeFi - everyone posts like crazy and only some stuff makes it to the front page. Because of this sometimes it seems to be quicker and more reliable than even Google news for breaking news and real world "excrement hitting the air conditioning" type stuff.

Otherwise, occasionally the links are interesting. The discussions are almost always excruciating. Your milage may vary. May cause drowsiness.
posted by loquacious at 3:53 PM on August 22, 2006 [1 favorite]


The money maker is the camel's nose in the tent: annual renewal. Does that sound familiar? Maybe because I propose it as often as possible.

It could be a really simple system: each Mefite sends in $5.00 (or whatever) on his/her anniversary date.

It would be even simpler if Mr. #1 would rent a PO Box so checks and money orders could be used instead of PayPal.
posted by Cranberry at 4:53 PM on August 22, 2006


and that money can be used to hire a professional programmer to rewrite the codes and implement some advanced features

Why bother when there are plenty of existing users who would happily do it for free?

AHEM.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:55 PM on August 22, 2006


Boing Boing, a four-person operation that bills itself as a directory of wonderful things, is on track to gross an estimated $1 million in ad revenue this year.

I think I just threw-up in my mouth a little bit...
posted by SweetJesus at 4:58 PM on August 22, 2006


Well, C_D, you'd expect a little remembrance at Christmas or your birthday, wouldn't you?
posted by Cranberry at 4:59 PM on August 22, 2006


BTW, Iwas thinking of Mathowie's income, not programming fees.
posted by Cranberry at 5:02 PM on August 22, 2006


Boing Boing, a four-person operation that bills itself as a directory of wonderful things, is on track to gross an estimated $1 million in ad revenue this year.

WTF? For that blog? Sickening.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:37 PM on August 22, 2006


I count 17 adds on the front page of bb + 1 googlewords ad block. We aren't (as) festooned in ads.
posted by bonehead at 6:07 PM on August 22, 2006 [1 favorite]


You got your Stable Mate in my PO Box.
posted by If I Had An Anus at 6:11 PM on August 22, 2006


Do you think Cory & Xeni get the majority of the cash, or does Pescowitz somehow get an equal split? If so, he's like John Salley on the Bulls/Lakers teams, getting four NBA rings without leaving the bench.
posted by jonson at 6:23 PM on August 22, 2006


Yeah, that's right, you heard me. David Pescowitz is the blogging equivalent of John "Spider" Salley. Deal with it!

Christ I'm a nerd.
posted by jonson at 6:24 PM on August 22, 2006


I would pay an additional $5 if I could add sparkly .gifs and bad rap music to my user page. I would also like the ability to 'friend' other users, and have a small square icon of my face next to my comments.
kthxbye
posted by Baby_Balrog at 6:37 PM on August 22, 2006


I know how you can hit that $60k a month mathowie. porn.metafilter.com, just like the music subsite, for user-contributed nekkidness.

Offer a $30 daily prize for the best reenactment of the spooge-eating monkey.
posted by evariste at 6:43 PM on August 22, 2006


Also, fuck disintermediation. Add fleamarket.metafilter.com and take a cut of every sale. I have an Apple Mighty Mouse, like new, that I want to get rid of but I hate eBay and Craigslist too much because they're so full of scammers and a waste of time.
posted by evariste at 6:49 PM on August 22, 2006 [1 favorite]


Is it just me or does everyone seem to think a million in ad revenue is the same as a million in profit?
posted by AmbroseChapel at 6:58 PM on August 22, 2006


Ambrose, how much could the costs of "running a blog" be?
posted by jonson at 7:07 PM on August 22, 2006


I bet people would pay to host a blog on a subdomain of metafilter. How much they would pay I don't know, but it would allow people to really GYOB and add some interesting content to metafilter.
posted by aburd at 7:39 PM on August 22, 2006


Also, it's time to roll out* the MeFi™ brand condoms, in LinkSlut Blue, L/G/B/T/Questioning Green and Frigid Gray.

*Geddit? Geddit?
posted by evariste at 8:00 PM on August 22, 2006


And if I ever hit $60,000/month blogging I think it'd be time to charter a flight and have a NYC mefi meetup in vegas.
You better include a budget to bring in the internationals, too.
posted by dg at 8:15 PM on August 22, 2006


Ambrose, how much could the costs of "running a blog" be?

Do you have any idea how much the price of hookers and blow has increased since Bush took office?
posted by loquacious at 8:16 PM on August 22, 2006


I'm confused. What are we supposed to do now? Send five Cranberries every year to Anus's P.O. Box? How in the world will that help Israel neutralize Fark?
posted by gramschmidt at 8:43 PM on August 22, 2006


Add fleamarket.metafilter.com and take a cut of every sale.

This idea I like.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 8:52 PM on August 22, 2006


Actually, I like that idea too. Y'all probably have some cool shit.
posted by danb at 8:59 PM on August 22, 2006


Keep your filthy commie hands off my stuff, you degenerate weirdos.

Hey, wait. What's that shiny thing you got there? Ooh, purty. I reckon I might trade you this here shiny thing for that one.
posted by loquacious at 9:17 PM on August 22, 2006


Actually, a better subsite name just occurred to me: Swap.metafilter.com. "fleamarket" is too long like "metatalk", "swap" is nice and short like "ask" and "music" (not to mention "www", of course).
posted by evariste at 9:25 PM on August 22, 2006


Just a question, gramschmidt. Have you been trebucheting with other Cranberries? Well. have you?
posted by Cranberry at 9:52 PM on August 22, 2006


I started a thread begging Matt to do the SwapMe site.
posted by evariste at 10:23 PM on August 22, 2006


so. is it just me or is there a curious silence on ad revenues? is it something we're not supposed to know?
posted by Hat Maui at 1:21 AM on August 23, 2006


We hear GYOB all the time. Just make the pro version be something like mathowie.metafilter.com, interrobang.metafilter.com, etc. etc. with an easy way to copy an FPP over to it and write a blog entry about it there. You can also have all your saved favorites and comments there with a tagging system to make it easy to find them.

or it could be blog.metafilter.com/?!
posted by ?! at 4:52 AM on August 23, 2006


"swap" is nice and short like "ask" and "music"

But you're not swapping. You're buying. And selling.

"I swapped a pool table for three hundred bucks!"
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:52 AM on August 23, 2006


Just make the pro version be something like mathowie.metafilter.com [...]

This is a great idea, but won't someone please think of the bandwidth!
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:53 AM on August 23, 2006


This is a great idea, but won't someone please think of the bandwidth!

That's like saying you don't want to make more money because you are worried about the taxes. More money outweighs bandwidth/taxes if the price-point is right.
posted by aburd at 7:21 AM on August 23, 2006


Add fleamarket.metafilter.com

I'd use this. Lots.

I buy on eBay, but setting myself up as a seller scares me.

Anyone need a vintage Bang & Olufsen stereo? A Rickey Henderson rookie card? A dog crate?

posted by gompa at 8:39 AM on August 23, 2006


I need a Rickey Henderson dog stereo.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 8:55 AM on August 23, 2006


uh, crash?

i hope this isn't too thick of me, but just what exactly is a fucking RICKEY HENDERSON DOG STEREO?
posted by Hat Maui at 9:27 AM on August 23, 2006


RICKEY KNOWS
posted by dersins at 10:00 AM on August 23, 2006


hmm...it occurs to me that i've never been to the fark site...i'm curious, but now i don't want to break that record...
posted by troybob at 10:13 AM on August 23, 2006


Hey, I just happen to have a Rickey Henderson dog stereo right here. Upgraded hi-cap caps, new z-filters, Mor-Woof, locking tuned ports, gelatinous cartridge nuts... the works!
posted by loquacious at 7:53 PM on August 23, 2006


« Older Favorited? No, I didn'ted.   |   Question about unique comments favorited Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments