Via John Gruber, I’ve been reading about Brent Simmon’s decision to experiment with advertising in FeedDemon. Somewhat predictably, some of the people who paid for the application (back when it used to be a paid service) hate the move, and are savaging it in the comments.
I’ve got some empathy for Brett’s situation — since the product synchronizes with a backend server, there’s costs involved with operating the service that he has to recoup. But you only get to pick one — usually, you can either run advertisements or charge the user, not both. (The only exception I can think of is at the movies, where in the past couple decades we all very gradually agreed to watch not just previews for more movies but a long string of advertisements for totally unrelated goods.) The only way to handle this without user rage is to give the people who’ve paid the ability to pass on the ads, no matter how relevant or tasteful they are.
