The Price of Free.

Image borrowed from Sach's Report.


CHEAP AS FREE

If you're reading this, you're taking advantage of a free service. When we start creating ePortfolios for this class, that will be a free service as well (for me anyway). It used to be that there were some things in life cheap or free, and then the same type of thing that you had to pay for. What differentiated the two was that the pay-service was obviously better than the free-service. But as we progress, this has become less and less the case. Companies offering "free" services are making more money than companies that charge. Remember Napster? The free program that people used to find songs (for free) dipped into the profit margins of major record companies (charging $20 a CD) so significantly that multiple law suits insued. Even today, creators of free P2P services (like Limewire) are making more money than pay-per-song or subscription sites that offer the exact same service (like iTunes or the new Napster).
We can thank the internet for this. The internet boasts an unimaginably huge audience. Inevitably, this means a dramatic range of exposure for companies advertising physical goods. The days of free hats and frisbees with company logos on them are gone. Say hello to pop-ups, spyware, and banners. Free websites now rake in ad revenue based on their traffic. This trend wasn't born on the internet (look at TV, radio, newspapers) but the internet has given it a much larger context. How many of you have clicked on those little mini-games in the banners of websites, only to find that your "prize" was an entire website of advertisement.
My curiosity lies in Blogs and ePortfolios. This class is about blogs and ePortfolios, and their potential roles in education. If you've ever taken an economics class at foothill college, you're more than familiar with Aplia Inc. They charge you a modest fee of $30 per quarter to use a program that counts for a major portion of your grade. They sustain themselves by this subscription, and the $30 the student has to part with solidifies his place in the class. There aren't any pop-ups or banners that I know of. At the same time, the eTudes service doesn't require students to pay for its use directly. The eTudes site (I'm guessing here) is probably funded in part by the school, and in part by enrollment into the online class.
But how are blogs funded? There are some subscription blogs. There are a lot of free blogs that count on ads. In fact, there are some websites (Xanga and Myspace come to mind) that bombard you with pop-ups and advertisement until your dizzy. Blogger doesn't do this, nor does it charge a subscription, so I'm at a loss as to how they keep this up. Then again, Google isn't exactly taking huge losses, so I'm sure they know what they're doing.
My question to you is this: Do you think its better to have to pay a subscription to blogs and ePortfolios, or accept a free service with the inevitable pop-ups and email spamming? Specifically, how about in an educational context? Being a college student, I've always gone the second route, so I can't attest to any feelings of liberation or giddiness when free from aggressive advertising. I actually don't mind the ads. However, there are always discussions about how advertising has gotten out of hand. How do you guys think it affects us?