Clive Thompson on the Problem With Online Ads

At first, Maciej Ceglowski looks like any other web entrepreneur. He created a clever bookmarking service, Pinboard.in, that lets you organize links, see who else has saved them, and even cache copies of entire web pages. With 20,000 users, it’s a tiny, scrappy competitor to Delicious, a long-established site recently spun off by Yahoo that does many of the same things.

But there’s one big difference: While Delicious has always been free, Ceglowski charges people roughly $9 to join Pinboard and $25 a year if they want to make cached copies of sites.

On the surface, this seems suicidal. Why charge money when your massive competitor is free? Ceglowski has a one-word answer: advertising.

By Clive Thompson

Full Story: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/08/st_thompson_onlineads/

(Many thanks to Kemble Fletcher for passing this along.)