Reading the NYT Bits Blog in the analog paper as opposed to my RSS feed is a bit of a disconcerting experiences, especially in a slightly undercaffeinated monday morning sort of way. Even worse was reading this entry by John Markoff about Chumby. Dave Winer had a pretty complimentary piece about Chumby last week, enough so that I went to the web site, poked around and decided, nah, partly because I couldn't figure out what I'd do with it.
Markoff describes it as $180 internet alarm clock, but the heart stopping piece was this:
Finally, the terms-of-use on the Chumby Website reserves the right for the company to insert its own widgets (a.k.a. advertisements) into my widget stream. Like everybody else in the Web 2.0 era, Chumby is hoping to subsidize its business and the Chumby network by selling ads.
Please, stop the madness. I understand that advertising is the moonshine fueling the entire Web 2.0 bubble, but the hangover is just around the corner. The idea that anyone, ANYONE is going to be very happy about purchasing an alarm clock that is then going to feed him/her ads is just nuts.
My big worry is that we are moving toward an era where content, stand alone content, high quality content, writing/music/video/news/analysis, you name it, is being judged as intrinsically worthless, seen only as a vehicle to ship ads.
Technorati tags:
advertising,
chumby