Comment by PontifexMinimus
5 years ago
> Paid services to align interests with the user (best user experience wins) are the way to go
I agree; aligning interests is important.
> I really hope they win out in the long run
It's hard for me to see how they can. Advertising supported services are free to the user, which improves take-up which means that network effects are in their favour.
Hope they can and believe they will are definitely not the same in this case. I do hope we get some great competition for paid alternatives in all sorts of categories, but I agree that it's a long shot for these types of services to win in most markets.
Ad supported free services will (unfortunately) always dominate network effect driven spaces.