greenthinks

they suck.

It was only a few months ago—Steve stood onstage at D:All Things Digital, and showed off podcasting in iTunes. One of the podcasts he showed, in fact the last one he highlighted, was a “test” that Apple was doing. It was a podcast version of the New Music Tuesdays email newsletters that Apple has been sending out since the Music Store launched.

Steve totally blew it off at the time, but only a few months later iTunes 4.9 with podcasting is here and what?

It’s #1! Guess this wasn’t just the mild-mannered test Steve said it was…

All this would be fine, since the podcast is actually quite good, if only it would be available on Tuesdays! For the last few Tuesdays, the podcast listing does not even update until late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, and even then it gets an error when it tries to download. By the time it’s actually available, it’s Wednesday afternoon. So much for New Music Tuesdays…

So I too hate posts where “___ sucks” is all the person has to say. However, I just have to share my frustrations with IGN’s subscription service.

The working assumption on the web is that there are two typical business models: advertising and subscription. Don’t be fooled by that “and,” we are speaking about either an advertising model OR a subscription model. This works on TV: Comedy Central is supported by ads, while HBO has no ads but costs money per month. This works on radio: AM/FM stations are supported by advertising, while XM/Sirius have no ads but cost money. This even works in software: WeatherBug, LimeWire, Opera all have ads, while their for-pay versions have none.

The practice of offering your content for free with ads, while trying to get people to subscribe works for one reason: people will subscribe to GET RID OF THE ADS! If you leave the ads even for subscribers, you’re screwing up the system!

IGN does not seem to understand this simply system. Yes, they have some great content. So like many foolish gamers, I enjoyed the content but hated the ads and decided finally to subscribe in order to keep what I liked and lose what I hated.

So once I had paid my money and logged in, I was aghast at the remaining presence of the half-page ads. Well, perhaps I merely need to “opt-out” of advertising in the settings of my newly-created account. Lo and behold, at the bottom of the account settings page, there it was: the opt-out of ads setting! Since this post is getting a bit long-winded, I won’t go into the list of insidious kinds of ads that they let you know you are turning off, but let’s just say that a large, established site like IGN should not be using such means.

To make a way too long story short(er), that option does not disable the most irritating of the ads, the half-page flash movies! You pay a 20 or 25 dollar subscription fee, and they still bombard you with advertising! Totally and completely unacceptable.

All the more so, because I also subscribe to Gamespot, who handles this absolutely perfectly.

Moral of the story: DO NOT support IGN. DO SUPPORT Gamespot.

More on why I love Gamespot another time…

Note: Yes, this post was originally located here.