Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

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Pastimes : Silicon Investor, DATEK, and broken promises -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SI Brad who wrote (20)	6/20/1999 7:51:00 PM
From: mrknowitall	Respond to of 72

Brad - until we have some information about what Datek is getting out of this - as in, what information about SI and SI members and their activities, you will have a lot of uncomfortable members. Mr. K.

To: SI Brad who wrote (20)	6/20/1999 10:30:00 PM
From: Razorbak	Respond to of 72

datek.com

To: SI Brad who wrote (20)	6/20/1999 10:35:00 PM
From: snerd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 72

Brad... The whole point for me is the 'ole "give 'em an inch" routine. You're right, management has done an outstanding job of keeping advertising to a minimum.... there wasn't any! Until now. And the barely noticable datek link is nowhere near to making me leave SI. Suffice it to say, I'll be watching for any additional advertisements on the boards for future decisions on my part. And don't get me wrong, you and your team have an excellent reputation, and what you have built here is nothing short of fantastic. It's my home on the net. I have nothing but the highest respect for what you have accomplished. And that's why I'd hate to see it sink into just another advertisement-laden chat site like all the others. What you seem to take as grumbling on my part is actually a very possesive, if somewhat overt, protection of what I consider the finest stock message board on the Internet. With all due respect, Snerd

To: SI Brad who wrote (20)	6/20/1999 11:27:00 PM
From: Gary Korn	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 72

You have not been bombarded* with solicitations* You are attempting to define the breach away. A reasonable person could well conclude that being forced to see the Datek banner on each and every message screen is beyond "bombardment." If one reads 1,000 messages in a day, one will see 1,000 Datek sponsorship banners. If that is not "bombardment," I cannot imagine what is. the word "banner" was inserted to specify that you would not see a "banner" ad (commonly accepted as a graphical intrusion taking up substantial screen real estate). Again, you are attempting to define the breach away. Where is it settled that an advertisement must take up "substantial screen real estate" in order to constitute a "banner"? It is a well-settled rule of contract law that the terms of a contract are construed against the drafter. The current situation is a good example of why this rule of law makes sense: There are lots of people -- including me -- who reasonably expected that there would be no advertisements on SI (and who paid good money to join SI on the basis of that representation). Under the rule of law I mentioned, and particularly in light of the reasonable expectations of SI's users, the drafter's current efforts to construe what was meant (by defining "bombardment" and "banner" in a fashion convenient to the drafter) should fail. Gary Korn

To: SI Brad who wrote (20)	6/21/1999 12:52:00 AM
From: AugustWest	Respond to of 72

To: SI Brad who wrote (20)	6/21/1999 1:07:00 PM
From: AJ Berger	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 72

Banner ads are needed to keep SI growing I for one welcome banner ads, and the revenue they will generate, as long as that money get's plowed back into making SI bigger and better than ever. The original no banner policy was made back in the naive days when this site was a 2 man operation first starting to charge membership fees. Now that SI has determined it needs an additional revenue streams to stay competative, I say, so be it. My only requests would be to limit the animated ads that slow down page reloading, and not have the ads interfer with third party software others have developed to view their thread postings. People here crying foul over "broken promises" and leaving SI over this issue, are just a bunch of cry babies who don't understand what's needed for web sites to survive the competition. As long as you continue to add value to this system, an alternative to banner ads would be premium annual memberships that would surpress the ads that normal paid lifetime members will have to see. This could be a bargin for frequent users. For instance, if you make $30 per thousend page hits, People may gladly pay, say $60 per year to avoid the banners. This compromise could keep frequent users annoyed by banners happy, and casual lifetime members would just have to live with the few banners that get in their way. I hope people reading this will chime in with their feelings over paying a modest annual fee to avoid the inevitable banners that are needed to keep SI alive and kicking! Another way SI could make such premium annual fee paying members happy would be to make all their thread stock quotes real time! real time pull quotes are pretty cheap now, and well worth the premium membership, and cost to SI in order to generate the additional revenue. Just think about it?! Maybe SI can negotiate special pricing with advertisers. Like premium members could get deep discounts on other content sites like thestreet.com or wsj.com. I think people would go for that in a big way!

To: SI Brad who wrote (20)	6/21/1999 10:39:00 PM
From: X Y Zebra	Respond to of 72

Instead, the word "banner" was inserted to specify that you would not see a "banner" ad (commonly accepted as a graphical intrusion taking up substantial screen real estate). I have two questions: 1. How much does SI get for the advertising [that it is not a banner], from Datek? [Maybe we, the members of SI can "buy out" the Datek advertisement] If not.... 2. Can you give me instructions so I can turn it off ? [I mean, I don't like the ad, and although I never really had an opinion on Datek, I am beginning to hate it.... you know, the reverse psychology thing....]