Businesses that don't profit: Anti-competitive?

[Nuke]

A ton of businesses lately have been going without profit and relying on basically corporate hoboism (venture capitalists and "angels") to make all revenues and balance their pocket books.

I think it could be seen as a violation of anti-trust laws, as an anti-competitive technique, which builds popularity by not having advertisements or fees, then slams the consumer with the very things they came to the business to avoid after solidifying a permanent userbase.

Tumblr is a prime example. They still haven't fully embraced revenuing, only offering mixed free and paid advertising via Tumblr Radar. Twitter is also an example, however, they embraced advertising in the end.

Facebook and others may also be seen as examples, if I'm correct.

(Also, I'm personally on the side that there should be little to no "anti-trust"/"unfair competition" laws. I'm just posting this because it seems interesting.)

 

[froggyboy604]

I read on http://searchengineland.com/too-many-ad ... lgo-108613 that Google ranks sites with less, or no advertisements higher then websites with more ads which may get lowering rankings for a poorer user experience because of ads.

"We’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away.
So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience."

http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/0 ... ement.html

I feel most of these websites main plan is to be bought out by a bigger company like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, or someone who is willing to pay big bucks for their company.

 

[Nathan]

If you're as big as tumblr, or even facebook, advertising should come naturally.

The amount of money people will pay for advertising on sites with so much popularity is almost unbelievable, however it should often be considered that over populating even the biggest site with ads, can be the site's demise.

 

[froggyboy604]

I think the Ads was one of the reasons many people from Myspace eventually switch to Facebook.

I find the ads on Facebook to be cleaner looking then Myspace ads.