They exist do to this notion of “ if we just get the user base and replace this old thing with our new thing, we can then monetize later.”
This has been the case since at least the .com bubble (and subsequent crash) in the late 90s to early 2000s. Even now, 25 years later, things haven’t changed much.
The main monetization strategies are still either to:
Charge money for the service, which people don’t like since they expect way too much for free. It also alienates low-income users. OR
Show ads, which people don’t like because ads. The increasing expenses and lack of people willing to pay for services has resulted in ads becoming larger and more intrusive. It’s a cycle that I’m not sure anyone knows how to fix yet.
There’s a newer third option but it’s mostly for smaller services:
Admins pay the costs out of their own pockets, and allow users to donate to support the service
It’s part of the reason why I think decentralized services could be the future. Lemmy or Mastodon can have a lot of small servers with reasonable costs spread across many admins, instead of one centralized service that costs a significant amount to run.
This has been the case since at least the .com bubble (and subsequent crash) in the late 90s to early 2000s. Even now, 25 years later, things haven’t changed much.
The main monetization strategies are still either to:
There’s a newer third option but it’s mostly for smaller services:
It’s part of the reason why I think decentralized services could be the future. Lemmy or Mastodon can have a lot of small servers with reasonable costs spread across many admins, instead of one centralized service that costs a significant amount to run.