The Deck turns 21
Content wants to be free, but content providers want three squares a day. Advertising is often the answer, but advertising on the web tends to be intrusive. Not so with The Deck, our targeted advertising network for web, design, and creative professionals. Its secret? Just one Deck ad per page, seen only by pre-qualified viewers, in a context they trust.
It’s a pleasure to welcome three new sites: Darius Monsef’s COLOURlovers, Veerle Pieters’s veerle.duoh.com, and A Brief Message, a concept developed by Khoi Vinh and Liz Danzico that aims to become the “Op-Ed” page for design on the web.
If you have a product or service that could benefit from being in front of millions of web, design and creative professionals each month, give us a shout at The Deck. Limited inventory is available for the fall.
Filed under: Publishing, links
Being a stickler and all, I have to mention that you left out the z in Danzico.
D’oh. You’d think I’d know better.
I blame the mascarpone.
To those who actually say “content wants to be free” with a straight face and seriousness of purpose.
“Content wants to be free” makes as much sense as “content wants to be a fireman when it grows up.”
When you say “content wants to be free” you’re just projecting your desires on an inanimate object and trying to avoid taking responsibility for what you want.
“Content wants to be free… and my teddy bear wants a chocolate chip cookie… and my shirt wants a hug.”
Stop being such three-year-olds and stop projecting your selfish desires on a defenseless concept. Sheesh.
Greg, “content wants to be free” is a slogan from the web’s euphoric early days. It predates the dot-com boom (which predates the bust). I used the phrase archly. Almost all on-line content is “paid” one way or another. Even blogs nobody reads run Google text ads.
Jeffrey,
I wasn’t saying you said it with a straight face, seeing as you followed it with “but content providers want three squares a day” (I often say “but content creators want to live indoors”). I’ve just been seeing it around a bit lately, and snapped. Sorry for the diatribe.
No worries, Greg! Thanks for sharing.
I think there is some truth in the phrase “content/information wants to be free” outside of the idea of humanising content and what it “wants”.
Information does want to be free in the sense that in it’s natural digital form, a prime ability and almost “right” of data is to duplicate. It is what it does. This is really what all of the DRM wars have been about, trying to fight against that in built prime-directive of information.
It also wants world peace, but don’t get me started.
Zeldman–
I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts and reasons for advertising your blog within ‘The Deck’. The reference you made to Not so with The Deck, our targeted advertising network [...] infers an equity stake … if such is the case, an ad participation for your blog is more easily understood.
Dangerfield,
Information has no “natural digital form”. Information’s “natural form” (if you wish to call it that) is analog and dates back to the dawn of DNA. Digital recording and duplication of information hasn’t even been around for the blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things. And it relies on various artificial technologies to work.
There is no “natural digital form” for information, and your use of such a term shows how extreme your bias is and how far your perception of information has been divorced from reality.
Digital information has no want, need, ability or right to duplicate. It’s just a pattern of electrical charges or magnetic alignments which is forcibly manipulated by machines that are acting on the instructions of humans. Digital information’s “natural state”, or “what it wants”, is to sit there like any other inanimate object until it is acted upon by an outside force.
The “want” or “need” to duplicate is just people projecting their own desires on it. Information doesn’t “want” anything. Information merely is. And the ease with which it can be duplicated has zero bearing on whether it “wants” to be duplicated.
I believe there’s a social good in the sharing of information and making it free, and I’ve put money, time, and copyrights where my mouth is. But I’m not going to attribute animus to the information and claim that I do this because “information wants to be free”. I do it because “people can benefit from the sharing of information”.
That said, no one should be forced to share information for free simply because some information addicts don’t want to pay for it. Information has NO desires. Any desires it may have are generally attributed to it by people trying to get out of paying for it.
- Greg
@thacker:
Coudal, 37signals and A List Apart co-founded the Deck. We approve or disapprove advertisers. We set rates. We decide which other sites would fit well into the network—a decision based on ensuring that our select group of advertisers reaches influential readers with minimal overlap.
Greg,
I sense any further discussion with you is probably pointless as you feel my perceptions are divorced from reality and my opinion is not valid. I am sorry if you are having a bad day.
As far as DNA information duplicating, I think it might. Check in your pants for the required software.
Cheers,
Dangerfield.