"... So how does a 'free' service pay for itself? ..."
Missed the obvious of replicating the service for foo (verticals) & charge for the codebase: cf http://moms4mom.com/about
Missed the obvious of replicating the service for foo (verticals) & charge for the codebase: cf http://moms4mom.com/about
Yes, they have a lot of work to do to make it truly vertical, and not disrupt anyone in the process, but I think thats where their real $ is going to come from.
I've sent stackexhange several emails, trying to get into the beta program early, even trying to pay an extra fee for premiere service...I am more than willing to pay the ~$1000 per month fee so I can get up and running now....but no dice it seems.
Anyways, back to the article.....really, anyone that is technical (geeky) enough that can and would block ads using a script....those people wouldn't be the types to buy software from the advertisers on SO anyways (and I'm sure the advertisers know this),,,so really, I think its just a bunch of hullaboo about nothing consequential.
You had to get in pretty early to get the beta badge ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2781240756/in/set-7215...
"... I am more than willing to pay the ~$1000 per month fee so I can get up and running now....but no dice it seems. ..."
Having said that why not build an alternative?
Seriously though, three people was working on that site almost full time for more than a year now. That's about 600-650 workdays. A decent junior developer (the cheapest programmer who could possibly do it) earns at least $200 a day. That's $120000 worth of wages. Which means, you will have to use this software for more than 10 years to justify writing an alternative, and we haven't even considered any additional future development.