Businesses charging money is not morally wrong

So, app.net. It’s a new social network that’s paid for by its users, rather than by advertisers or by venture capital.

This is timely, because Twitter just stabbed all their developers in the back. That in turn is bad for users, who won’t be able to enjoy innovative Twitter clients any more — all clients will have to look and work like the official one, and woe betide any that get too popular.

This is a common story for web services whose users aren’t the customers. If advertisers or venture capitalists are calling the shots, the service has little obligation to act in the interests of its users.

But then you get posts like this, that suggest that $50 is too much to charge because not everyone can afford it:

I have absolutely no interest in being part of such an exclusive club no matter how much I agree that social networks shouldn’t be ad supported.

Let’s unpack that. Writing and maintaining a service like app.net has a monetary cost, both in terms of hiring employees, renting an office, buying hardware, leasing data centre space, paying for off-site backups and more. So far, so like any other business that provides a service. And for most businesses that provide a service, they’d charge their customers to access that service. They’d get money to continue the business, they’d know if their standards slipped then customers would stop paying, and their customers would get use of a service that has some benefit for them. Take the example of a cleaning service. People don’t get outraged that their cleaner charges money.

Yet there’s outrage when a web service dares to do so. The reason why is, I think, because other web services that don’t charge money exist, and are prevalent. People assume, therefore, that a web service does not need to charge money, and doing so is greed.

But we’ve now come full circle. App.net exists because all the business models that lead to a free web service also lead to someone who doesn’t have the users’ best interests at heart calling the shots. It’s a reaction to those models. So anyone proposing that app.net allows free registration is saying “Go and be like the thing you’re trying to differentiate yourself from”. Go and be Twitter. 

As a user, I want something sustainable, that isn’t going to screw me over. I want my web services to charge money. I’d be happier if they all did. 

What of people who can’t afford to use a web service? Are they “kept out of the country club”, as people have been putting it? I think it’s an issue, but it’s not directly the responsibility of the social network, just like someone not having enough money to buy food doesn’t imply that food companies should give their wares away. Running a social network has tangible costs, just like selling food, building houses, emptying bins, and anything else that people are employed to do. The only difference is people are so used to not seeing the costs for a web service, because some (flawed) business models hide them from the customer, so they assume that any service that does cost its users is just being elitist.

It’s not, it’s being honest.