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Let the Simpsons be Your Free ISP

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the exploiting-cartoon-celebrities-online dept.

Anthony Fuentes writes "Looks like Homer and company are getting into the free ISP business, click here for details. Offer applies to win32 users only." Probably because Homer uses Windows - and Internet Explorer, of course, because that's the only browser you can use with this service.

11 of 387 comments (clear)

  1. One word. by rob_from_ca · · Score: 3

    Doh!

  2. Buy 'em out boys... by fremen · · Score: 3

    Does this mean that Bill Gates is going to show up with goons and "buy him out?" Can it allow me to download nude pictures of Captain Janeway any faster?

    "Gee, they have the Internet for computers now! What will they think of next?"

    1. Re:Buy 'em out boys... by CleverNickName · · Score: 5
      If you click on the Signup Page, and look at the "small sponsor-oriented navigation bar", you can see that in order to keep your connection alive, you have to click on an ad to refill your "health meter"!

      I think this is only a good idea if you have one of those novelty, drinking birds that Homer used when he worked from home to keep clicking it for you.

  3. These won't last. by TheDullBlade · · Score: 3

    There are lots of internet ad-based businesses coming out now, but I don't think they're going to hang around a lot longer. People just don't look at internet ads, and very rarely do they click on them. There is some chance of making money at it with a website that is cheap to run and has thousands and thousands of visitors per month, but there is no way is this advertising worth the cost of running and supporting an internet provider. Advertisers will learn this sooner or later.

    Follow this link for a good article on this.

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    1. Re:These won't last. by Rilke · · Score: 5

      Sure,click-through is low, but what's the click-thru rate on TV advertising? Basically zero. Few TV ads elicit an immediate response, but they manage to put the name of the product in your head.

      The real question is "how much do people notice those ads?" and studies on that are still inconclusive. For some unknown reason, early INet pundits thought that Web ads would be like infomercials, where you immediately call the 800 number (or click through) and order the product.

      But they aren't like that, and nobody should ever have thought they would be. Banner ads are more like billboards; they put the idea and name of the product in the back of your head.

      This idea of click-through has kept web ads restricted to web companies for the most part. But that's changing. We're already seeing significant web advertising budgets coming from the motion picture industry; there's a good chance other industries will follow.

      BTW, simpsons free ISP does more than just try to get banner ad money. It also advertises the Simpsons quite effectively.

      PS. Kinda hard to believe nobody patented the idea of ad-supported ISPs,isn't it?

  4. Specifically why advertising here is a waste: by TheDullBlade · · Score: 4

    Click-through value will suck mightily, as customers will be forced by the "health bar" to click through an ad or other button every once in a while, and will immediately return to their previous surfing. This will cost the advertisers money, as wasted bandwidth, not produce additional sales.

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  5. Re:MMMmmm....cookies by Ryan+Taylor · · Score: 3

    Now, it should be known that I don't like MS at all. In fact, I am hopefull that we will see Gates and Balmer strung up. But in all objectivity, I should also note that IE4.0-5.0 under NT 4.0 has crashed on me once, /ever/. This excludes plugin related crashes (Flash is evil). I've seen Netscape crash quite regularly under Linux, 98 and NT. Back in the 4.0 days, I was a die-hard Netscape user, if only to protest MS's business practices. I switched because of crashes and have no desire to switch back. I realize your post was essentially just kidding around, but I think this scratches the surface just beneath a serrious problem in the OSS community. It seems that many of us have a knee-jerk reaction for anything Not Good For Open-Source. At some point it becomes just as detramental to our cause as genuine FUD. If we're constantly making desicions/opinions based on history and not the real facts, we're not doing any good for anyone. I realize again that you're probably just joking, and I'm not accusing you specifically of exhibiting the above traits. I just thought I'd speak my mind. An interesting test of my theory will be to see if this gets moderated up or down. =) Sincerely, Ryan Taylor

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  6. And we thought Intel was OS-indifferent... by LocalYokel · · Score: 3
    As we all know, Homer's brain was replaced by the "powerful" Intel(r) Pentium(r) II processor about a year ago, hence the creation of the so-called "super" doughnut... Perhaps he's a fatality of the overclocking craze and has a fried core?

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  7. (Free ISPs and) other "deals"... by locutus074 · · Score: 3
    Interesting. Makes me wonder why I haven't seen http://www.freedsl.com/ on Slashdot yet. :)

    If I'm not mistaken, Gateway and others have, for a little while, at least, been giving a year's worth of "free" access with the purchase of certain models from them.

    Like many others around here, I don't expect this trend to disappear any time soon. How many co-branded credit cards are there, anyway?

    One positive thing about their service is that although you have to use Win32, you get a choice of email clients, which is more than I can say for MSN (yes, I fell for that trap). You see, I didn't like the way Outlook Express handled replies (the Right Way (IMO) is to put the reply and signature after the quoted text), so I downloaded Netscape and gave it a try. Imagine my surprise when it failed to connect and retrieve my email! I checked and compared between the MS and Netscape, and the only significant difference between the two configuration screens was an option for something called Secure Password Authentication. I later found a HOWTO-like document telling how to access MSN from Linux. (I became interested in Linux after I got my computer and fell for the trap.) It turns out that UUNet actually provides the connectivity. A couple items in the document explained things, though:

    If you've ever looked at your internet address, you may have noticed that it ends in uu.net. Now we know that we don't have to deal with any proprietary Microsoft protocols (at least to connect).
    and (near the end):
    Well, you should be able to enjoy most of your MSN account now. You can't get your email yet because thats hidden behind Microsoft's SPA.
    Things seem to be turning out all right, though, as I've just started a new job at an ISP (and get free access (even DSL after I've been there a little bit!)), and MSN has been unable to charge my credit card (tee hee!). (They haven't mentioned anything about the $400 yet. I've got to check my contract, though, after that Slashdot story a couple weeks back -- one of the postings told of someone in Columbus, OH who was able to get out of his contract with no strings attached!)

    Alas, I fear I've started to ramble. Perhaps a combination of sleep deprivation and caffeine OD.

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    This post brought to you by the elements N, H, C, and O, and the alkaloid caffeine.

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  8. Re:This is odd.. by Evro · · Score: 3
    NetZero (hugely popular in NY) can be altered so as not to display any ads by removing one dll file and replacing it with any file with the same name. I know at least 20 people who do this, and who find the ads so annoying that they probably wouldn't use netzero if they had to look at them.

    people always love getting something for nothing, even if it cost nothing to begin with...

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    um, sigs should be heard and not seen?

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  9. Where's the Profit? by Squeamish+Ossifrage · · Score: 5

    The advertiser-supported ISPs are going to have a hell of a time staying in business. A quick look at the business model:

    Income: Web Advertising rates. Common rates for a banner add are in the 1 to 10 cents per "eyeball", or pair thereof, depending mostly on how well-targeted the ad is. Absent very sophisticated (and rare on an ISP level) profiling, the ISP cannot really identify what the user is interested in, in order to carefully target ads. Moreover, the free-ISP user demographic is likely to be mostly internet newbies, which is the kiss of death for an e-commerce site. So it's very unlikely that a free ISP will be getting more than 1 cent per ad. Click-throughs can be worth as much as 25 cents in some cases, though it's likely to be much less, especially since a forced click-through doesn't signify real interest and is therefore less valuable to the advertiser than a voluntary click-through. Porn sites, which often use pop-up windows to essentially force a click-through, rarely get more than 3 or 4 cents per click-through. And porn is very profitable. Posit a maximum of 5 cents per click-through of revenue.

    Expense: Based on Earthlink's SEC filings, and the data of other companies (including my own employer), it is generally accepted that about $13 per user per month is the minimum cost for an unlimited time or > 15 hrs per month dialup account. That covers only direct costs, not advertising. Moreover, that level of efficiency requires on the order of 1 million users. Cost per user looks more like $20 per month for most smaller companies. Further, it tends to cost about $15 - $20 in initial costs (including advertising) to get a user. 18 months is a fairly average length of time for a user to stick with an ISP, so the ISP *must* recover its initial investment within that time to make a profit. Given the annoyingness of ads, it's unlikely that a free ISP will have a better retention rate. Let's suppose J. Random Free ISP is doing about $15 per month, at best. Further, they need to recoup $18 (to be simple) in 18 months. So they need $18 per user per month to break even. Add another 10% to make it sufficiently profitable to bother, and you need $20.

    That's 2,000 ads or 400 click-throughs (or some combination thereof) per user per month. At best. Our average unlimited-time user logs about 15 hours a month. At that rate, the free ISP needs to serve each user 125 adds an hour (or 24 click-throughs) to break even. That's a pretty weak proposition. I wouldn't put any money on it.