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RemarQ.com Shutting Down
ZeroLogic writes: "RemarQ.com, is shutting down! According to the message on the home page, it looks like they want you to use their pay service instead. It's a shame since RemarQ was the only good Web based usenet reader I could find." ...and the free stuff will keep going away as IPO money runs out all over the Web industry. Expect a feature on this soon.
Why do so few free services appear these days? What happened to, "I'm doing it for fun, and if I make a few bucks, then that's icing on the cake"? Like Slashdot, for instance, and photo.net, for another. Everything now has to make millions of bucks, or else it's not worth doing, apparently.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
I think you mean VC money, since RemarQ hasn't IPOd.
Really, all it means is that the web as matured to the point where you just can't throw something up, try to attract a bunch of eyeballs, and then try to figure out how to build a business model later.
Ad revenue based sites are always going to have trouble making it... look at Salon's problems recently (not that I can't think of anyone who doesn't deserve it more..) Look at the magazine industry.. Very high failure rate, pretty low profit margins.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
ok,
let me get this straight.
I'm going to give you a product or service. And, in return you dont have to give me anything. And later, everyone's gonna act all shocked when I don't make a profit and have to stop giving everything away?
"I mean, All you can definately say about a fellow who thinks he's a poached egg, is; He's in the minority." James Burke
Sites that are ad-driven will always be free - to not be free would be instant suicide for an ad-driven site.
If sites are not using an ad model, then its wide open. Admittedly, these models have tended not be very fruitful, and it simply reinforces the strengths of those few sites who can be profitable on ad-based revenue.
I would have thought it was obvious that the market for ad-driven websites is obviously winner-take-all (AOL is not in this category - they are a subscription service). The portals are a clear indication - within five years, Yahoo outlasted its competition, who have all signed on with partners through acquisitions.
While over time the amount of choice on the web will drop, the leaders in ad-driven sites will always be free services.
I can't say I'm disappointed that Remarq's free service went bye-bye. Not only was its pay service not known for being among the best in either retention or group availability, but its free service was, IMHO, a mockery of USENET. It didn't carry many of the active groups, and it catered mostly to people who don't really understand USENET or the many ways to access it. As such, I think it dameged "real" USENET providers, by allowing Web users to go to USENET and stay there without learning even the simplest basics about it, and by providing a free alternative just barely good enough to keep newbies there and keep them from joining up with real providers--thus making it harder for real providers to stay in the black.
It's hard for me to make that last statement, since I'm very much in favor of Free Software, but there's a major difference between the big software companies and the big USENET services. Even the "big" USENET services are relatively small, and many have trouble staying afloat; RemarQ cut into an already lean profit margin for some providers, and the cost to the public of the important USENET news services shutting down is, dare I say, more grave than the cost of losing this free and limited RemarQ service.
Also, as I said, services like Remarq allowed people to get onto USENET without learning any of the basics involved, many such people never even realizing that they're not on the Web any more. While I'm a champion of ease-of-use, there comes a point when the ease-of-use of RemarQ does more harm than good. You end up with most of the free RemarQ users--not all, but most--not contributing to the newsgroups they're accessing, never bothering to read the FAQ because RemarQ does all the work for them, and littering them with "me, too"s the likes of which haven't been seen since the horrid AOL invasion of yore. Most of the senseless wastes of bandwidth I've seen on USENET recently, all the "me, too"s and clueless newbies who won't read the FAQ even after you tell them twice, have come from RemarQ.
The loss of RemarQ isn't even that bad, since great premium USENET access can be gotten for between $5.95 and $14.95 a month. Personally, even though the NNTP connection is limited to 33Kbps, I prefer Altopia's service: $12 a month, they have every single newsgroup, and a minimum of a four day retention for binaries (up to 8 days, depending) and longer for text (usually about 7). If you have a cable connection, and down/upload binaries, you can pretty much leave your connection on all the time to make up for the slow connection cap. They also offer 128kbps access, but at a hefty $48/month. One reason I support them so much is that Chris at Altopia seems to be big on freedom and very against censorship--Altopia has never dropped a group, for any reason, that I know of. As long as you're not uploading anything illegal (yeah, *you*, wArEZ d00dz and pedos!) Altopia doesn't care what you do, and is very conscious about not keeping records longer than necessary to prevent abuse. I like their privacy policy, it's absolutely the best. To be fair, I also hear good things about uncensored-news and usenetserver.
But that's just my 2 cents; support a free (as in -dom) USENET by subscribing to a good provider. Please, they need as much help as they can get to keep the news free and uncensored, unlike the Web.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*