
State of MetaFilter  - danso
http://metatalk.metafilter.com/23245/State-of-MetaFilter
======
sinak
I've gotten far more value out of my Metafilter subscription than the $5 I
originally paid for my account. It really is an excellent (and very well-
moderated) community.

If you're interested, you can donate to help cover Metafilter's ongoing costs
using this link:

[https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-
xclick&hosted_b...](https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-
xclick&hosted_button_id=PPKPHJFYASBTU)

~~~
revorad
Are MetaFilter's traffic stats publicly available? I feel like there might be
ways to make more money from it to keep it self-sustaining.

Edit: Matt Haughey just told me on Twitter that the quantcast numbers are
accurate enough -
[https://www.quantcast.com/metafilter.com](https://www.quantcast.com/metafilter.com)

So that's 6M uniques and 16.5M pageviews per month.

Some napkin math:

Let's say 8 staff + servers cost $100,000/month.

So, they need 10,000 people paying $10/month. That's 0.2% of their monthly
uniques.

Assuming 10% of the uniques are registered users and 2% of registered users
pay, that seems achievable.

Plus, they can keep the ads for non-paying users and also have higher paid
plans for those willing to pay. For example -
[https://twitter.com/mathowie/status/468474737790693376](https://twitter.com/mathowie/status/468474737790693376)

~~~
matthaughey
This is rough back of the envelope calculations, but we only have 62k paid
users, only about 12k come back every day, so subscriptions would need
something like 25%-50% of the daily userbase paying, not just 2%.

~~~
revorad
Thanks Matt. As someone not very familiar with your site, I have some
observations about the user experience of the site:

I just tried signing up for the site. My first hurdle was finding the sign up
button. It's nearly impossible.

After finding the "New user" link and clicking on it, I'm presented with your
community guidelines, which I understand make MeFi what it is. But, that page
could still do with a sign up button, instead of the link buried at the
bottom.

Anyway, I clicked on the "Go ahead and sign up for an account here" link,
filled in my details and _then_ I was presented with the "pay $5 to complete
your signup" message. I didn't know it was going to cost me $5! I went back to
the guidelines page, and I noticed you did mention the $5 there, but I didn't
read it.

I expect this is the most common user experience of new visitors to your site
interested in joining.

I don't know if improving these things will move the needle at all for you,
but there seem to be a few simple things you could try to increase signups.

~~~
toxic
This is a feature.

Lurking on Metafilter doesn't require an account; you need one only if you
want to post or comment. The $5 threshold (and the wall of text "guidelines"
page where it's mentioned a couple of times) serves as an incredible
gatekeeper. That is probably the single most effective thing that is
responsible for the high quality of Metafilter's posts and comments. The
exceptionally well-done moderation is a very close second.

Most mefites actually did read the guidelines page, because by the time
they've decided to become a member, they know that text on that page is
probably important, and (much like the rest of Metafilter) is probably worth
reading in full.

Because what usually happens is a user will read Metafilter for days or weeks,
slowly realizing how special it is, and then finally hit a topic that they're
passionate about -- the kind of thing where they just have to post, because
they know they can contribute to the community... so they spend the $5 and
sign up.

The catch is, they've been a member of the community for a bit already, albeit
a mute one, and they've probably picked up on some of those guidelines
already. That's the point. Optimizing the site so a first-time-visitor is more
likely to become a (paid) user would inherently be deprioritizing community
quality.

It's that community that makes MetaFilter what it is.

~~~
balladeer
I agree with "Most mefites actually did read the guidelines page, because by
the time they've decided to become a member, they know that text on that page
is probably important".

But just wanted to say that I love MeFi but the interface leaves a lot to be
desired. Really :(

------
patio11
It's not my section of the Internet most of the time, but I'm professionally
obligated to know a little about it, so in case anyone here runs a massive
consumer Internet property and can't make the bills with AdSense: you should
strongly consider having a direct ads sales force. AdSense is very effective
at fulfilling the role it was designed for, which is algorithmically filling
your least valuable advertising slots. It is not good at getting top dollar
for brand advertising, in fact, it is optimized in entirely the other
direction. Brand advertisers _sneeze_ out numbers which pay for the entire
salary bill in a month.

This is _particularly_ true if you have an anomalously strong community or an
audience which is more valuable than "a generic Internet user in your
company."

Even if you're not a massive B2C company, there are plenty of niche publishers
who quietly receive $500 to $X,000 a month for each of ~6 ad placements rather
than taking $125 in "webmaster welfare" from Google. At that level you don't
even need a sales force -- just "your ad could be here" leading to a contact
page works.

~~~
eli
Coming from the B2B media world, I couldn't agree more. Google Ads are a
commodity. They work by making all web sites appear more or less than same to
the advertiser. Direct sales is the opposite: it's about explaining why your
audience is special. The difference really is orders of magnitude.

------
IvyMike
> Jessamyn, who has worked in some capacity on the site for almost 10 years
> and was instrumental in shaping the voice of Ask MetaFilter, is taking a
> voluntary layoff.

Holy crap. I think this is a giant mistake; IMO she's the heart and soul
behind that site.

~~~
jessamyn
Thanks, that's really sweet, but it's been almost a decade and it's definitely
time. I've got some stuff coming up (will post more about it later on so as
not to take any of the attention away from mathowie's post) which is all good
news. It was really time for me to get a little more librarianing in.

~~~
notlisted
Thanks for all your work Jessamyn. I've lurked since 1999 and found a lot of
useful information over the years (has it been 15 years already? it seems like
it just was yesterday!). Made a small donation just now.

Too many valuable things die or are simply discarded these days, whilst utter
nonsense by 17yo's that have no purpose get funding in the millions, which are
rapidly squandered.

I respect your decision. I also suspect that Matt _seriously_ underestimates
the amount of goodwill the site has generated over the years... There's no
shame in collecting on this.

PS Get off my lawn young'uns.

------
mrbill
I can't think highly enough of Matt and the staff / family at MetaFilter.

This is why:

[http://ask.metafilter.com/125445/How-do-you-deal-with-the-
un...](http://ask.metafilter.com/125445/How-do-you-deal-with-the-unexpected-
death-of-a-spouse)

[http://metatalk.metafilter.com/18056/Update-on-my-wifes-
pass...](http://metatalk.metafilter.com/18056/Update-on-my-wifes-passing-away)

and finally

[http://www.mrbill.net/mefi/](http://www.mrbill.net/mefi/)

I've made lifelong friends and had many enjoyable meetups with local folks.
It's going to be hard to think of Jessamyn as a not-moderator.

~~~
RyJones
I was just reading SUN related stuff, reminiscing about mid-late-90's SUN,
wondering how you were. Sorry for your loss.

~~~
mrbill
I'm still here. :) Still run SunHELP although it doesn't get many updates
nowdays; the geeks and rescue mailing lists are still pretty decent traffic
though.

------
mutagen
I just commented on HN yesterday on the success of Metafilter's model of
charging a gatekeeper fee for posting. Maybe a one time fee is enough to keep
spam at bay but not enough to pay moderators.

The bigger issue seems to be Google's algorithm changes. I don't think anyone
would argue that Metafilter is a low quality site or that they should appear
below some of the spammy and generally worthless sites that continue to stay
near the top. Relying on ad revenue is difficult, especially when your core
audience is the crowd that is typically running ad blockers and search traffic
changes at the whim of a search engine.

~~~
cheriot
I can't help but wonder if reddit's still growing popularity is a contributing
factor. reddit found a slightly better way for the community to moderate
itself so they've been able to have a higher programmer to moderator ratio.

~~~
thenmar
What way is that? Reddit's staff are intentionally hands-off and it really
shows. In fact, the only successfully moderated subreddit of any significant
size I can think of is r/askhistorians.

~~~
dredmorbius
There are several well-moderated subreddits. AskHistorians, AskScience, and
Science all come to mind. Even some of the very highly trafficked subs do
amazingly well (yes, with some bumps).

And there are exceptions as well, as there is abuse. The ability for fringe
interests to effectively hijack subreddits is a particularly troubling
dynamic. See the case involving, of all things, xkcd discussion on reddit:

[http://www.dailydot.com/news/xkcd-reddit-moderator-
drama/](http://www.dailydot.com/news/xkcd-reddit-moderator-drama/)

[http://wizzley.com/reddit-holocaust/](http://wizzley.com/reddit-holocaust/)

There are some interesting reddit rules which play into this:

• subreddits are considered community, not personal, resources. If a
subreddit's moderator goes AWOL (fails to log in to reddit for 2 months), the
sub may be assumed by another moderator. Note that merely failing to moderate
a sub _isn 't_ considered AWOL.

• Once installed, moderators are not (or are only very, very rarely) removed
by reddit admins.

• To clarify, moderators are ordinary reddit users who moderate subs. Admins
are actual paid reddit staff who run the site.

• Senior moderators can remove more junior mods. There's no provision for
voting among subscribers or moderators in the event of perceived abuse.

• The generally recognized remedy is to create an alternate subreddit with
different mods. This happens with some regularity. You'll now find
/r/xkcdcomic as an alternate to the original sub, and with a subscriber count
approaching that of the original.

These rules are generally laid out in the reddit FAQ:
[http://www.reddit.com/wiki/faq#wiki_moderators](http://www.reddit.com/wiki/faq#wiki_moderators)

------
distantparts
There is supposed to be a softer Panda algorithm coming soon (Matt Cutts
announced it in March 2014 - [http://searchengineland.com/google-working-
softer-gentler-pa...](http://searchengineland.com/google-working-softer-
gentler-panda-algorithm-help-small-businesses-186619)). Maybe that will help?

Google definitely caused a lot of collateral damage with Panda, especially to
large sites with user generated content. And unlike algorithms that target
aggressive use of links or ads, it's still very unclear how to fix a site
that's been hit by Panda (I should know, my car review site was hit by Panda,
and never really recovered, despite 2 years of improvement work).

Now that content farms are not such a pressing problem, Google should be able
to dial things back a bit, so that good sites like Metafilter aren't ranked
lower than they otherwise would be.

------
DangerousPie
I was actually surprised to hear that they are employing multiple full-time
moderators for a site like this. Is there any word on how much they were
spending per moderator?

When I read things like "current response times to contact form emails of less
than a few minutes will increase" I am tempted to say they might have actually
had too many until now, but I don't participate enough on that site to judge
this.

Maybe it would pay off to invest some money in the development of better
"crowdsourced moderation" features (like rating/flagging of posts) to save on
staff in the long run?

~~~
JackC
Metafilter has absurdly good moderation. It sounds like they're going to do
the best they can with more automation and fewer staff, but this is a huge
loss.

What they're doing is just really hard. It's not a paradise, but they have
reasonably civil, well-thought-out conversations with people of vastly
different viewpoints on everything from transgender issues to Israel-Palestine
to which rock band is the best to weird art to police brutality to which dogs
are the cutest dogs to anything else you can think of. Imagine scaling up
Hacker News so that every member is allowed to post to the top of the front
page, and posts are allowed to be on any topic imaginable, and the average
comment is going to be at least as knowledgeable and thoughtful as it is here
-- in fact, the comments are expected to be good enough that they won't be
sorted or threaded, and it will be more or less a faux pas to comment without
reading all the comments that came before yours. It'll also be a faux pas to
drive away people with contradicting ideas.

Running a site like that is so hard that I don't know of anyone else doing it.
Not at this scale, not with so many members, not with so much freedom
remaining to members.

The key is that Metafilter functions like a community. The members have
reputations they care about (partly because of the $5 entrance fee, and partly
because they value the respect of other members), and the mods pay attention
to the mood of the site and the relationships between people, spending more
time nudging people than actively deleting things. They also spend a ton of
time (at metatalk.metafilter.com) getting feedback from the community about
how the site should be moderated.

Spend a few weeks reading Metatalk and you realize that, whatever they're
being paid, _it isn 't enough._

~~~
dublinben
It's pretty difficult to have a conversation of any kind, let alone a
productive one, without threaded comments. I feel like the site is stuck in
the 90s along with Fark.

~~~
archagon
I disagree completely. When you have threaded comments, what happens is that
people post their (often reactionary) opinions in response to OP, and then
other people respond in kind to those opinions. On occasion you get a witty
quip or a good story, but there's just no meaningful flow of conversation.
It's soapbox vs. soapbox. On the other hand, non-threaded discussions, while
more difficult to follow, read like actual, real-life conversations. You have
a chance of having a pleasant discussion (or even changing someone's mind!) on
those sites.

I post on HN or Reddit when I feel like adding a point of data to a debate. I
post on MeFi when I want to talk to my peers.

(Admittedly, even sites like MeFi can't compare to talking with people in real
life. There's something to be said for taking control of someone's locus of
attention while you're talking, which you simply can't do when you have to
talk in discrete, comment-sized chunks.)

~~~
Metapony
With Mefi, one could always quote someone in reply to make things clear. Some
of the best discussions online happen over at Metafilter. (I find HN
interesting due to it's SV audience, but it functionally feels like an old
version of reddit.)

~~~
dredmorbius
What hurts both G+ (and HN) is the absence of a specific blockquote markdown.

None of _italicize everything quoted_ , "put quotes in quotes (especially for
long passages)", nor > prefix quotes with a greater-than sign work
particularly well IMO. Though I suppose they generally suffice.

~~~
dublinben
Blockquotes have been supported in markdown as the ">" prefix since the very
beginning. It's a mystery that HN doesn't support it when even reddit does.

~~~
dredmorbius
Precisely my point. I've raised the issue specifically with Yonatan Zunger,
and got a very typical Google NIH response.

------
ronaldx
MetaFilter is a site which I always value, when I read it, but am rarely
directed to: I don't remember _ever_ noticing it in a search engine result.

I'm sorry to hear this and I will endeavour to more actively support
MetaFilter and other uniquely valuable sites in the future.

~~~
beerbajay
Ask Metafilter used to come up often in my google searches for esoteric
questions. Not as much lately.

------
ap22213
I used to love ask.metafilter.com!

I went there almost every day, up until a couple of years ago. Around then, I
sort of lost interest, as most of the popular questions became 1) Can you
recommend me a recipe X for Y?, 2) I hate my life, now what?, 3) Can I ask
this question so that we can all bash men?

That's just my opinion. I'm sure it's not the reason for their downfall. It
does make me sad, and I hope the data doesn't disappear.

(Losing karma is worth it sometimes, to state an opinion against the masses.
Political correctness be damned.)

~~~
Niten
I've been a long time reader and I am saddened at the prospect of MetaFilter's
decline, but yes, the man-bashing is certainly one thing that's driven me away
from the site lately.

I consider myself egalitarian; injustices against women and men alike are
infuriating to me. So several months ago I posted a powerful article about a
woman's struggles growing up in Hezbollah culture. This was very well
received, but one of the first commentators felt the need to add, "I say [this
religion] was dreamed up in the first place by men, for men, and it seems
continually to be defended and further embellished for the benefit of men."
This became one of the most-favorited comments on the article, and I felt put
on the defensive there simply for being a man.

In contrast, I had also posted Susan Sons's Linux Journal article "Girls and
Software" (very well-received here on HN), as I thought it was an interesting
counter-point to numerous recent MetaFilter articles adhering to the popular
view that the lack of women in computer science is due to some systemic bias
against women in higher education and industry (as opposed to preferences
formed in early childhood). It was quickly removed, with the moderator calling
it a "fight-starter opinion piece".

But every community has its faults I guess, and I certainly hope MetaFilter
survives this.

~~~
leoedin
It's a shame that "Girls and Software" was removed. That article was really
fantastic (to the extent that I made a point of saving it). I suppose this
sort of thing is the reason why we tend to engage in multiple online
communities. The discussion around that article on HN was worth reading!

------
csense
Two problems with the site that I can think of:

(1) It's somehow 14 years old and this article is #1 on HN, but somehow I've
never heard of it.

(2) I haven't been able to figure out what the site actually is, or what it
does. I looked at the FAQ and the orientation page on the wiki, but I still
have no idea what I want to accomplish by going to the site.

~~~
barrkel
Think: NPR-loving, female-friendly left-leaning cozy-fest discussing this that
and the other.

------
Tomte
Sad to hear this.

I got into some ugly argument right on the very first try at participating in
a discussion on the site, wasn't really impressed by how the mods handled it
(although the one I PM'd was actually quite okay), and never really gave it
another try.

I always felt like I'm really missing out and this was probably all just bad
luck and a bad combination of personalities in this specific comment thread,
but whenever I went back to the site those memories kind of killed the fun for
me and I never commented again.

 _sigh_

~~~
mavenlarkey
Totally agree with you.

I used to read Metafilter for many years, and even paid the $5 to start
commenting. I stopped though since unlike many members of that site, I tend to
be pretty conservative in my views, and it always seemed as if the mods had a
vendetta against beliefs too different from their own. Turned me off
completely.

~~~
wwweston
What do you mean by "vendetta"?

I'm not particularly conservative, but I am relative to Metafilter and I've
argued center-to-right positions there (for example, pro-life).

I think it's true to say that it can be very challenging to engage the
membership in a way that goes against the lefty gestalt, and if/when you do,
there are certainly members who will be less than kind or thoughtful about
responding to that kind of participation. But I've rarely had any problem with
negative attention from the mods, certainly nothing that I'd describe as a
vendetta.

------
3pt14159
Why doesn't MetaFilter update their layout / aesthetic? If google is hammering
them, I'm sure a large part of it is the insta-bounces a site this old looking
has.

~~~
zorpner
Metafilter has a lot going for it (personally I think it's probably the best
non-private community online, particularly in the sense that once you're an
active participant it truly is a "community"), but willingness to change
anything about Metafilter is not among its virtues:
[http://metatalk.metafilter.com/13786/The-Green-Should-Be-
Whi...](http://metatalk.metafilter.com/13786/The-Green-Should-Be-White)

Perhaps this event will provide the catalyst necessary for the Mefi community
to accept some modernization.

~~~
smackfu
The answer is probably completely different designs for members vs random
visitors.

------
franze
[https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aask.metafilter.com%2F...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aask.metafilter.com%2Ftags%2Fears+inurl%3Atinnitus&pws=0&hl=en&filter=0)

internal duplicate content, might not hurt (might hurt), definitely does not
help.

force lowercase, always. 1 page == 1 URL, 1 URL == 1 page

always set a canonical, the canonical is content dependent, not URL dependent.

also, your tag pages are wasted, as you do not target a sensemaking phrase
i.e.: "Posts tagged with lawschool" nobody searches for that.

also there is no sitemap.xml reference in the robots.txt, which is at least a
warning signal.

also i got a very concerning result while doing a webpagespeed test
[http://www.webpagetest.org/result/140519_H1_10TE/1/screen_sh...](http://www.webpagetest.org/result/140519_H1_10TE/1/screen_shot/)
i only got the first result of a tag page

i could see this with a first request no cookie (on firefox), too, this is
very strange, and if this is communicated to google this will definitely lead
to traffic loss. have you done an extensiv "fetch with googlebot" using
webmaster tools?

my name is franz enzenhofer, i'm the most successful SEO in europe, write me a
twitter message, so like now. hope you read this.

in just 5 minutes i have seen 3 warning signs, if this is all new to you,
please just fire your SEO instead of your moderator staff!

~~~
chrisamiller
When I'm on metafilter and I click on the 'lawschool' tag, it absolutely makes
sense that the header says "Posts tagged with lawschool"

Their goal is not to optimize for Google, it's to optimize for users on the
site. (This is one of the reasons that makes metafilter such a special
community)

------
nkozyra
This is a major bummer, but never having delved too deeply into metafilter, it
seems like it's been basically unchanged for sometime, no?

I don't believe in change for change's sake (and this juncture somewhat
reminds me of where Digg was a few years back), but the whole thing seems like
it could use some modernization.

Maybe it has iterated a lot and I've just missed it or not noticed through the
years of my casual encounters.

~~~
mbrubeck
The biggest changes have been new sub-sites. The most recent of these is
FanFare, for discussing TV and movies (and possibly expanding to other media
in the future):
[http://fanfare.metafilter.com/](http://fanfare.metafilter.com/)

There have also been subtle changes, like removing the ability to post images
in comment threads, or adding a five-minute window where you can edit comments
for typos. I appreciate the amount of thought that goes into both
implementation and policy changes and how they are likely to affect discourse
on the site. It's the people and the conversation that make MetaFilter, not
any flashy technical features.

~~~
archagon
Whoa! I totally didn't know about this subsite. This is great.

~~~
zarq01
Launched in response to TWOP's shuttering.

It's brand new, and they're still working the kinks out. But Matt has said he
wants to expand it to include discussions about movies, and possibly books as
well.

------
nervousvarun
Would hate to lose the Big Blue :(.

A site I've visited at least once a day every day for over a decade.

------
Mz
Old HN discussion of mefi moderation:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1711995](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1711995)
I had not seen it before. I thought it might be of interest.

------
wmeredith
This is a failure of Google's algorithm to recognize and rank appropriately
quality web content. Shame.

------
jedanbik
For those who are wondering what MetaFilter is, it's a meta-filtered internet
space, a well-moderated community where people can talk about things on the
internet, without making it all about themselves.

The About page is a good place to learn more about the site:
[http://www.metafilter.com/about.mefi](http://www.metafilter.com/about.mefi)

~~~
jedanbik
Or really, the Popular Tags page should speak for itself:
[http://www.metafilter.com/tags/](http://www.metafilter.com/tags/)

------
noelwelsh
Ravelry, the social network for knitters, in its early days had several
fundraisers that keep it going for a while. The amazing thing is these
fundraisers (called "For the love of Ravelry") were actually organised by the
community.

I think if Metafilter gave its community a chance to keep the site afloat
they'd step up.

------
petercooper
The only advertising I see on there is The Deck which is divided up over so
many sites I can't imagine any of them make much money from it. If I log out,
I see Adsense too, which as far as I can tell isn't a good source of returns
nowadays either, it's more in the last-ditch "I can't sell advertising myself,
give me anything!" school of advertising.

I think they should take the Reddit approach: gold + directly sold ads.
Directly sold ads would surely make a better CPM than Adsense and it could go
on all pageviews rather than just non logged in ones..

------
brianbreslin
What would you guys say is metafilter's core objective now? I used to read it
a lot between 2004-2007, then got bored. So if you could describe metafilter &
its community, how would you?

------
darksim905
If a site like MetaFilter is barely surviving, how is that Stack Exchange,
Reddit, et al can just keep going? Is it because those sites have VC backing
or roots in YC?

~~~
dublinben
I'm pretty sure those sites are much more popular, and have better
categorization for advertising targeting. You can charge a lot more for ads in
/r/Television, /r/movies, and /r/trucks than you can on the generic MeFi
homepage.

------
opendais
Well, damn. :/

That sucks but at least MetaFilter will live on.

------
atmosx
Sorry for the silly question, but what is metafilter?! Like HN for general
content with a price tag?!

~~~
grlhgr420
old and well established user-generated blog with an extremely well moderated
(best on the net, imo) discussion forum in the form of comment threads, with a
medium-sized user base. the pice tag is only to comment, and as you might
imagine it tends to make people value their ability to participate more than
on other, free forums. it's the only place on the internet where i genuinely
enjoy reading comments.

------
oskarth
I wonder where they would be today if they took a monthly or yearly as opposed
to a one-time fee. It seems to me like recurring revenue would turn the main
problem into keeping users, rather than recruiting them.

~~~
Mz
From what I gather, their main revenue is ad money. The fee to join is mostly
a gatekeeping thing. It is not a big part of the revenue model. Matt managed
growth really well (from what I gather) by limiting new memberships and what
not. It is a community and limiting new memberships and putting in a
gatekeeper fee seems to have done a lot to avoid eternal September and what
not. That's the main thing you need to do to make money from a community: Keep
your eye on the prize of making it a good community. I have seen that failed
elsewhere.

I don't know much about google algorithms but if you don't have the good
community piece of it, you have no business model for this. It is not HN, HN
is the funnel for applicants for Y Combinator, so it is part of the business
model here but it is a very, very different model. Mefi exists solely (as I
understand) to be a community and not to serve some other business need the
way HN does.

I think they should make the donate button much, much more visible but I am
not a fan of recurring membership fees. But I don't have time to write more at
the moment.

------
joshdance
Interesting that the only thing I know about MetaFilter is that I heard they
are a well behaved community. That is it. Know nothing else about the site.
What it does, why I would visit etc.

------
sergiotapia
Really sad to see that even if you 'make it' and make a lot of money, you can
(and probably will) lose it all given enough time. Never put all of your eggs
in one basket. :/

~~~
kurtko
Who said the founders/managers were going to lose in aggregate? They may have
set aside a nest egg in peak years and not want to dip into that.

~~~
sergiotapia
I never said that - I said they were going to lose their month-by-month
income, not their total savings.

------
guelo
Damn, basically fired by a computer algorithm. We are living in the future.
But is Google too powerful?

~~~
Raphael
Ah, but they were essentially hired by the same algorithm. Had the algorithm
not existed, they would have had to find another job.

~~~
troymc
To be fair, the algorithm changed.

------
lectrick
So Google killed Metafilter?

------
techaddict009
Why dont they try Adsense?

~~~
mbrubeck
Most of MetaFilter's revenue comes from the Adsense ads on Ask MetaFilter
pages.

------
whoismua
_A year and a half ago, we woke up one day to see a 40% decrease in revenue
and traffic to Ask MetaFilter, likely the result of ongoing Google index
updates. We scoured the web and took advice of reducing ads in the hopes
traffic would improve but it never really did, staying steady for several
months and then periodically decreasing by smaller amounts over time._

Amazing power Google has. We desperately need this power distributed to 4-5
search engines, not one. I have been thinking about the changes, and I suspect
that a lot of the "lost" traffic went to ads (Adwords) and YouTube. In other
words it shifted from sites like MetaFilter to Google. Great ain't it? Google
decides that it's own properties (where it keeps 100% of revenue) are more
relevant than sites where it keep just about 30% of it. Proof for the shift
are Google's own numbers: in house ad clicks have been grown by double-digits,
quarter after quarter.

Oh, I have heard the "Chinese Wall," "Church and State" but frankly I no
longer buy it. Something stinks , as we hear of a lot of losers and one
winner, the one that also ranks.

Too many coincidences, too many punishing updates for non Google sites, and a
very suspicious increase of Google's own ad clicks.

------
JDDunn9
I didn't realize this was a legitimate site with real users. I always thought
it was just a spam site scraping from somewhere based on the horrible design
and excessive ads...

------
kvirani
After a heartfelt letter to the public, and layoff decisions final, you are
willing to pitch in some donation? How nice.

But would have even clicked the donation link prior, even if it were a
_prominent_ "Please donate. We need it!" button?

That's the real question folks.

------
massysett
I'm stunned there was staff to lay off.

I've seen such disappointing vitriol in the comments of the main MetaFilter
that I stopped reading it long ago. I do continue to drop by Ask, though. I'm
surprised there was anything on MetaFilter that required so many full-time
staff and looking back on years of reading MetaFilter still doesn't give me
any appreciation for what they must have been doing. In particular, the
quality of comment moderation on the main MetaFilter did not, to me, reflect
the level of quality one would expect from several full-time staff.

~~~
oskarth
I think you severely underestimate the effort it takes to run and maintain a
successful community site.

