Concerning Earnings.

I think Newsvine has struck a very healthy balance with advertising - it doesn't distract too much from the content, and I'm afraid the system would evolve into something where really popular authors would have an incentive to load their pages with ads to generate revenue.

I agree that Newsvine has advertising down very well, I think that allowing people to choose ads wouldn't be too bad of an idea. Also some ads on group pages could work - depending on how they are implemented.

I feel like the most popular authors on Newsvine are popular for their content, and would like to stay that way. They are all very smart people and I think they realize that if they bog their page down with too many ads, it will drive away potential readers, which could then potentially decrease their revenue.

it will drive away potential readers, which could then potentially decrease their revenue.

The law of dimishing returns probably applies.

Diminishing, of course. That's what I get for not using spell-check.

Spell check is for the week.

Spell check czech is for the week.

"What does it do for you?" Well, it really doesn't do a lot, I guess. It's just a feel good thing right now.

If you care about leaderboard placement "Popular Comments" is something that factors in.

Yeah, but based on my own observations popular comments is a very, very minor component of leaderboard placement. Take if from a "comment Viner." In weeks where I have no seeds (and so no submission votes or comments), I can have more comments and more popular comments than 3/4 of the top 25 and still be ranked around 40,000.

spiff:

I'll say. Because of all that meta crap last week, I only commented, did not write, yet because I carried a heavy load in the meta discourse, I ended up with 89 popular comments for the week ... and fell from about 60th on the leaderboard 5,300th.

Yeah, on the other thread that's why I proposed a guess of something like 25:5:1 for comments:seeds:articles. It's pretty clear that comments are far and away less valuable than seeds or articles (not that I disagree with that, necessarily).

I'd say it's more like 100:5:1, and that's for popular comments. Regular comments might be 500:5:1.

I'll ask Tobias what his rank is. All he's ever done is comment.

Tried eating good will? Developers to me are individuals whose content, develops readership.
We, the content providers are playing a relatively shallow game.We write and are rewarded with votes and petty cash.

The 'developers' and I take it you mean the initial investors, and top level staff are playing a slightly less shallow game. Increase readership, increase content, sell. Rinse and repeat.

Newsvine is a testbed. Personally, as an investor of time, it's an interesting hobby.
Without further development in revenue catchment in a variety of experimental forms it will continue to remain what it is. A speculative experiment on behalf of it's directors and investors.

I'm a minnow in the writing game, it's something I do in addition to my primary income, still, I earn more rewriting one page of someone elses material than I've earned in newsvine in a year.

We are all icing, we are not the cake. The cake was worth a couple of speculative million, it remains to be seen whether the icing entices anyone passing to buy. The code too is an important asset, as is the admin experience gained by Calvin and company.

Further commercialization is simply a fact, it simply remains to be seen as to how much or how little economic autonomy 'newsvine' chooses to relinquish in the pursuit of increasing numbers and the speculative worth of those numbers.

My opinion is that commercial interflow via the prospect of donations and autonomous group advertising marketed locally or by topic or some other variation is nothing more than an additional asset and potential valuation metric when the time comes to move to stage 2 of investment.

Also, it seems like the administrators of a number of groups don't actively participate, so it would be problematic to set up distribution (I infer this from the fact that I've had membership pending in a few groups for weeks at least - but then again, maybe they just don't like me).

emix - Shoot off a quick e-mail to the group's administrator asking them to act on your request. Hopefully they check their e-mail more often than their group requests. IMHO, waiting weeks to join a group is not acceptable. However, I do know that several groups have certain preferences regarding new members as a guard against trolls. Depending on the group, you may need to post so many seeds or write so many articles so that you are deemed "safe". Not all groups have the same requirements. I don't know what group you've attempted to join, but it may be that you have not met the group's requirements yet. I'm sure that it's not a question of liking you or not. Being anal, I check for requests nearly every day. But that's just me. :)

Thanks lauhal. I did as you suggested. It turns out that two of my longer-pending requests were accepted - the last one left is Artsvine. I emailed the group admin, so hopefully that'll solve the problem. I expect the email just got overlooked the first time. It seems like a better system (built into the site somehow rather than email-only) would make sense.

There is a built-in feature, actually. That's what I use primarily. Double check the rules for the group. Make sure that you qualify. You may have to post some specific type of articles first and be around for a bit. As I said before, sometimes it's just protection against potential spammers. Sit tight! :)

I'd like to see user columns as customizable as the front page is now, down to RSS feeds and ad modules.

Now that's a good idea. I'll bet you my $0.17 in earnings to date that it's in development.