chiyo - 2:45 pm on Jul 22, 2001 (gmt 0)

Thanks Black Knight.. enjoyed the discussion..

Brad, I see vortals being able to charge subscriptions, memberships whatever by:

Combining web resources with other off-line benefits of a membership..

"Members" would get advanced benefits on the Web that visitors do not. The vortals would be run by "experts" (as much as i hate the term) and people would be willing to learn from them in a specific highly targeted areas.

So you can see my unvalidated prediction (hope!) is that people are willing to pay for highly targeted and expert information, (which is what the web is good at) while they were not so keen to pay for "generalist services".

Off topic and despite all of the above, but i think we are heading to the stage where a google (which now has almost a monopoly on relevant results_ for instance can charge a moderate annual fee for people to gain access to special advanced search, and other goodies, and also for limited ads and no PPC results. Certainly I would consider that. Still ive talked about that in another thread so wont go on and on...

Now if Mr Google wants to chat to me about some great ideas for rolling out the "package" my email is in my profile!