Financial model and Newsfeed

[shanen]

shanen last edited by leocg

Pardon my meta-focus, but that's my meta-problem... Also I see all of the meta-issues as connected. (Or should that be "meta-connected"? )

From the top, I find it hard to trust Opera because the financial model is too opaque. If it doesn't make sense, then I have to wonder how long it will last... Or that might be a philosophic conflict, because I think a good financial model should be oriented around recovering costs, not maximizing profits, and as long as the costs are covered in a reliable way, then everything should be okay. My way of thinking also favors small donors over large ones, so if enough people are willing to donate to cover the costs for a feature, then that's fine, but if not, then that feature (or proposed feature) should be allowed to go away without pain.

So along those lines, I actually visited because of a story about a newsfeed feature. I am thinking of a different way it could be funded with symmetric revenue for Opera and journalism. Is such a topic relevant? Would a different economic approach help Opera (and journalists creating the news stories and videos) succeed?

Then I got distracted with a long diversion into registering for an Opera account and trying to figure out these forums. Main mystery right now is where the "new" item counter is coming from. I'm referring to the icons at the top, where the first one after the hamburger, the one with the "Unread" label on the hover, has a red circle with a number. Where the heck could that number have come from? If I click on that icon, I see a list of fairly recent topics, and clicking on them will decrement the counter... But mysterious and distracting.

Back to meta... I have been using Opera for many years, but only for narrow and special purposes. I'd like to see it succeed in a broader way, but I do think the financial model is a barrier, perhaps the main one.