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Who remembers Slashdot?

Geeks are often found huddled together, at least in a virtual sense.

One of the most popular online discussion places for geeks used to be Slashdot, a site that highlighed and invited comment on the tech stories of the day.

"Back in the day", Slashdot was wildly popular and for a website to be mentioned or linked on the site would often result in such sites crashing due to excessive traffic. In fact "being Slashdotted" almost became a synonym for denial of service attack.

However, these days, Slashdot has become a mere shadow of its former self and whereas every thread would receive many thousands or even tens of thousands of comments, today that number has fallen to dozens or hundreds at best.

Today, things got even worse for Slashdot.

As might be expected, those geeks who still frequent the site are highly likely to be using ad-blocking software. Such people are ad-averse and smart enough to install and configure such systems.

A recent change to Slashdot's advertising system has outraged these people because it appears to break the site if adblockers are installed on a user's system.

As to be expected, this has created a degree of outrage and already the "firehose" section where discussion topics are suggested by members has exploded into a hotbed of complaint (as of 5am this morning, Wed 15 Feb).

Suggested discussion topics include:

• How-To: Block Ads on Slashdot
• Slashdot is forcing user to turn off ad blocker
• Slashdot Dies A Slow Death with Crippling Advertisements
• Slashdot goes mental with advertising
• Slashdot is dead and has been replaced by an ad-saturated shithole

Unsurprisingly, the operators of the site have not (yet) moved any of these suggestions onto the main page where they become visible to casual visitors.

Could this be the final nail in the coffin of a once-great website?

Perhaps the site operators have decided on a "do or die" move to cover costs and keep the site running. Or maybe they'll do an about-face and step back from a move that could drive many of the few remaining users away.

This situation raises an interesting question: is the era of ad-funded content coming to an end?

The rapid growth of subscription-based video services such as Netflix, Disney, etc has dealt a significant blow to free-to-air and ad-funded services. In fact, even though the BBC doesn't carry ads in the UK, has been usurped by Netflix as that nation's most popular broadcaster.

Perhaps we've reached the point where, as publishers slowly turn up the levels of ads they show, people are about to say "enough" and seek out alternatives to those websites and other services that no longer provide a fair value-exchange.

The future looks interesting and change is the only constant.

Carpe Diem folks!

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