Playing defined / Yahoo to change their Tos already?
Ethan Stock reduces my post "Let me play" to being a complaint about not being able to use that service commercially.Which is not the point of the "let me play" mind set I was talking about, but I can absolutely see how one could read it that way. So let me add this: Making money, using something to make money or having to pay for usage are important things, but I could have made a similar point just based on the number of allowed requests. While my blogs don't have that much visitors a day, it easily could be that way.
Having those kinds of restrictions at the horizon make me stop considering playing with them. It is not so much of me sitting here and saying "Oh they are bad, I don't want this!!" but more of a subtle unconscious thing like "eeh. okay. well, I could be making that much hits if I have a clever app - is it worth the effort of getting to know this thing?" This is like looking at a new host for a website with a 1 GB traffic limit and thinking about podcasting - you would be stupid to buy there.
As for commercial, there is a point besides 'making money': Many bloggers use Adsense on their blogs to cover hosting costs and perhaps a little bit more. This makes a usage of such a service a commercial usage most of the time - so these restrictions and my pointing it out are not as far fetched as one might think.
But his post was very interesting in this regard:
Which would be interesting, if they reacted so fast. Then again, I always wonder why they don't testdrive such things before they release it. I mean, there is a whole lot of clever people out there who would spot this kind of 'problem' at once - Adsense and their competitors are so ubiquitous today!Not so fast, Robert. More on this tomorrow, but I just got off the phone with the Yahoo Maps team, and they said that tomorrow they will be removing the "non-commercial only" clause from their TOS, and that Zvents, as a commercial site, is "golden" to start using their APIs.
"and their competitors" is exactly the point why I am saying "let me play" - because if you have some awkward Tos etc, and your competitor has not, then you have to have very compelling features the other one does not have to get me staying with you. And if they don't jump into my face directly that I am hooked immediately, you will have a hard job selling your service to me.
Technorati Tags: Yahoo maps,
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2 comments
- Nicole,
Apologies for the reductionist link. It’s an artifact of blog link conventions much more than any particuarly well-thought-out summary of my opinion on your post.
Cheers,
Ethan
Ethan Stock 07 November '05 - 18:15 - Ethan, it is no big deal to me, but I welcome the possibility to look back at that post and think about if it really just reads as if being just about the money. :)
Nicole 07 November '05 - 18:22
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