Where does my membership fee go?

[mhahn]

<p>I've begun to wonder about how my Photo Net membership fee is used.</p>

<p>Just one question, basically. Does the fee stay within Photo Net (to be used for its operation, administration, etc.), or does it go to NameMedia, to be used as NameMedia sees fit?</p>

<p>Perhaps a Photo Net administrator could shed some light on this.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>It goes to tarot readings, of course. And could by an exec's child like 20 candy bars a year. </p>

[mhahn]

<p>That is probably true, although appalling.</p>

<p>Maybe we could check a box when we pay ("to be used solely for the operation, administration, and profit of Photo Net").</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>I've told my local grocery store that I only want the money I spend there to support the guys that work on the loading dock, the fish counter, and produce area. They are <em>not</em> to let any of my money support the people who stock any aisle in the store that sells carbohydrates - especially the ones that aren't whole grain.<br /><br />I also told my local coffee shop that they can only use the money they charge me to be ready to serve me an occasional skim latte to pay for <em>that</em> overhead, and absolutely not to help them stock and sell cookies of any kind.<br /><br />Yes, tarot-type businesses are the purist toxic nonsense. But for all you know, Martin, more money has been flowing from that direction into PN's substantial overhead than the other way around. I don't think you're going to get to look at the company's books. I wouldn't let you look at mine, either. Can we see yours?</p>

[mhahn]

<p>As far as I know, you don't operate a business that I've contributed money to, and I don't think I operate one that you've contributed to. So, no, Matt, you <em>can't </em>see my books.</p>

[Mike Howard]

<p>Tarot web sites are a rip-off. I prefer my readings with real cards, a haggard, red hair-dyed, chain smoking medium. That's really the only way to get a true reading.</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>I do believe you've complete missed the point, Martin. I'll try again. Do you have any expectation that you should be able to see the books at your grocery store, or your doctor's office, or anybody else's, if they're not a publicly traded/owned company? Or, more to the point, do you let everyone that pays you to do [whatever you do] to look through your financial records and hear about the details of your business? </p>

[mhahn]

<p>I think I understand your point, Matt, but I don't think my doctor's office, grocery store, etc., operates anything that I'd find as obviously objectionable as a business that may tempt people in some sort of emotional distress to spend god-knows-how-much money on internet psychics.</p>

<p>I was certainly lacking in any understanding of how Photo Net is run. I think I thought that it was basically Josh Root's private business. So when I found out that it is owned by NameMedia and looked into what kind of schlock they are peddling . . . wow.</p>

 

[lex_jenkins]

<p>Sometimes I think photo.net would make an ideal sampling group for a Stroop effect study.</p>

[mhahn]

<p>I could look it up, but I'll just ask: What's a Stroop effect study?</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>My <em>actual</em> point: what you find offensive may be nothing of interest to most other people, and things that absolutely light me into a towering bonfire of righteous indignation might be, to you, boringly benign. Which is why businesses don't usually lay it all out in the open. Because (sticking with my grocery store example), there are vegans that get positively apoplectic at the thought of some of their artichoke and carrot revenue going to pay health insurance for that cruel guy who makes the delicious pork sausage or steams the crabs.<br /><br />What's your take on horoscopes in the New York Times or the Washington Post, and the thoughtful, non-superstitious people who none the less pay to subscribe or advertise in those publications because ... in the interests of all the things they like, they can just look past that bit of leftover cultural noise?</p>

[qalam]

NameMedia Inc. was planning an initial public offering in 2008 but dropped that plan. It is a privately held company that

owns several large Websites, including PhotoNet.

 

If you do not want your PhotoNet subscription to be freely used by NameMedia, don't subscribe. Unless you can get a

seat on the NameMedia board of directors, you are unlikely to learn any details about their finances, and you certainly

won't have any control over their activities.

[mhahn]

<p>I think newspaper horoscopes (for instance, the Washington Post's) are completely benign. I don't think the Post offers to hook you up to a video cam-enabled psychic reader who may be willing to drain money out of you for hours on end.</p>

<p>Using your analogy, how apoplectic would that vegan be if he only found out that a store he shopped at sold meat when he entered through a hidden entrance and found a part of the store he had never been in before?</p>

[lex_jenkins]

<blockquote>

<p>"What's a Stroop effect study?"</p>

</blockquote>

<p>A deceptively simple test that reveals interesting things about our perceptions and cognitive tendencies.</p>

<p>When a person being tested is shown the word "Red" in a green font and asked to quickly identify the color, will he/she say "green" or "red"? The Stroop effect test is also used to evaluate mental and physical fatigue, since test subjects who may normally be able to answer correctly and quickly tend to answer more slowly and less accurately when they are fatigued. It's also used to evaluate cognitive traits in an effort to determine why some messages seem to be clearly understood by some folks and not by others.</p>

<p>A related real world example...</p>

<p>Several years ago when I was dabbling in oil painting rather than watercolors, some oil paints were still available in the traditional toxic metal pigments, including cadmium red.</p>

<p>One day I was browsing the paints and a young woman asked about the availability of a particular red hue comparable to cadmium red but without the toxic cadmium. I suggested a tube of cadmium red hue, a commonly available substitute.</p>

<p>"But I want something without cadmium," she said.</p>

<p>I explained that cadmium red hue contained no cadmium</p>

<p>"But it says 'cadmium' right on the label!" she insisted.</p>

<p>I could not convey to her the concept that the word "cadmium" by itself was not toxic and that it served merely as a descriptor. In her world, the word itself was toxic.</p>

[mhahn]

<p>Then, the newspaper horoscope is the "cadmium red hue," and the video cam-enabled psychic reader is the "cadmium red." I won't try to figure out who I am.</p>

[Matt Laur]

<blockquote>

<p>I think newspaper horoscopes (for instance, the Washington Post's) are completely benign.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Why? They perpetuate destructive magical thinking, and do so in a venue (that of a well-respected newspaper) that adds credibility to what is purely poisonous BS delivered by daily entertainment IV drip. It's part of the cultural landscape that helps to inspire people to turn to charlatans like fortune-tellers - whether working the boardwalk or some dot-com equivalent. And worse, it's sober they-know-better businesses (NYT, WP) that are cravenly exploiting superstitious twaddle to sell some more ad space. Giving them a pass is quite hypocritical, I think, given your take on the matter at hand.</p>

[Spearhead]

<blockquote>

<p>They perpetuate destructive magical thinking,</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

Well so does religion. They should all be lumped together. Probably why I don't donate to religious organizations. But I'm not sure photo.net has anything to do with that. If tarot.com generates income for Namemedia and that helps photo.net, I'm all in favor.</p>

[mhahn]

<p>At least spare the New York Times. No horoscope there.</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>OK then. The Seattle Times, both Chicago's Tribune and Sun Times, the San Jose Mercury News, the Los Angeles Times, the previously mentioned Washington Post, and countless others. It's an ongoing epidemic of Delusion Lite. The NYT publishes their share of delusions, but I'll <em>gladly</em> give them full credit for skipping out on that particularly chronic one.</p>

[mhahn]

<p>Then what's Tarot.com? Why do you give that a pass?</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>Martin, while I agree with the point Matt made (the grocery store example was spot-on), here's a few additional thoughts that might help get rid of negative thoughts on subscribing to p.net:</p>

<p>- Most people really have no idea what it costs to run large sites, to make sure they're to be found well by search engines, what all the storage space costs, how much band-width is going to cost on photo-heavy sites and so on. I've got a bit of experience with high-traffic sites (no, you cannot see the books or any of the figures, and it's not THAT much experience), and based on what I know, I sincerely doubt the subscription fees cover the p.net expenses. The advertisements the non-subscribers see are most likely really necessary. So, that makes the whole question where the money goes kind of immaterial, because the money is ultimately needed to keep p.net up and running.</p>

<p>- When I was considering the amount of taxes I pay versus the services the state is rendering which I am not using, I got this kind of mood that seems to have sparked your post. My solution to it, and it still works today, is to just imagine that my tax money is spent on state operations which I full endorse and possibly enjoy, and not for those things I do not care about. Simplistic and naive? Yes, it sure is. But I know I cannot change it, I know in the background there is actually some truth to my simple naive thinking, and it keeps me happier. And frankly, life's too nice to be spoilt by useless thoughts on potential negative things that you cannot change.</p>

<p> </p>

[david_henderson]

<p>Martin h.<br>

Still banging on with your lost cause then? When you demonstrate tht you scrutinise the spending of all the organisations you spend $25 a year or more with, then your argument might hold more water . But since you're probably quite happily buying stuff from organisations that do a lot worse than running a tarot site available only lunteers, your crusade is sounding vindicative and kind of pointless. I'm sure that if I was that way inclined I could find reasons not to spend money or time with most of the businesses I patronise, but I don't do it unless it's a lot more important than this.</p>

[DickArnold]

<p>This whole discussion is pointless. I worry about where my money goes when I give to veterans causes because I want to help disabled veterans and their families. I am buying access to certain features in PN that I like for a very nominal amount and I would like to keep the site going. I don't care who gets my money as long as I get my service. They have a right to try and make a profit. PN is not a non-profit socially oriented entity. The quality in PN is in the contact with the members not the so much the management although they effectively keep us from descending into chaos and anarchy. I don't care what they do with the money as long as I get my access because I think over the years I have gotten much more than what I have paid for. They have delivered these services to me for seven years and I am a satisfied customer having gotten more knowledge here than I could possibly buy elsewhere for the same amount.. Linda is over twenty five a month I have paid for her company's service to gain knowledge. Martin I suggest you give another 25 dollars to Wounded Warriors. They claim to use over eighty per cent of their income for services to the warriors. I hope you would be comfortable with that or something similar. My guess is that you need PN more than it needs you. Besides you don't have to pay anything to gain a lot of knowledge here by just lurking as a non-member. </p>

[G-P]

<p>The short answer is if you are a subscribing member all of the funds are used for administration of the site. Do not forget that a site this size does have inherant costs to run, maintain and improve. You also receive numerous benefits for that subscription fee which includes but not limited to significantly decreased advertising for the subscribing member. The Photo.net P&L is completely independent of any other site at NameMedia.</p>

[mhahn]

<p>Thank you, Glenn.</p>

<p>Don't know what a P&L is, though.</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>It's one of the most basic of business terms, Martin. And having a sense of the most basic of business issues is really what this conversation is all about. It's interesting to hear that the parent company doesn't cross-pollinate web properties, funding-wise. Though I suspect that a web presence in their stable is still subject to investment from the parent company, with the invested-in web presence having to pay that back (and that equity drawn from the individual site's revenue impacting its P&L). <br /><br />PN is sort of a fixer-upper. That takes cash, and the meager membership fees can't possibly come close to covering that sort of thing - to say nothing of the bandwidth bills. Good luck, Glenn! Rooting for you guys to keep things healthy.<br /> </p>

[JDMvW]

<p>You could do far worse than to run your life on the basis of Magic 8-Ball answers.</p>

<p>You could, for example, be listening to certain cable news channels.</p>

<p>I personally prefer the Azande solution of using the rubbing board oracle for small things and the chicken oracle for important decisions.</p>

[gungajim]

<p>I thought the money went to fund Josh's golden parachute severance agreement. Honest, I saw it on the internet.</p>

[Jeff Lear]

<p>Martin, P & L is shorthand for profit and loss.<br /><br />Unlike when I go to a grocery store or any of the other examples listed, I don't buy **** from photo.net and subscribing is strictly <em>voluntary</em>, unlike trying to walk out of your local grocery store with a cart/trolly full of crap you didn't pay for. I couldn't care less about the reduced ads or the reduced cost insurance or the ImagePro subscription that I was never smart enough to make work and gave up on years ago. I care about this community. I consider my subscription to be a <em>donation</em> to support this site and the valuable resource it is to people all over the world so yeah, I'm with Martin. Thankfully, Glenn cleared things up... I appreciate that.</p>