[rescue] I'm about to get netscaped

[rescue at sunhelp.org]

~ -----Original Message-----
~ From: George Adkins [mailto:george at webbastard.org]
~ Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 5:38 PM
~ To: rescue at sunhelp.org
~ Subject: Re: [rescue] I'm about to get netscaped
~ 
~ 
~ On Friday 01 February 2002 04:50 pm, you wrote:
~ > D'oh! I forgot we require a free membership (recent 
~ change). Join and the
~ > maps/directions are free.
~ >
~ 
~ Oops, you just lost a customer.
~ I was going to quit using MapQuest and start using Mapblast because a 
~ listmember worked there, but I fundamentally refuse to become 
~ a Marketing 
~ Statistic.  If I have to provide you my name or e-mail 
~ address, it's not free 
~ in my book.  : (
~ 

Ummm.... Yeah. U R right. There were months of arguments around these
offices over this issue. We have abandoned the "get them in for free and
make it up in advertising" notion. Mapblast now costs us over a million
dollars a year to provide, and its not even in our business plan anymore
(not for the last two years even). Every location geocoded costs us money
because we have to license some types of map data. We were going to dump it,
but many of us have a fondness for it. The solution was an attempt to reduce
traffic through aggravation (not really the intent, but the effect). There
are other free content providers to go to (some even use our services, like
Yahoo). But, if you want our "line-drive" technology (a simpler way of
presenting map data that is especially good for PDA's and printouts), you
have to go to mapblast.

We don't do anything with the user data other than provide advertisers with
better demographics. In fact, about 1/3 of the user data is bogus anyways,
unless someone really does have FU at whitehouse.gov (paraphrased) as their
email.