Pageflakes introduces obtrusive and inappropriate adverts
Posted by Karen Blakeman on November 20th, 2008
Today and without advance warning Pageflakes installed advertisements on all of its members’ pages. There had been reports of ads appearing on new users’ pages but it was not until today that they were imposed on all existing users.
The ads are garish, often irrelevant to the content of the page, sometimes ‘inappropriate’ and always fixed. They appear in the top right hand corner of the page. As Phil Bradley has pointed out in the Pageflakes Forum, the positioning of the advert is excellent from their point of view but a disaster from ours. If it is an image it completely dominates the content. Until I had removed most of my content I saw bright orange, red and yellow ads being served up on my page.
I am sure that most of Pageflakes’ users appreciate that the company has to generate revenue but Pageflakes has not offered any alternative subscription options for those of us who are willing to pay for an ad free environment.
So what are the alternatives? I do not use Pageflakes other than to demonstrate it in workshops but I do maintain pages for other organisations. I have moved them all to Netvibes, which I recommend you investigate as an alternative. (For a very ordinary and straightforward example see the UKeiG Netvibes page)
November 21st, 2008 at 12:19 pm
This is a good thing! Pageflakes, never quite as good as Netvibes or iGoogle, but hanging in there and leeching off the Netvibes life force. Now most people will move from Pageflakes to Netvibes, which gives the superior service a chance of survival in the battle against iGoogle. Gotta think strategically about resources!
December 4th, 2008 at 6:02 am
[...] I also updated my slides a hour or so before delivering the talk, using a tweet and subsequent blog post from Karen Blakeman in which she commented that PageFlakes had added advertisments on its Web site [...]