This was a triumph (tldr: thanks everyone for helping so far with listnook gold)

As someone who donated, I really would prefer the engineers work on general listnook problems instead of special "Gold Member" features. I appreciate the gesture, but I'm sure most donors aren't looking for special payback. We just want the site to stay up.

So Listnook Gold is a go, huh? I think it will be a hit, **provided** somethings I personally would not like to see. Namely: - Exclusive content for Gold subscribers - Features that give Gold subscribers a clear unfair advantage over non-Gold users (like 2x karma or something) - Obnoxious user designations (like gold usernames, yuck)

Can you all accept Google Checkout or Amazon payments too? I want to subscribe but my bank will not authorize anything from Paypal.

You know, I'm sorry, I'm not rooting for you guys. In the end run, in the meta sense, yes, I want Listnook to succeed, but this is a **_really_** bad lesson for the Listnook admins and Code Nast to get out of this. Conde Nast executive: "Oh, we don't need to fund Listnook. The members can be counted on to support the website. We have to do cutbacks next year -- let's slash Listnook's budget by 20% and have them ask their users to make up the difference. If they can't, well, tough shit." Listnook admin: "Oh, we don't need to confront that Conde Nast exec who gives me the willies every time he tours the office. And let's save Cool New Feature X for Listnook Gold members. The site as is is still good for the average Joe. After all, the average Joe should consider it a free 'benefit' that we're not down every five seconds now that we have our servers working again." Listen, it's not that I'm unsupportive of you or of the site. But this is the wrong lesson to be getting out of all this. You got bought by Conde Nast. And what you -- and all those who donated -- have just taught Conde Nast is this: **THERE'S NOW NO DOWNSIDE TO GIVING YOU AN INSUFFICIENT AND HALF-ASSED AMOUNT OF FUNDING, FAR LESS THAN YOU NEED TO ADEQUATELY RUN THE SITE -- BECAUSE THE USERS HAVE JUST DEMONSTRATED THAT THEY CAN BE COUNTED ON TO MAKE UP YOUR OPERATING SHORTFALL IN EXCHANGE FOR ONLY PLATITUDES OF LISTNOOK FRATERNITY, WITHOUT EVEN ANY MATERIALISTIC BENEFITS.** Congratulations. Your problem is now going to get worse. Neither you nor the userbase is going to see it now, because everyone's all flush with "woooo, Listnook! woooo, Listnook Gold! go us! rah, rah, sis boom bah, gooooooo, Listnook!" But your corporate owners are noting this, and making their plans. And it's not even evil, or sinister, in intent. It's just the cold, capitalistic bottom line that every huge corporation adheres to in order to appease their stockholders. They're not going to give you money you don't fight for (and you've demonstrated you're not going to fight for it), and they're not going to give you money when you demonstrate that you can get your userbase to cough up dough in a donation drive. So let's keep watching as Conde Nast rolls out Listnook's budget in whatever installments they roll it out (quarterly, annual, I don't know). And let's see what happens to your funding. Suddenly, it's going to become more and more urgent to the admins that people buy those Listnook Gold memberships. There's going to be posts to blog.listnook about how you're sorry you have to raise the Listnook Gold price to $24.95 per year, but it's more urgent than ever that people show their support for Listnook, since Conde Nast has decided to cut your funding by 25% in Q3 2011 ... It'd be glorious if I were to be 100% wrong on this. I would be really happy if I was proven completely and utterly off base on this in the months to come, that somehow this popularity convinces Conde Nast to adequately fund you in order that Listnook might have the robust growth its popularity deserves. Call me a cynic, though, but I don't think I *will* be proven wrong on this one, though. As much as I'd like to be. Oh, and to continue with the "Still Alive" theme from your blog post: *Maybe you'll find someone else to help you.* *Maybe Conde Nast* *THAT WAS A JOKE.* *HAHA. FAT CHANCE.*

Why not spend the money on a solid marketing position rather than adding features that should be available regardless. For example, look at Digg: they add features all the time (albeit a lot of those features are downright silly). You need someone savvy enough to figure out a way to make the site profitable. Asking for "donations" (a joke - you're a for-profit entity, so stop calling them that because you can't write this off on taxes) is merely a stopgap solution to a much larger problem. Unless you can find a way to monetize your large user base you're just treading water. With all the extremely popular sub-listnooks, you have the ability to offer advertisers a very targeted demographic. Personally, I have chosen to support Listnook by white-listing it from my AdBlocker and click on ads every once and a while. I will not be "donating" money to a corporation which has shown no real initiative in growing the site. Listnook's success story can be attributed to its community, not its administrators. Maybe it's time to change that.

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A serious suggestion here. If you are really having money problems then perhaps you should employ someone/work on improving the targeting of the ads that you display. I gotta say that I've never seen an ad on listnook that I would even remotely think about clicking on, or that has had any relevance to me whatsoever (listnook is not alone in this). You know, if people are subscribed to the movies listnook then maybe you should show ads for up-and-coming movie releases (I would actually love this). Similarly for music/books and their more specific sublistnooks. (Would anyone who is subscribed to the heavymetal sublistnook really be upset if they were shown ads for new heavy metal releases?) They don't even have to be flashy animated ads. People who are interested in these topics (as evidenced by their subscribing to that sublistnook) will actually actively click on simple static images simply stating that the movie/album is coming soon, click the ad for more information. Of course, you should still stick to the golden rules of not pissing off listnookors (no ads that make sounds, popup, or popover. Also, give us the option to block specific ads that we find too distracting or are uncomfortable with having appear on our screens in our mixed gender work environments, like the grandma b**** ad). *Edit: Even better, why not create "virtual sublistnooks" such as /r/movie_ads that display movie ads when you subscribe to that sublistnook?

That pikachu postcard was written by my friend! We dropped by listnook HQ on Saturday evening. A few more shots: [All five postcards!](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bnookala/4787923042/) [Postcards, I choose you!](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bnookala/4787922938/) [Bulbasaur!](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bnookala/4787922122/) [And a pic of us writing nice things on them](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bnookala/4787921966/) Glad to hear things are looking good for listnook!

I envy those with gold membership. I can't join. I'm too paranoid about attaching my on-line activities to my real life identity. I can't even keep the same username for more than a month. The saydrah episode creeped me out. She left a crumb trail back to her real life; a trail that she made one little crumb at a time. No one believes it can happen to them until it happens. She should have known better. Listnook's biggest selling point for me is the ease of throwing away accounts, throwing away my current identity. It's more important to me than karma. tl;dr -- No financial transactions, No home address, no personal info about preferences. We're not really friends and I don't really trust you.

[Samuel Irving Newhouse, Jr.](http://bit.ly/9AqomT) Owner of Condé Nast Publications Net worth: 4billion 132nd Richest American by Forbes Magazine in 2009. And he needs help with the servers. You're not short on money, it was an experiment. The fact is your owner there is doing ridiculously fine, he just wants even more money and he's not beneath feigning being needy to ask for donations from the actually truly needy (AKA us). Donating to Multi-Billionaires stinks. :c

This will be viewed as a case study in business schools for years to come. "There are a number of ways to avoid going under. Diversification, sourcing investors, cost cutting, selling non-essential assets, restructuring..." "Then there's one more. But I really shouldn't say..." "Please tell us professor!" "Well, ok. But you didn't hear this from me. It's known as... the *Listnook model*."

Glad this worked well. But I have to tell you that Slashdot made very little money off of subscriptions. It was never really worth the money for what they were offering. You've really got to make Gold do something cool here. Well, either that or get serious about ad sales.

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I've gone Listnook gold... here's the one thing you guys should really fix-- **please stop calling it a 'donation.'** That word is weighted, and has a lot of meaning behind it that you're not intending. The contribution is neither a tax deduction, nor are you a charity. You should call it a contribution or something similar, the last thing you need is a headache from people who claim their Listnook 'donation' as an IRS deduction and get you in financial hot water.

Great now please use some of that money to generate more money so you will never have to do this again.

We just bailed out listnook. I think that means it's... *dun dun dunnn!!* TOO BIG TO FAIL!

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What happened with the guy who wanted to buy Listnook?

I donated to Listnook, but I am completely f****** against Gold-only subscriber features. A trophy is enough for me. I don't even want my name to be a separate color. Don't turn this site into a shitfest. I donated because I want to keep this great site alive. I wouldn't've if I had known that it would make the site less great. Please, don't create subscriber-only features.

What is the thing I'm going to love? Oh god, please tell me. I have a heart condition, I don't know if I can stand the wait.

I'm holding out for listnook platinum.

I still like the idea of having a @listnook.com email address

Listnook must exist, I'm **not** going back to Digg.

Thanks for the upd ** *A Listnook Gold™ account is required to see the rest of this comment.* **

Um, so how much did you take in? Fair question since I donated :)

Excited for the *One More Thing*!

I donated 6 comments today. Just doing my part.

Oh great, this link made the front page. Here come all the non-gold members...

Am I the only one who thinks this is a bad thing? Listnook.com is one of the most visited sites on the internet, yet isn't sustainable without donations or subscriptions? Is the solution really to start charging people for more features and leave those who cannot afford it in the dust?

Here's something I don't get... Digg is clearly a hated rival here, but can we take a peek at their model for a second here? They serve up much higher volume (more users, higher page sizes, etc), and they've managed to do just fine. They also aren't backed by a major corporation, that I know of, like Listnook is. Their staff costs are monstrous compared to Listnook's. I know it's been said, but listnook is very nearly a text-only site that feeds off the creative efforts of the rest of the web. That's a fact. You run ads in several locations. I don't know the performance, and I don't care. All I know is that **I don't block ads on Listnook**. You can't seem to make even the most basic things work here, like uptime, let alone search. I have no idea how you can't run things on your ads and traffic and lower costs, but ff this gold c*** doesn't work, just close up shop already. It's pretty embarrassing at that point.

I love /r/lounge! 86% like it!

The one way for Listnook to produce an income would be to fill their pages with ads. I would hate this, and so would you. The donation gold would be temporary. There are other ways to raise cash. I hate to look at Farmville as an example, but they have an interesting concept in using farm cash for buying personalized items for their farms. If Listnook made it fun for the user to part with their money, it might be good for all. My idea would be to sell little Listnook aliens to be next to your name. Offer 10 different styles at first. It would be fun, because we could recognize each other by our alien or combination of aliens. You could sell them for $5.00 a pop. Everyone would want an alien because Listnook users are fun people with a sense of humor. We could have Listnook Alien designing contests. Each user could have a storage box for their collection and bring out an alien to suit the mood for the day. Birthday Alien for when they are having a birthday, etc. What do you guys think?

Listnook is my favorite site, donating to support it is the least I can do.

It's funny how many of us are willing to dish out our advertising and marketing ideas for the sake of listnook ending up to be what WE MOTHERFUCKING WANT IT TO BE! On a sidenote, we need to start selling rage comic t-shirts from the fffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuu sub listnook. I know I would buy a few for social situations. For example, I would take my 'girl raging at a movie theatre' shirt when I go to see a movie. As I mentioned, listnook can be whatever we want it to be. I have faith the engineers won't f*** us with the future of our precious. It's not that this place is any better than digg or fark, it's that the people here seem more genuine in both their advice and their jokes. I also don't know how many retarded stepchildren you'd have to shit out to make your comment layout as bad as the other sites. If you found a way to f*** that up I would just leave.

>Oh, and there's One More Thing coming soon that you guys are gonna love. This had better be either working search or episode 3.

What people are failing to realize is that Listnook **is not** a charity case. Listnook owned by a **billion** dollar company (Conde Nast). Why are we donating money to Listnook when they should be getting funds from their parent company?

You remember how 4chan said a while back that they where going to come here and troll us? The constant jokes about 4chan gold accounts has gotten to the point where the admins have started to take this seriously, and actually implemented this feature. Unless this all turns out to be a joke and the biggest reverse troll by the admins in the history of the listnookt, 4chan will have pulled off with listnook what it never could with 4chan, gold accounts. They couldn't change their own site, no gold accounts on 4chan, no matter how many times people post those same pictures, there are constant jokes about listnook turning into 4chan. Listnook gets gold accounts. Let that settle in for a second.

I wonder how the Techcrunch article spins this tomorrow. I also wonder how digg spins this next week.

I'm debating on donating simply because I want a trophy in my case. I'm that sad.