I once enjoyed my home page as a source for news. One on computer I had MSN and on the other I had Yahoo. But now it seems that half the articles on the home pages are "sponsored" sites, or in other words, that articles are nothing more than a series of short articles or pictures intended to bring you a long series of advertisements. They will get you with headlines that read "What Justine Batmen looks like now is simple amazing" When you open the site they have 27 pictures of various actresses and Justine Batmen will be number 24. When you finally click through the whole thing you realize you have viewed a series of formerly hot women who are now just a bunch of old folks and you realize that your fantasy women is no longer desirable and you just wasted 15 minutes.
I do my best to resist the temptation to click on these sites but once in a while a headline really gets my interest. I had no idea what a teapot scandal was so instead of click on the article I just searched the term "teapot scandal" and read an article that contained all I wanted to know without having to click the next page button.
More often, I click on one of these sites because I read the headline but missed the word sponsored hidden by the white background or printed so small that it was difficult to see.
As a result of these sponsored sites I seldom read my home page anymore and have gone back to watching the news on TV. I always hated TV news. They tantalized us with :This common product could be deadly to you and your family" and then promised to give you the details 7 hours from now, leaving you wondering if you are about to use a product that could kill you and then realizing the news comes on 4 hours after you go to bed because you have to get up at 3 am in order to be at work at 5 and won't be able to watch.
At one time a person could just search his home page for the news article and find out now. But it seems that in the present day one goes to his home page, finds an article "Common products that kill" click on it and find it is a sponsored site and the newest product in the 48 listed on the site was made unavailable in 1974. All the while you will used and frustrated so you set your DVR up to record the local news and watch it the next morning while you are fixing your breakfast hoping that no one used that product the night before and you or someone you love won't be found dead in and hour or two.
When cable TV first came out it was promoted as "Pay TV" but the big selling point was that there were no advertisements. But now there are more ads on cable than there ever were on "free" TV.
The same seems to be happening to computers. The more we depend on them then more companies try to get us to click on an ad. We have to watch a 30 second clip before watching a news video nd many times the only difference between the news articles and the headlines is just one or two words.
Another trick I see is the "Read more" button. It reminds me of the "continued on page five tagline one finds on headline stores in newspapers. Page five always turns out to be in section B of the paper which your wife or roommate is reading. Oh please give me a break.
It was a cardinal rule of newspapers to never put advertising on the front page. Except for the Sunday edition and the Wednesday paper, people bought newspapers for the news. The same is for our homepage. It should be for the news and now for ads or sponsored sites. Now, MSN won't even let a person comment on articles. I guess that is because no matter what is discussed, people will soon resort to political statement and name calling, just like they did in the days when everyone had a CB radio. The immaturity of the American mind is so unbelieveable.
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