Rules, principles and revenue online

“Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are” — Franklin D. Roosevelt

If we can agree that nothing is free in this universe then monetizing users is the principle.
This means one must find a way to monetize users for the services they receive. Especially if the services are labeled “free”.

Now comes the tricky part: the rules quoted above are methods by which one generates revenue from the users. And these rules are a Wild West story.
Starting with the famous vote of the US Congress about allowing ISP to sell user data, it all became official.
But if we look back many online service providers were already using user data for generating revenue.

Google has all the data it needs will stop scanning Gmail inboxes
Unroll.me’s CEO is ‘heartbroken’ that users are upset their data was sold to Uber

The price of free: how Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Google sell you to advertisers
The internet is a largely a free service, and sharing personal data is the price we pay. Problem is no company laid it out plain and clear: we offer free services but on the other side we collect your data and use them for our profit.

The even bigger problem is that others have gotten the taste for this kind of revenue:
Bose headphones have been spying on the customers
Accuwheater is one of the latest newcomers to the feast.

For those who want to reverse this trend Proemtheus will start with the most important asset online: email.
Email will be detached from the service provider and distributed to the users. This is decentralization.
We start from here and move on with more features.

Hope to see you at the presale starting Saturday Aug 26 07:00 UTC.
Invite all your friends, after all we’re paying the bonuses ;-)

the Proemtheus team