Some of my other favorite pairings include:
1A – 2 heads are better than 1.
1B – If you want something right, do it yourself.

2A – Don’t judge a book by its cover.
2B – Image is everything.

Great observation. So why are you a fan of BuddyTV then? I poked around the site a bit, and they fit your description exactly.

Would you agree that it’s generally fair to say that Redfin and some of your other broker partners display more information about the listing than you do, and that the main reason for this is that your business model is designed to complement the sites of those broker-partners? For example, the price history and a full set of amenities is displayed on Redfin’s site and I assume you don’t display that out of respect for the brokers?

Regarding whether I imagine “a world without advertising” I don’t think I am that dull! I must not have written the post clearly but the post does conclude by saying: “This is not to say that you can’t build beautiful ad-driven sites, or that you can’t make money from those sites. The web is by far the world’s most powerful advertising medium.” I fully expect ad dollars to shift to the Web, and for the ad-driven model to continue growing. I just hope that the downturn creates room for other models.

And regarding Facebook as a utility, in introducing Facebook into the essay, I began by quoting Facebook’s description of itself as a social utility, which to me is a form of an application. And generally, I argue that Facebook should charge like a utility. So I think we agree there, too.

I am embarrassed to say though that I don’t know what PSE means. What does it stand for?

Can you please correct your comment about limiting photo’s? Zillow.com displays more than 3X the number of photo’s Redfin does and our site is ad supported. Thanks!

Just FYI; the ad game is also evolving to meet the changing marketplace. You seem to imagine a world without advertising and that may be how it ends up feeling to users but ads of one type or another are and will probably remain the primary revenue stream for online publishers for the next decade (unless of course you take the stance that “everyone’s a publisher” but I’m talking about net-native business models here.)

IMO, fb (and twitter) are neither media site nor web application. Zuckerberg says it best when he defines his site as a “social utility.” These sites are the PSE of the internet and trying to be a media site is what kills them (I’m talking to you, myspace.) I wouldn’t be surprised if the true utilities like fb, youtube, twitter ultimately found a way to get their revenue directly from the ISP’s.

Well, the reason is not that simple. Look at the financial statements of software companies… say Microsoft and Oracle. Yeah, they are rich, they are ripping people off, they are just fat assholes, right? But, their profit margin is a consistent 25% or so. Great margin, but nowhere near what it could be if producing software really had no marginal costs. (I know you meant the cost of putting something up on a site to be downloaded or on disc, but that is really trivial and really is worth nothing).

Microsoft and Oracle SPEND 75% of their revenues on something. And it’s not all cafeterias and Ballmer’s salary. IT COSTS MONEY TO BUILD SOFTWARE, and, importantly, THE BUILDING NEVER STOPS. Because if you think that after you invested in coding something, marketing it, supporting it, you can kick back and just let the money roll in while you fire your engineers and have no marginal costs, you have a revelation coming if you ever try to run a software company.

If you really call something your “final version”, your software will and should become free. In the software business, everything you do, everything you come up with, everything that is “hot” becomes old, worn out, and “cold” in about nine months. You have to keep moving, and keep spending money, and therefore need revenues to keep alive — VC’s can only get you so far.