By Christian Becraft / Staff Writer
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April 15
For surfers, window browsing and procrastination blogging could soon get costly. Though some rumors might waive, for other Web sites like kodak.com and its online photo services or even rumors of a Facebook membership fee, charging users might be a new trend.As technology becomes more digital, making written journals and printed photos obsolete, companies are looking for better ways to make a profit off of their Web site's services.Kodak Gallery's new online rule has some customers in shock.According to an Associated Press article, if users don't pay the new fee for what used to be a free online photo-album service, the company will delete all its members' photos.This fee can range from $4.99, the price for storing pictures that require less than two gigabytes, to $19.99, if members store more than two GB of photos.However, if customers purchase a product within this set standard, their "free" photo storage will be fine.Kodak is not the only company to start charging its users in hopes to a make profit, after covering the cost for sites and services.According to a Reuters article, Newsday, a newspaper that serves Long Island, N.Y., and the surrounding suburb area announced it will soon phase into charging online readers.Because of the decrease in bought papers and increase in online browsing, newspapers are reverting back to offering its articles only for its subscribers.Other Web site utilities, such as social networking services and journal and blogging Web pages, are starting to test the waters with a membership fee.But the biggest concern that has rippled rumors throughout its network regards the social networking utility Facebook.Farhad Manjoo, author and staff writer for slate.com, wrote an article on how Facebook could soon charge its high-activity users, that is, those who have many friends and applications.Charging for its services will make the site better profit than what it makes from mostly advertisements.However, Manjoo said in an e-mail interview that he does not think Facebook would thrive as well if it did start to charge its members."It seems natural to me that if Facebook did start charging, a lot of people would quit," Manjoo said.
