> MySpace failed because a better competitor came along. It had a history of predators, spammers, and viruses, and was hard to use well. (Did you see the pages people made?).
A big reason facebook was better is that it wasn't crudded up with horrible advertising. And yes, I saw the pages people made. That alone is not why MySpace failed. People just like to bash gaudy, haphazard pages because it makes them feel superior. But yes, it could have been easier to use.
Modern facebook advertising is a great example of how to manage ads well. It's possible wikipedia could try and follow facebook's advertising principles but I'm not sure how well it would work for them. Facebook has been developing it slowly for years. Wikis that include advertising tend not to be nearly as slick as facebook.
> AdBlock has minimal market share [1], so the prevalence of AdBlock isn't an argument in your favour.
Number of people using adblock does not mean that many people hate ads. It means that's how many of the people who hate ads have the knowledge, means, and will to do something about it.
> Radio stations certainly have ads, and those that claim "x songs without commercials!" usually put self-advertisements in instead, which they count separately. It's still advertising, just a different sort. Overall the whole process is pretty duplicitous (imho).
In my experience, that's just a technicality. Yeah, there's maybe one or two ads in the ad-free hour-- compared to 15 minutes or so of ads normally. So I wouldn't call it duplicitous at all. And regardless, even if it was that wouldn't change the point, since they are appealing to people's desire for ad-free programming. Whether they actually deliver on the promise is incidental.