I think that Hubski focuses too much on "look" (which is hideous). The functionality of Hubski would work just fine with ads. Granted - the current layout isn't the best for ads but ads suck fundamentally so no layout works well. I also think ads are on the way out, which is one reason why an approach like this - where things are heavily targeted - is worth pursuing. Any internet marketing expert right now will tell you the only thing that works anymore is Facebook ads, and those can be targeted ridiculously tight - talking "women 18-20 that like techno and are shopping for purses within 3 miles of zipcode 90210."
Heh, facebook ads are very very aggressive. At a certain point there was a way to target one person. Anyway, I actually don't find hubski hideous. It definitely takes some getting used to, but so does reddit (and look at it's popularity!). After that I started finding it quite lean and streamlined. These are opinions though. Curating ads is a pretty cool idea, but I can't say I support it when there are alternatives like NPR's model. Besides, most people use adblock/ublock and I doubt that many would go through the trouble of disabling it for hubski.
Given my 'druthers, Hubski would look a lot like Protopage - in other words, however I want. We've already got "themes" and so long as we aren't inflicting themes on other people, there's no reason my hubwheels need to look like your hubwheels. If I want traffic lights and comic sans and I'm willing to pay $2 to have them, take my money. The thing about doing ads in this particularly targeted fashion is that it wouldn't work with anybody's ad network. Hubski would have to write its own. In writing its own, it would be immune from adblock, just like Facebook is. Yeah, you can kill the sidebar shit no problem... but the actual targeted ads? They're bulletproof.
I didn't know that facebook's targeted ads weren't blocked by adblock. I don't use facebook much though, I only log in every now and then to check for messages and stuff, though, so I wouldn't be able to tell. I don't see what would make an extension like adblock unable to patch those out though, unless facebook was actively using some random placements and/or serving them from a lot of different servers.
I misspoke. It appears they do. Nonetheless, six months immersed in online marketing courses has taught me that nobody is advocating any other kind of advertising at the moment which tends to indicate that they're still the most favored marketing option. Adblock works by comparing a LUT back in server-land with the page your browser sees. If it sees "ad" it tells your browser not to load it. This has caused Adblock to actually run slower than non-blocked browsers because of the proliferation of iFrames - if you've got six iFrames on your page, Adblock needs to make 6 calls to Adblock's servers. If each one of those iFrames can load a millisecond faster than Adblock can get a response, your page gets served six milliseconds slower with Adblock than without and the difference is cumulative. Adblock doesn't always work on targeted ads because there's nothing requiring Facebook to tell ABP that such and such is an ad.
It's the LUTs that kill you.