Find a Sparklebox alternative after the founder is jailed
Last week the announcement came that Daniel Kinge, founder and manager of Sparklebox.co.uk, has been convicted of a second count of downloading and storing child pornography. Although there have been rumours and chatter since 2007, it seems most were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. As one forum post puts it:
Basically its a nice chap who was a teacher but quit to do Sparklebox full time. He makes teaching resources which you can download for free.
I’m afraid not, fellas. He did it to make money out of advertising (so yes, every time you click on you are boosting his income in jail), and possibly to build a profile and reputation to approach children.
One comment Teachable is tired of hearing is that because we charge our users for access to files, the service is somehow less useful to teachers. At the Teachmeet BETT 2010 meetup last week we got a couple of comments along the line of “chargeable product = bad, ad supported = good”. Every teaching website out there needs funding, either from:
- Advertising
- Government subsidy
- Charging end users
We believe advertising alone is both insufficient to run a good service, and can lead to conflicts of interest when trying to impartially offer educational content. Government subsidy is likely to run out in the UK pretty fast in 2010, leaving 3 as the only viable business model. We are proud to charge our users for teaching resources and half that money goes to contributors.
Unless, like Sparklebox, it’s not really a business at all, but something altogether more murky.
January 22nd, 2010 at 7:45 pm
We’re happy to pay for a decent clean business … especially if it contributes to society.
January 23rd, 2010 at 1:00 pm
Hi!
We wouldn’t have to stop using it if he was convicted of murder, or anything simmilar. :/
Regards
January 25th, 2010 at 10:05 pm
Just wondered being as we have been using sparklebox is this PERSON still or will he be earning money from this site!!!!?????????
January 26th, 2010 at 9:00 am
As far as I am aware, Mr Kinge hasn’t opted to give the proceeds to charity. He is probably getting £1500 a month from the site in click-through advertising and, after hosting and bandwidth costs, that might be over £500 profit.
But the great irony is that all the recent publicity has resulted in a surge of visitors to Sparklebox, and some of those will boost the ad revenue.