Excerpt from an email forwarded to us from a defender of the ‘Beak,

Another tidbit, you may notice that the Flicker link was removed from the the ‘photos’ shortcut section on the Kiwibeak left nav bar (it’s still in the community directory though). I had to help mrs. [blurb] today set up a FREE photosharing account. Flicker now only gives 100MB space for free and was bought out by Yahoo. Pbase (newer and less known) is also weak, charging for any decent amount of space. Formely junky photobucket is now the best offering a good amount of space, then only charging a fee for 25gig+ storage. Logically, they are trying to get a bigger market share. Guess who owns them? The small guy: Ask.com.

Lastly, i don’t know if you heard the rumours that Google is to implement a “music search” directing surfers to paid tune download companies/sponsors. LAME! Facebook is to start charging ‘tokens’ for their games, on top of the literal millions they make off their ads.

What is happening?. The web is supposed to go free, not pay (against the trend), which makes it more important for a site like Kiwibeak that efficiently lists the best FREE sites to exist.

The Beak is not a ‘trend’ or ‘empty’ homepage, it has a real and valid purpose unlike quick, cash-in (independent or big corporate run) sites. It’s obvious that there’s a lot of devotion and work on their part for FREE and for an idealistic purpose, and the web makes an endeavor like this possible and fairly cheaply, so why not do it? Someone has to…and not that many service sites attempt to build a truly FREE site. Kiwibeak does offer a free site and doesn’t just promo their own company stuff, and that alone is reason enough to use Kiwibeak as a homepage.

Nobility rules. Long live the Beak.

Tags: free, free vs. pay, web, web culture, web trends.