You may not know that soap operas are called soap operas because they were originally created as a way to sell more soap. Putting a quality drama on television during the day is a great way to get peoples' attention. Sprinkle in some ads for soap and you have a pretty nice business model. This is what's known as the "interruption-based" advertising model. The viewer shows up to watch a drama and gets interrupted every 10 or 15 minutes with profitable ads.

Many of the top internet companies are beginning to look a lot like soap operas.

Facebook is covered with irrelevant display ads and requires you to install all kinds of apps to work effectively.

Irrelevant advertisements have started to pop up in my Twitter feed.

LinkedIn has gone from a super clean site to a mess.

Spotify and Pandora ads are poorly targeted and happen too frequently.

Don’t get me wrong. I recognize that these are businesses that need to generate revenue and I have no problem with them doing so. I guess I’m just a bit disappointed that as internet companies have evolved into real businesses, they’ve defaulted to old fashioned disruptive marketing to make money. Each of the companies above have built great products and innovated significantly. You can't say the same about their business models.