Well I didn't think about it too much but the idea is that the more "salesy" the site (i.e. the further they stray from the ideals of the webring/directory), the higher the price.

Also, I wasn't thinking of a stream-of-posts type thing -- more like private, curated search but I guess having a stream makes sense too.

Either way, the question then becomes would enough people pay whatever monthly fee would keep the site viable (pay for the curation, bandwidth, etc) to prevent the people running the service from making compromises on the vision...