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Pre.Script
The first tangent on this post is better and much more informative than the post itself
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This is a more seriously considerable topic.
Perhaps some internet natives and economists could determine how it might work.
Internet Money.
I don't mean how you use your credit card or PayPal for online shopping. And I don't mean how people will pay real money for World of Warcraft items.
I mean a reasonable response to the amount of work and services that many people provide for free on the internet. There are articles, blog posts, downloadable shareware, ... virtually tons of useful things that real people provide for my relatively ignorant benefit.
Consider:
a man who has an actual job and a family, but has been closely following certain political issues which he makes accessible to others through his carefully maintained blog.
Or someone who devotes a good amount of their own free time to coding free software for download by the masses.
These people are not being paid for the helpful services they render, but it would be great if these people could be compensated without having to sell ad space on their websites.
It would also be great if I could easily and painlessly donate a small amount of money to them. But currently, there's a minimum transaction which can take place online because of the way credit card companies run their operations.
Wouldn't it be great if I could easily click something to transfer possibly fractions of a cent to someone who's internet service I found especially helpful? It would be simple for me, and if the person has a broad enough reader or user base, the fractions of a cent would quickly ad up and make it more possible for them to continue donating their time and energy to providing that service.
The fractions could gather in that person's online account and they could use it themselves for donations, online purchases, or even transfer to a real account if the amount exceeds some appropriate minimum amount.
I think that some version of this idea, modified so as to be practical, would be a really great tool in shaping the direction of the internet as an exchange information and services.
Maybe I'll convince some Econ major to write a thesis about this. Then it will seem more reasonable and somebody with the means and proper ability will set it up ...
3 comments:
I'm sorry to say that you're not the first person to think of this. The concept is called micropayments, and it is literally older than the internet... Ted Nelson included it as a fundamental part of Project Xanadu, a precursor to the World Wide Web. Visionaries like Scott McCloud have repeatedly called for micropayments as a solution to the problem of funding internet-hosted content, yet it seems that every significant attempt at building a micropayment system has failed to catch on or gone bankrupt (e.g. Bitpass). There are some exceptions... if you consider the ability to buy a single song at a time from iTunes (rather than a full album) to be a "micropayment", then iTunes could be considered to be a successful micropayment system, but it doesn't sound much like the universal system that you are describing or that Ted Nelson etc. envisioned.
It's hard to say why micropayments failed, but there are some obvious factors:
(1) Forced payment discourages volunteerism and donations. If you had to jump a paywall to get into Wikipedia, do you think that Wikipedia would be such an excellent resource and thriving community? Wikipedia was built by its users, and it doesn't make sense to charge your volunteers before you allow them to help you out. Similarly, many webcomics and fellow travelers like Homestar Runner rely on merch sales and donations, which require the goodwill of your fan community.
(2) People hate paywalls, and even hate sites with required registration. First, it just raises annoying barriers to gaining access to the content, and with all of the content on the internet it's usually easier to simply direct your attention elsewhere. Secondly, it raises serious privacy concerns... if you paid to get into every site you accessed, that would mean that someone (your micropayment broker) could trace your every move online.
(3) Even relatively wealthy people can only jump so many paywalls before their internet surfing habits become a liability. Why reduce the number of people reading your content? Word of mouth is still the most powerful marketing tool in the world, and if you reduce the number of readers that you have you're bound to reduce the amount of attention you receive, and that's not usually good for the bottom line. If nothing else, you can charge advertisers for access to your readers... readers are a valuable resource!
Don't be sorry at all!
I was sure that someone had thought of it before, but I'd just never heard of the idea, and I don't see it being used.
And I don't think it should be a forced payment system, but rather an option.
Thanks for your awesome response.
Now that you mention it, there is a "microdonations" system called IndieKarma, which I think has a lot of potential. I think that microdonations are the only form of micropayments which have a chance of working.
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