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>I don’t think subscriptions are the only answer here, as many do. >We need models that support free consumption of media for many reasons. If you rule out pa

by jasode 9y ago

>I don’t think subscriptions are the only answer here, as many do. >We need models that support free consumption of media for many reasons. If you rule out paid subscriptions to subsidize the freeriders, what options are left for "free" consumption? Either advertisements or a government-sponsored system (e.g. citizens taxed to support the BBC tv channels). If there's a crypto financing option that Fred is hinting at, what would that look like?

amoorthy 9y ago
Any idea why Fred is not a believer in subscriptions? My hypothesis is subscriptions, for news at least, are all-or-nothing propositions. But in a world where there's so much content, much of it for free, we will only want to bypass a paywall for a given site occasionally when we encounter it. Why hasn't someone built a variable subscription model that is geared to one's reading habits?
- jasode 9y ago
  >Any idea why Fred is not a believer in subscriptions? He's ok with subscriptions. However, his particular statement is in context of subscriptions interfering with providing free content. As far as I can tell, if we want to have websites provide "free" content we have the following choices to that puzzle: 1) sponsored by advertisers 2) sponsored by government taxes (e.g. collect a new "web usage tax" from citizens to fund a CitizenBook as free alternative to Facebook ads and PublicNewsTimes as free alternative to New York Times paid subscription. I doubt that enough voters would support such a tax just to avoid ads.) 3) blockchain? cryptocurrency? (Not sure what Fred has seen with this option.)
- nickdandakis 9y ago
  Subscription fatigue, maybe? The idea of variable subscription models is interesting, especially if the consumer can see detailed justifications for their bill. I think that's a key point in battling subscription fatigue. Software companies water down their financial models to a very simplistic bill, partly because there's no way of (easily) variably billing consumers of their software, but also because it's easy to understand. I know that if I received an easily digestible bill of my monthly Spotify usage, and was charged more than what I'm currently paying for on my fixed plan, I'd be ok with it. I also know that if I'm not using Spotify as much for a specific month, and was charged less than what I normally pay for it, I'd also be very ok with it!
- CurtMonash 9y ago
  A subscription is like a gate that gives you admission to certain content. As a general rule, the gate that gives you admission to the MOST content wins. Illustrative examples include: -- Search engines clobbering "portals". -- The huge subscription market for Bloomberg, et al. (In its early years, Bloomberg consistently offered more information than its competitors.) -- ASCAP. -- Netflix. -- Kindle Unlimited. More limited subscriptions can of course succeed if their value propositions are sufficiently simple and compelling. For example: -- Pre-internet, business newsletters and almanacs had a good market, especially if they had valuable and unique raw information. -- Pre-internet, the only categories of consumer newsletter that had good markets were in investments and health. In both those cases, the value proposition is pretty clear. -- Our household subscribes to HBO almost solely for Game of Thrones.
brucephillips 9y ago
Yeah I don't understand why he doesn't describe the solutions he claims to be thinking about.
mtgx 9y ago
A cryptocurrency-backed tipping model (extremely low friction in tipping compared to any non-crypto alternative) is starting to look very promising. Take a look at http://steemit.com/ http://steemit.com/ for instance. It's kind of a Reddit clone based on that model. I think it still only has fewer than 1 million users, which means the quality of the user-generated posts won't be as good even as that from the (much larger) Reddit right now. But the tipping itself seems to be (largely) working. I say largely, because last I checked months ago, I still thought it prioritized a sort of feedback loop for the "rich to get richer" on the platform. But this is easy to change with an algorithm update. My guess is the main reason they don't do it is because having people earn "$1,000 per post" is getting them a lot of publicity and word of mouth promotion, compared to if they made it so "almost everyone can earn at least $1-$5 on every post". But as the platform grows (and the money on the platform grows with it) I would like to imagine they won't allow the "famous posters" to make tens of thousands of dollars on every post, and they will try to redistribute that to the rest of the platform users. If they don't do that, the platform will fail under its own weight anyway, and another competing cryptocurrency tipping platform will take its place. But overall, I think this sort of platform has extremely high potential. I've seen many smaller-time Youtubers start using it, because it almost immediately allowed them to make more money than they made from YouTube alone. Oh, and perhaps the "secret sauce" of the Steemit.com site is that it also spreads the earnings with the upvoters/downvoters as well as the commenters, which is basically paying for the curation of the platform, thus offering real monetary incentive to do those actions properly (although I imagine there may be some who try to abuse it, too).
- f00_ 9y ago
  steemit seems like a ponzi scheme. Could someone explain the whole "powering up" system? I think it's counter example to Proof of Stake, like there isn't the economic incentive there is for Proof of Work
zweice 9y ago
I think he refers to https://basicattentiontoken.org https://basicattentiontoken.org

by jasode 9y ago

amoorthy 9y ago

Any idea why Fred is not a believer in subscriptions? My hypothesis is subscriptions, for news at least, are all-or-nothing propositions. But in a world where there's so much content, much of it for free, we will only want to bypass a paywall for a given site occasionally when we encounter it. Why hasn't someone built a variable subscription model that is geared to one's reading habits?

jasode 9y ago
>Any idea why Fred is not a believer in subscriptions? He's ok with subscriptions. However, his particular statement is in context of subscriptions interfering with providing free content. As far as I can tell, if we want to have websites provide "free" content we have the following choices to that puzzle: 1) sponsored by advertisers 2) sponsored by government taxes (e.g. collect a new "web usage tax" from citizens to fund a CitizenBook as free alternative to Facebook ads and PublicNewsTimes as free alternative to New York Times paid subscription. I doubt that enough voters would support such a tax just to avoid ads.) 3) blockchain? cryptocurrency? (Not sure what Fred has seen with this option.)
nickdandakis 9y ago
Subscription fatigue, maybe? The idea of variable subscription models is interesting, especially if the consumer can see detailed justifications for their bill. I think that's a key point in battling subscription fatigue. Software companies water down their financial models to a very simplistic bill, partly because there's no way of (easily) variably billing consumers of their software, but also because it's easy to understand. I know that if I received an easily digestible bill of my monthly Spotify usage, and was charged more than what I'm currently paying for on my fixed plan, I'd be ok with it. I also know that if I'm not using Spotify as much for a specific month, and was charged less than what I normally pay for it, I'd also be very ok with it!
CurtMonash 9y ago
A subscription is like a gate that gives you admission to certain content. As a general rule, the gate that gives you admission to the MOST content wins. Illustrative examples include: -- Search engines clobbering "portals". -- The huge subscription market for Bloomberg, et al. (In its early years, Bloomberg consistently offered more information than its competitors.) -- ASCAP. -- Netflix. -- Kindle Unlimited. More limited subscriptions can of course succeed if their value propositions are sufficiently simple and compelling. For example: -- Pre-internet, business newsletters and almanacs had a good market, especially if they had valuable and unique raw information. -- Pre-internet, the only categories of consumer newsletter that had good markets were in investments and health. In both those cases, the value proposition is pretty clear. -- Our household subscribes to HBO almost solely for Game of Thrones.

brucephillips 9y ago

Yeah I don't understand why he doesn't describe the solutions he claims to be thinking about.

mtgx 9y ago

A cryptocurrency-backed tipping model (extremely low friction in tipping compared to any non-crypto alternative) is starting to look very promising. Take a look at http://steemit.com/ http://steemit.com/ for instance. It's kind of a Reddit clone based on that model. I think it still only has fewer than 1 million users, which means the quality of the user-generated posts won't be as good even as that from the (much larger) Reddit right now. But the tipping itself seems to be (largely) working. I say largely, because last I checked months ago, I still thought it prioritized a sort of feedback loop for the "rich to get richer" on the platform. But this is easy to change with an algorithm update. My guess is the main reason they don't do it is because having people earn "$1,000 per post" is getting them a lot of publicity and word of mouth promotion, compared to if they made it so "almost everyone can earn at least $1-$5 on every post". But as the platform grows (and the money on the platform grows with it) I would like to imagine they won't allow the "famous posters" to make tens of thousands of dollars on every post, and they will try to redistribute that to the rest of the platform users. If they don't do that, the platform will fail under its own weight anyway, and another competing cryptocurrency tipping platform will take its place. But overall, I think this sort of platform has extremely high potential. I've seen many smaller-time Youtubers start using it, because it almost immediately allowed them to make more money than they made from YouTube alone. Oh, and perhaps the "secret sauce" of the Steemit.com site is that it also spreads the earnings with the upvoters/downvoters as well as the commenters, which is basically paying for the curation of the platform, thus offering real monetary incentive to do those actions properly (although I imagine there may be some who try to abuse it, too).

f00_ 9y ago
steemit seems like a ponzi scheme. Could someone explain the whole "powering up" system? I think it's counter example to Proof of Stake, like there isn't the economic incentive there is for Proof of Work

zweice 9y ago

I think he refers to https://basicattentiontoken.org https://basicattentiontoken.org