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- By reducing the cost of other links of the value chain, there is more money available to spend on the links you actually generate revenue on. This shifts prof

- By reducing the cost of other links of the value chain, there is more money available to spend on the links you actually generate revenue on. This shifts profits along the value chain to that link. By this logic, the biggest force in the universe preventing micropayments by tying media to the tawdry, corrupting mechanism of advertising, is Google. A desert of profitability shifts consumers to you, and keeps competitors away. Cities are supposed to impoverish the regions directly around them in this way, as well.

ucaetano 9y ago
> By this logic, the biggest force in the universe preventing micropayments by linking media to the tawdry, corrupting mechanism of advertising, is Google. No, it is users being willing to pay. The vast majority of users are far more ok with being shown ads than paying the equivalent of the cost of the ad to have it go away.
- stcredzero 9y ago
  The vast majority of users are far more ok with being shown ads than paying the equivalent of the cost of the ad to have it go away. What if the ad were not in the picture at all, and you had low friction micropayments? There are YouTube channels which eschew advertisements and get most of their money from Patreon instead. There are other channels that have been demonetized against their will and have gone this route as well. It's workable, and yet, Patreon is far from the lowest friction it could achieve. If there was some party able to make micropayments work, and able to make them not ever work, it would be Google.
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    > What if the ad were not in the picture at all, and you had low friction micropayments? Again, people don't want to pay for content. Between one website asking you to pay $0.10 to view an article, and another offering it for free but showing ads, people will pick the free one. And Google has been trying: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/21/google-contributor-pay-remove-ads https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/21/google-co... But it is really hard to convince people to pay, when they can get it for free.
    - paulkon 9y ago
      What if automatic micropayments were made on content request? Directly from the browser.
      - ucaetano 9y ago
        Nobody would pay for them. You're not getting to the real problem: if a user can see an article with ads for free, or pay 10 cents, that user will most likely opt for the free version. And you can't compete with free.
        stcredzero 9y ago
        Nobody would pay for them. I would. if a user can see an article with ads for free, or pay 10 cents, that user will most likely opt for the free version. There is quite a bit of content for which ads don't work, for which people are only too happy to pay. Reduce the friction for that, and the market would increase. YouTube just slaughtered a bunch of WeedTube channels. Then, there's also GunTube. That content definitely has an audience. That audience definitely is willing to pay! Why isn't someone making something with less friction than Patreon?
        ucaetano 9y ago
        > I would. Sure, 1 user. Maybe even a million users. Well, the solution for that exists: subscriptions. But nobody will build a system for such a small number of users. > That content definitely has an audience. That audience definitely is willing to pay! Sure, niche markets always exist. HBO makes money out of subscriptions, The NYT too. If you can find a niche audience that's willing to pay for your content, that makes it a viable business model for you. But that doesn't scale across the billions of users on the internet. Particularly when you include the 1.5 billion who are not in rich countries.
        stcredzero 9y ago
        Well, the solution for that exists: subscriptions. I think it's still a bit too high in friction. I think there's yet another model possible. Sure, niche markets always exist. HBO makes money out of subscriptions, The NYT too. If you can find a niche audience that's willing to pay for your content, that makes it a viable business model for you. A lot of those niches aren't advertiser friendly. Subscription kind of works already. There must be something with lower friction yet. But that doesn't scale across the billions of users on the internet. Particularly when you include the 1.5 billion who are not in rich countries. I don't see why micropayments couldn't work on adjusted scales. We already have different prices for things depending on the market. Also, it's a problem that somewhat fixes itself, automatically. A website relevant to low-income rural people outside the 1st world won't be able to charge as much as a 1st world website, but it might well be able to charge enough to greatly benefit the operator anyways.
  - the-dude 9y ago
    Blendle tries but is struggling. It does not seem to work, not enough subscribers, unhappy papers ( uhh, advertisers ).
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Thing us that our easiest way to pay online are credit cards. But credit cards suck for the kind of small payments the web warrants. Also, what is the chance that we would pay and get shown ads anyways? For me it is not ads, full stop, that are the problem. but distracting/disturbing ads unrelated to what i am reading at the time.
kaycebasques 9y ago
> “Cities are supposed to impoverish the regions directly around them in this way, as well.” Where’d you hear that?
- stcredzero 9y ago
  Where’d you hear that? I read it in an Indian social geography paper while writing an undergraduate Geography "101" paper. (The course number was actually 1)
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    The Indian model is very different: cities create large "suburban" slums and poor villages around them. Not because of resources, but because of overpopulation.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
> Cities are supposed to impoverish the regions directly around them in this way, as well. Just because you can specify a business model, doesn't mean it's automatically viable, or moral, to execute in any context.
ucaetano 9y ago
> Cities are supposed to impoverish the regions directly around them in this way, as well. This doesn't make any sense. Cities exist as trading hubs: where people trade labor, services and goods. Why are you bringing cities into this anyway? Makes no sense at all...
- GW150914 9y ago
  My first thought was of all the wealthy suburbs surrounding even relatively poor cities like Detroit. Cities definitely don’t create a desert.
  - stcredzero 9y ago
    Cities definitely don’t create a desert. Not exactly a desert. More like zones of coalescence, like areas cleared out inside a nebula that's a stellar nursery. You're not going to find every single kind of service in those suburbs. You're not going to find certain kinds of businesses. Anything that benefits by being well connected to a hub is going to be drawn into that hub, which means that other areas of the city may have less of it. By "impoverishment," I don't mean "becoming poor" in an absolute wealth sense. I mean that certain things are sucked out of certain areas to other areas.
    - ucaetano 9y ago
      > which means that other areas of the city may have less of it. And make a ton of money while doing it! Farms closer to cities are richer than farms further away from cities.
    - ta2987 9y ago
      I haven't read a bit of your analogy that actually seems like anything close to reality.
- stcredzero 9y ago
  This doesn't make any sense. Cities exist as trading hubs: where people trade labor, services and goods. This is also true. However, the centralization causes various forms of impoverishment -- which you might also describe as "specialization." Cities develop zones around them that lack many services, but concentrate others. Think of the places where there are lots of warehouses. If you are in a city to be connected to some kind of a hub, the fact is that not all of that city's area is going to be equally well connected. Think of what happens to towns near large cities. This has been studied by social geography since at least the 70's.
dredmorbius 9y ago
The content market has pretty much always worked by the precise inverse of micropayments: aggregation, bubdling, and regular serial subscriptions. The addition of advertising made market size itsef, rather than the content, the goal. Irony is that it was the Master of the Channel himself who came up with the falsehood that "content is king": Viacom's Sumner Redstone. Maybe he believes that himself, but it doesn't make it the truth.

ucaetano 9y ago

> By this logic, the biggest force in the universe preventing micropayments by linking media to the tawdry, corrupting mechanism of advertising, is Google. No, it is users being willing to pay. The vast majority of users are far more ok with being shown ads than paying the equivalent of the cost of the ad to have it go away.

stcredzero 9y ago
The vast majority of users are far more ok with being shown ads than paying the equivalent of the cost of the ad to have it go away. What if the ad were not in the picture at all, and you had low friction micropayments? There are YouTube channels which eschew advertisements and get most of their money from Patreon instead. There are other channels that have been demonetized against their will and have gone this route as well. It's workable, and yet, Patreon is far from the lowest friction it could achieve. If there was some party able to make micropayments work, and able to make them not ever work, it would be Google.
- ucaetano 9y ago
  > What if the ad were not in the picture at all, and you had low friction micropayments? Again, people don't want to pay for content. Between one website asking you to pay $0.10 to view an article, and another offering it for free but showing ads, people will pick the free one. And Google has been trying: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/21/google-contributor-pay-remove-ads https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/21/google-co... But it is really hard to convince people to pay, when they can get it for free.
  - paulkon 9y ago
    What if automatic micropayments were made on content request? Directly from the browser.
    - ucaetano 9y ago
      Nobody would pay for them. You're not getting to the real problem: if a user can see an article with ads for free, or pay 10 cents, that user will most likely opt for the free version. And you can't compete with free.
      - stcredzero 9y ago
        Nobody would pay for them. I would. if a user can see an article with ads for free, or pay 10 cents, that user will most likely opt for the free version. There is quite a bit of content for which ads don't work, for which people are only too happy to pay. Reduce the friction for that, and the market would increase. YouTube just slaughtered a bunch of WeedTube channels. Then, there's also GunTube. That content definitely has an audience. That audience definitely is willing to pay! Why isn't someone making something with less friction than Patreon?
        ucaetano 9y ago
        > I would. Sure, 1 user. Maybe even a million users. Well, the solution for that exists: subscriptions. But nobody will build a system for such a small number of users. > That content definitely has an audience. That audience definitely is willing to pay! Sure, niche markets always exist. HBO makes money out of subscriptions, The NYT too. If you can find a niche audience that's willing to pay for your content, that makes it a viable business model for you. But that doesn't scale across the billions of users on the internet. Particularly when you include the 1.5 billion who are not in rich countries.
        stcredzero 9y ago
        Well, the solution for that exists: subscriptions. I think it's still a bit too high in friction. I think there's yet another model possible. Sure, niche markets always exist. HBO makes money out of subscriptions, The NYT too. If you can find a niche audience that's willing to pay for your content, that makes it a viable business model for you. A lot of those niches aren't advertiser friendly. Subscription kind of works already. There must be something with lower friction yet. But that doesn't scale across the billions of users on the internet. Particularly when you include the 1.5 billion who are not in rich countries. I don't see why micropayments couldn't work on adjusted scales. We already have different prices for things depending on the market. Also, it's a problem that somewhat fixes itself, automatically. A website relevant to low-income rural people outside the 1st world won't be able to charge as much as a 1st world website, but it might well be able to charge enough to greatly benefit the operator anyways.
- the-dude 9y ago
  Blendle tries but is struggling. It does not seem to work, not enough subscribers, unhappy papers ( uhh, advertisers ).
digi_owl 9y ago
Thing us that our easiest way to pay online are credit cards. But credit cards suck for the kind of small payments the web warrants. Also, what is the chance that we would pay and get shown ads anyways? For me it is not ads, full stop, that are the problem. but distracting/disturbing ads unrelated to what i am reading at the time.

kaycebasques 9y ago

> “Cities are supposed to impoverish the regions directly around them in this way, as well.” Where’d you hear that?

stcredzero 9y ago
Where’d you hear that? I read it in an Indian social geography paper while writing an undergraduate Geography "101" paper. (The course number was actually 1)
- ucaetano 9y ago
  The Indian model is very different: cities create large "suburban" slums and poor villages around them. Not because of resources, but because of overpopulation.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

> Cities are supposed to impoverish the regions directly around them in this way, as well. Just because you can specify a business model, doesn't mean it's automatically viable, or moral, to execute in any context.

ucaetano 9y ago

> Cities are supposed to impoverish the regions directly around them in this way, as well. This doesn't make any sense. Cities exist as trading hubs: where people trade labor, services and goods. Why are you bringing cities into this anyway? Makes no sense at all...

GW150914 9y ago
My first thought was of all the wealthy suburbs surrounding even relatively poor cities like Detroit. Cities definitely don’t create a desert.
- stcredzero 9y ago
  Cities definitely don’t create a desert. Not exactly a desert. More like zones of coalescence, like areas cleared out inside a nebula that's a stellar nursery. You're not going to find every single kind of service in those suburbs. You're not going to find certain kinds of businesses. Anything that benefits by being well connected to a hub is going to be drawn into that hub, which means that other areas of the city may have less of it. By "impoverishment," I don't mean "becoming poor" in an absolute wealth sense. I mean that certain things are sucked out of certain areas to other areas.
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    > which means that other areas of the city may have less of it. And make a ton of money while doing it! Farms closer to cities are richer than farms further away from cities.
  - ta2987 9y ago
    I haven't read a bit of your analogy that actually seems like anything close to reality.
stcredzero 9y ago
This doesn't make any sense. Cities exist as trading hubs: where people trade labor, services and goods. This is also true. However, the centralization causes various forms of impoverishment -- which you might also describe as "specialization." Cities develop zones around them that lack many services, but concentrate others. Think of the places where there are lots of warehouses. If you are in a city to be connected to some kind of a hub, the fact is that not all of that city's area is going to be equally well connected. Think of what happens to towns near large cities. This has been studied by social geography since at least the 70's.

dredmorbius 9y ago

The content market has pretty much always worked by the precise inverse of micropayments: aggregation, bubdling, and regular serial subscriptions. The addition of advertising made market size itsef, rather than the content, the goal. Irony is that it was the Master of the Channel himself who came up with the falsehood that "content is king": Viacom's Sumner Redstone. Maybe he believes that himself, but it doesn't make it the truth.