4 ms·
"Nobody reads from just 15 or 20 sites a month. People read from hundreds of sites a month, creating a vast long tail of publishers." And somewhere out there T
by SMrF 14y ago
"Nobody reads from just 15 or 20 sites a month. People read from hundreds of sites a month, creating a vast long tail of publishers."
And somewhere out there Ted Nelson is saying, "I told you so. We needed transclusion, transcopyright, and micropayments in our hypertext from the beginning!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu
(p.s. not a xanadu zealot, just fascinated by the history)
- AndrewDucker 14y agoXanadu was a fascinating idea, but they still don't have a product I could put a user in front of and have them use it to read things. If they ever had, I'd have some sympathy/respect for them.
- _delirium 14y agoI don't think it's really been a "them" for a while now; Xanadu as a funded project with employees wound down around 1993-94, and since then it's just been Ted Nelson occasionally sketching out designs.
- cageface 14y agoThis is why I think that people that predict that custom native apps will displace the web are getting ahead of themselves. I'm willing to install a dedicated app for a handful of services I use all the time but otherwise I'm happier to just keep a bookmark.
- jes5199 14y agowhich is the bigger problem with Xanadu: that no one ever solved the technical issues, or that no one ever got a critical mass of users?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- dredmorbius 14y agoMicropayments do not scale. The cost of my deciding whether or not an article is worth whatever the cost of reading it is, let alone the huge privacy invasion that per-article pricing implies (tying information content and payment to a single user) is a non-starter for all but a very few sites. That leaves us with accompanying advertising, patronage, syndication, content-as-promotion (propaganda/advertising), and self-publishing. "Accompanying advertising" is the existing model of display or other ads accompanying content. This works for some sites, but not particularly well, and there are concerns in the mobile space. "Patronage" is essentially sponsorship of work, as fine art patronage was fairly common in the past. "Syndication" would require a model of mechanical payments and essentially a tax-like funding stream (part of your monthly data plan) from which content providers are paid. "Content-as-promotion" is where the initiative for creating content is its own utility in promoting the commercial or ideological goals of the author. Bands promoting live acts, political or religious organizations. "Self-publishing" is essentially vanity publishing -- where many blogs are (possibly a special case of content as promotion). Of this list, the syndication model is the only one I see as having strong viable economic potential for general works, though it requires the creation of a syndicate. Small-scale syndicates, in the form of paywall/paygate operators could be the start of this -- major periodical publishers (NY Times, Murdoch/Dow Jones), Apple, Amazon, eBay. But for general content, I'd see a mix of a mechanical reproduction right, a flat (or very simply tiered) level of content payments, and what would amount to an all-you-can-eat or bandwidth-based scheme through a data service provider or independent syndicate provider. It's a leaky system, but might just work.
- niels_olson 14y agoSeems to me Facebook, Reddit, and Google are in the best position to support micropayments since they already have buttons on so many sites. BTW, am I imagining things or did login happen before commenting was allowed? And did that speed up the HN?
- maigret 14y ago> Micropayments do not scale. It's just a matter of time before it does. I'd rather say the current micro payment offerings are not good enough.