6 ms·

Like the New York Times....pretty sure they're not all "bullshit media rewriters" there. Expect a LOT more "Become a member" or "Subscribe to..." websites as a

Like the New York Times....pretty sure they're not all "bullshit media rewriters" there. Expect a LOT more "Become a member" or "Subscribe to..." websites as adblockers become more popular.

zodPod 11y ago
Which will likely, hopefully, just create a new media. Things like Periscope. Newer generations will ignore the big media garbage and follow citizen reporting. This is all speculation and I'm sure there are problems with it but these big companies will just be digging their own graves with bull crap like that. They already have enough trouble selling print media who's going to pay them for their content (which is 80% useless filler anyway) when they start doing that. I do understand smaller bloggers and stuff will have a similar problem but it's people like those that will actually GET subscriptions and who I'd actually be willing to pay for their content if they didn't bombard me with bull crap when I loaded their pages.
- untog 11y ago
  Which will likely, hopefully, just create a new media. Things like Periscope. And how would Periscope users get paid, exactly?
- s73v3r 11y ago
  "Things like Periscope." And how do you expect things like Periscope to stay in business without earning revenue?
nine_k 11y ago
With all my respect to quality media like NYT, I don't want a full-scale subscription. What I'd like is paying a few cents for a specific article in a hassle-free way. Micropayments are hard because of the transaction costs, but this seems to slowly change (see e.g. flattr). I wish more sites offered a per-view zero-setup one-click micropayment solution. What's more interesting is what Google will do if their ads revenue shrinks considerably — I suppose 99% of their income is targeted online context ads.
- smsm42 11y ago
  There's more problem with per-article payments than transaction costs. E.g., how I know if I want to pay for particular article - maybe it's a useless crap that isn't even worth my time, let alone money? I could pay _after_ reading, but then the publisher has no guarantee I would bother to, after all I've already got what I wanted. You'd say "well, NYT is so good you would want to pay for _any_ article published there!" - but then why wouldn't I subscribe if I value them so much?
  - nine_k 11y ago
    A hassle-free after-reading tipping jar would be welcome! It could even say "If you liked this article, pay $0.nn and the next article you open on our site will be ads-free for you."
- cousin_it 11y ago
  I don't think micropayments are the future. Flattr has been around since 2010 and I don't think even a single person has made a living wage from it. The main problem when charging for content is justifying to the user why the price is "fair" before they've actually seen the content. If you can get around that problem, e.g. by using teasers or word of mouth to instill a need, then you can get away with charging much more than a few cents. And if you can't, very few people will be wililng to pay even one cent, because of the huge perceptual gap between zero and one cent. This model works best for huge chunks of content like books, movies or video games, where you can create compelling teasers that don't give away the whole experience. It's much harder for stuff like music or NYT articles, where the consumable chunks of content are small and teasers don't make much sense. I don't know any good answer for those.
  - nine_k 11y ago
    Well, I'm not a representative sample of the general public, but for me NYT's paywall is mostly about the hassle, not the money. I totally won't mind losing 10¢ on an article that was not worth reading, as long as getting to the content was just one paid click, without a monthly subscription or entering details. What I'd like is a PayPal one-click payment sort of system for that, with limitation of e.g. 50¢ per transaction without authentication (with limits per hour and per domain, etc, preventing money-bleeding exploits). A huge selling point for me would be an ability to come to a previously unvisited site supporting this system and pay with one click. The thing is that I don't browse media sites from their home pages, I mostly follow links found in social media. This gives the links some level of trust, because I can assess the poster's credibility before clicking the link.

Like the New York Times....pretty sure they're not all "bullshit media rewriters" there. Expect a LOT more "Become a member" or "Subscribe to..." websites as adblockers become more popular.

zodPod 11y ago

Which will likely, hopefully, just create a new media. Things like Periscope. Newer generations will ignore the big media garbage and follow citizen reporting. This is all speculation and I'm sure there are problems with it but these big companies will just be digging their own graves with bull crap like that. They already have enough trouble selling print media who's going to pay them for their content (which is 80% useless filler anyway) when they start doing that. I do understand smaller bloggers and stuff will have a similar problem but it's people like those that will actually GET subscriptions and who I'd actually be willing to pay for their content if they didn't bombard me with bull crap when I loaded their pages.

untog 11y ago
Which will likely, hopefully, just create a new media. Things like Periscope. And how would Periscope users get paid, exactly?
s73v3r 11y ago
"Things like Periscope." And how do you expect things like Periscope to stay in business without earning revenue?

nine_k 11y ago

With all my respect to quality media like NYT, I don't want a full-scale subscription. What I'd like is paying a few cents for a specific article in a hassle-free way. Micropayments are hard because of the transaction costs, but this seems to slowly change (see e.g. flattr). I wish more sites offered a per-view zero-setup one-click micropayment solution. What's more interesting is what Google will do if their ads revenue shrinks considerably — I suppose 99% of their income is targeted online context ads.

smsm42 11y ago
There's more problem with per-article payments than transaction costs. E.g., how I know if I want to pay for particular article - maybe it's a useless crap that isn't even worth my time, let alone money? I could pay _after_ reading, but then the publisher has no guarantee I would bother to, after all I've already got what I wanted. You'd say "well, NYT is so good you would want to pay for _any_ article published there!" - but then why wouldn't I subscribe if I value them so much?
- nine_k 11y ago
  A hassle-free after-reading tipping jar would be welcome! It could even say "If you liked this article, pay $0.nn and the next article you open on our site will be ads-free for you."
cousin_it 11y ago
I don't think micropayments are the future. Flattr has been around since 2010 and I don't think even a single person has made a living wage from it. The main problem when charging for content is justifying to the user why the price is "fair" before they've actually seen the content. If you can get around that problem, e.g. by using teasers or word of mouth to instill a need, then you can get away with charging much more than a few cents. And if you can't, very few people will be wililng to pay even one cent, because of the huge perceptual gap between zero and one cent. This model works best for huge chunks of content like books, movies or video games, where you can create compelling teasers that don't give away the whole experience. It's much harder for stuff like music or NYT articles, where the consumable chunks of content are small and teasers don't make much sense. I don't know any good answer for those.
- nine_k 11y ago
  Well, I'm not a representative sample of the general public, but for me NYT's paywall is mostly about the hassle, not the money. I totally won't mind losing 10¢ on an article that was not worth reading, as long as getting to the content was just one paid click, without a monthly subscription or entering details. What I'd like is a PayPal one-click payment sort of system for that, with limitation of e.g. 50¢ per transaction without authentication (with limits per hour and per domain, etc, preventing money-bleeding exploits). A huge selling point for me would be an ability to come to a previously unvisited site supporting this system and pay with one click. The thing is that I don't browse media sites from their home pages, I mostly follow links found in social media. This gives the links some level of trust, because I can assess the poster's credibility before clicking the link.