Stefan Jones  07-02-2003
07:05 PM ET (US)
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Someone go hit Jerry on the head for me. Sixteen seconds. I'll pay you a dime.
* * *
Uhm . . . Scoot McCloud?
Sounds like a video game character. Fox McCloud's fleet-footed coyote nephew, maybe.
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Jerry Kindall 07-02-2003
05:20 PM ET (US)
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Name anything that provides more than 15 seconds worth of enjoyment for a dime.
Chewing gum!
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Dan Z. 07-02-2003
03:34 PM ET (US)
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<rant>
Some people treat the subject of micropayments like they're telling ghost stories around a campfire:"I heard the Micropayment Monster's gonna start charging us for ev'ry page we look at on th' web!"
"Well, I heard that this one guy surfed the web one night, an' the Monster sent him a credit card bill for a million dollars!"
"Oh yeah, well, this kid's mom that I know, she totally freaked out cuz of micropayments everywhere, and threw her computer out the window and committed suicide!"
Settle down, kids. There's no monster. Micropayments are good, and the BitPass model really seems poised for success. It took me only a few seconds to sign up for it last night, and a couple clicks later I was reading Scott's comic -- the most enjoyable 25 cents I've spent in a long time.
First, the idea that every website is going to start charging people per page is asinine. The sites that try to nickel and dime you to death will end up in the same graveyard as the sites that try to advertise you to death. Don't you already mentally blacklist websites doused in crazy blinking Flash ads or shoshkeles? Most of us will just add the nickel-and-diming sites to the same pile. And advertising will always make more sense than micropayments for large, brand-oriented sites like CNN.com.
Second, the BitPass model isn't going to spring any sudden credit card surprises on anyone. It's essentially the prepaid phonecard model applied to online content. You buy a BitPass card for as little as $3, spend it in nickels, dimes and quarters on your favorite webcomic, band or online beggar, and you're done. Buy another card if you want, or don't. It's pretty simple.
Third, Metafilter was filled with posts today saying things like "I think an entire cent is too much" for online content and "it better be DAMN well WORTH it!"
Let's get some perspective. Name anything that provides more than 15 seconds worth of enjoyment for a dime. Give it a shot. Even a quarter. What can you buy for a quarter? Anything? You probably couldn't get a hobo to kick you in the nuts for a quarter. Whining about the epic, tragic loss of a dime? That's comical. Griping that even an entire cent is too much to support the artists you like? That's insulting.
Up until now, the web has been deprived of entertaining, informative content because micropayments don't exist. Scott's comic is a good example. It's worth a quarter; it's not worth $7. There are all kinds of creators out there who are excited about micropayments because they know subscription or donation-based models don't work for them. There are worthwhile websites that aren't ad friendly creaking under the strain of overwhelming bandwidth bills. Micropayments enable them to survive and flourish.
If BitPass succeeds -- and with the engine of webcomics behind them, I think they actually might -- it will change the web. Not in the drastic, market-mad campfire story ways, but in the amount of enjoyment and information we'll be able to squeeze out of the web. There will be more websites worth going to, more musicians being rewarded, more webcomics worth reading, more webloggers not just blogging but reporting. I'd say that's worth a quarter.
</rant>
WimL: The difference between BitPass and Cashets is that BitPass appears to have actual people behind it, while Cashets seems to be a server left alone on the net. It's more likely to spit errors than complete a transaction.
And BitPass has a few interesting extras, too, like the ability to set a threshhold price. There's a little BitPass icon next to BitPass links, and it changes color depending on what your spending threshhold is set to. By default, it's set to 25 cents, so anything over 25 cents turns the BitPass icon red. It's a clever way of alleviating some of the pressure associated with buying -- if the link is over your threshhold price, you can see that and ignore it on an almost subliminal level.
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Wim L 07-02-2003
02:40 PM ET (US)
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Has anyone compared bitpass to cashets? They look pretty similar to me, except cashets has been around longer; it hasn't been taking off, unfortunately. The bitpass FAQ for earners appears to be secret, so I can't tell what their fees are.
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ArkhamAdept 07-02-2003
01:43 PM ET (US)
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And what if the US Dept of Transportation started charging you a nickel per mile to drive on their roads?
News Flash, People, this isn't going to take over the way we do bidness on the web. Porn sites will still charge you $24.95 a month, regardless of how many times you look at Bertha Butt.
As Love Gravy pointed out, when it was pay by the hour, most people said, forget it! The ISP's wised up and started the flat rates, and zoom! Everybody's in the pool.
Scott's idea about micropayments is not meant as a replacement for 'regular billing' but as a way to directly compensate artists and creators without having that compensation chipped away by a gazillion middlemen. Most comics are 2 or 3 bucks these days, most creators get a handful of peanut shells for their efforts (If they're lucky and crazy succesful, anyone heard of Chris Claremont lately?) while companies like Marvel and DC reap huge profits.
I don't like the pay to consume model LoveGravy posits either, but having gone to the NY Times website for archived articles, and been confronted with the demand of $2.95 per article (Special deals are available for day long access, but I can go to the Library for free if I'm going to spend a whole day digging through old articles.), I look at McCloud's desire for a quarter per story as an exceptional value! Again, I doubt that anyone would stand for the 'penny a page' idea any more than we stood for the pay by the hour plan.
Worse, I know that the balance of that money is going to HIM, not Nameless Big Huge Co., so he can pay his rent, feed his kids, and *gasp!* Create More Stuff!
Are micropayments the perfect system? Please.
Are they a step in the right direction? Uh, maybe.
Should we give it a fair shake and then offer our constructive criticism? Oh, baby!
Considering the alternatives (Further stagnation, less choice, starving artists and so on), why the hell not?
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automaticmonkey 07-02-2003
12:21 PM ET (US)
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It'd be great if BitPass licensed their technology to Amazon so their Honour System could operate in two modes: donation and payment required.
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LoveGravy 07-02-2003
12:11 PM ET (US)
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This kinda scares me in some ways. When ISPs were charging "per hour" connection charges, I stayed off the net, and my bills were low. Then they started flat-rating and I paid more per month and used them a TON more.
My concern is that we'll have things like CNN charging "$0.01 per page view", and things like that. They will say "What's a penny!", but I just don't like the pay as you consume concept for media. If cable-TV charged me .50c per program I watched, I don't think I'd watch much TV even though my cable bills would be lower than they are now even if I maintained my current viewing levels.
For the example below I think it's a great fit. However, to use the most ubiquitous example, what if Pr0n sites started charging 5c/image? Or if MMORPGS (like Everquest) started charging 1c/minute? Or FilePlanet charged 3c/Meg? Even if it saved me money at current usage levels, it would sap my enjoyment (and usage) because I'd be hearing the clock ticking and cash register chinging with every click.
That's why micropayments make me nervous. I don't want to go back to the old "pay as you consume" days of metered internet, but this time, instead of your ISP metering your use, it'll be 100's of other companies.
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technomancer 07-02-2003
11:26 AM ET (US)
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This micropayment system is rather depressing - I've been following this story for a while, and it seems to me that there's nothing new or innovative here, and that it'll only be a useful system if lots of sites use the same micropayment provider. There are several things that could be done to improve the service, I think.
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Shan Fenderson 07-02-2003
10:35 AM ET (US)
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First Virtual! Yeah, I remember them. This does seem like much the same thing.
IMO micropayments should start out as voluntary, not required to view the content; and limited to a fixed maximum per user per month (across all the sites the donate micro-money to). Makes things much simpler and more likely to catch on.
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Glenn Fleishman 07-02-2003
10:07 AM ET (US)
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This is sort of slick as it's the ultimate realization of First Virtual Corporation -- back in 1995, I think, Nathaniel Borenstein (a MIME co-inventor and general user-centric computer scientist) was one of the founders of a firm that would charge your credit card an aggregated amount based on your microcharges.
It never took off for two reasons: one, you had to install some funky CGI scripts to get it to work via a Web site or use a client software package; two, the credit card companies were against it because it wasn't exactly the kind of thing they allowed.
I wonder what changed with the c.c. firms?
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