Conversation

Notices

1. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Tuesday, 15-Jan-2019 05:35:29 EST Strypey

   Back in the late 90s, Jakob Neilson really drank the automated #micropayments kool-aid:
   https://www.nngroup.com/articles/the-case-for-micropayments/

   Like most proponents, he was bang on about the problems with a web funded by advertising, but failed to understand the reasons #ClayShirky has offered for why automated micropayments are not a viable solution, and never will be. Although low-friction *voluntary* payments (#BuskWare) or cross-site subscriptions (eg #Flattr 2.0) could be.
   http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/02/why-small-payments-wont-save-publishers/

   1. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Tuesday, 15-Jan-2019 05:36:38 EST Strypey

      in reply to

      "... security requirements are much smaller when handling payments on the order of one cent per transaction ..."
      https://www.nngroup.com/articles/readers-comments-on-micropayments/

      Jakob Neilson doesn't seem to have considered that you can take $1000 out of someone's account, by taking 100,000 lots of one cent. If anything, security becomes *more* important when dealing with small, automated payments.

      1. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Tuesday, 15-Jan-2019 05:45:29 EST Strypey

         in reply to

         Totally agree with him about size limits for web pages though:
         https://www.nngroup.com/articles/size-limits-for-web-pages/

         A lot of people in web development are starting to raise the alarm about web page bloat, in the same way people were about bloatware a decade or so ago. The move back to offering static websites where possible, and even user-friendly CMS that generate static sites, is very welcome IMHO.

   2. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Tuesday, 15-Jan-2019 05:59:09 EST Strypey

      in reply to

      "Even as the Web grows in importance in the future, most people will probably access less than 100 non-free pages per day" - Jakob Neilsen
      https://www.nngroup.com/articles/the-case-for-micropayments/

      This reminds me of the legendary (and maybe apocryphal) quote by #BillGates about nobody ever needing more than 64KB of RAM ;)

      1. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Tuesday, 15-Jan-2019 06:05:27 EST Strypey

         in reply to

         "The charges are not so much to pay for the hardware as to pay for the human time needed to develop a comprehensive website" - Jakob Nielsen
         https://www.nngroup.com/articles/readers-comments-on-micropayments/

         The same is true for developing software, and this is the most fundamental conceptual flaw of micropayments. Paying people a regular wage or salary for their work on developing digital resources requires regular, predictable income streams. Even if they worked, micropayment revenues would be inherently unpredictable and chaotic.