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| Notice: GeekPress is back up and running, thanks to Paul! It's still a not-so-serious tech news blog, but the format is significantly looser. Diana, having given up programming for philosophy, has her own philosophical blog NoodleFood. More of her work can be found at DianaHsieh.com. |
| Postrel on Amazon MicroPayments |
| 3:31:07 pm mst / 6 February 2001 found by diana / filed in business / source Dynamist.com 72 hits / 1 comment / 0 e-mails |
| Virginia Postrel offers her perspective on Amazon's new Honor System, which allows users to "tip" their favorite web sites. |
| I have my doubts about the system, but time will tell! |
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| Comments |
| This comment board has been retired. |
| Microcelebrity and Micropayments by jwales 5:35:45 pm mst / 6 February 2001 / # 1 |
I think that GeekPress should do this, or something like it. One of the most interesting phemonena on the net is the growth of the microcelebrity -- camgirls mostly, and not all pornographic, but mostly. The economics are really compelling. A site like geekpress can survive as a hobby only so long as the founders stay interested. To support itself with advertising, it needs to get a lot more popular. This is of course possible for geekpress, because it is so cool, but it may not be possible for niche sites. As a pay site, though, or something like a pay site, the economics get more interesting. If people would pay $1 per month for geekpress (or for added features, perhaps, or author privileges), then instead of needing 50,000 daily readers, you can get by with 3,000-5,000 members. If you could get people to pay Of course, one problem with the Amazon model is that it seems to be about tipping, or the honor system, not about paying. Would that work well? I don't know. |