although i love the fact that this is a dutch startup (waves the red-white-blue) I really feel paying real money for newspaper articles, some persons opinion and so forth is not really going to happen in a world where such content is readily available for free. and a world where you have to go to some trouble to avoid getting it basically thrown at you. In fact I'd pay quite a bit for a service which guarantees to keep me isolated from this kind of content.
Micropayment platform Blendle will launch a US beta in early 2016
21–29 of 29 posts
Re: Micropayment platform Blendle will launch a US beta in early 2016
#22I've used Blendle and kind of like it, but I wonder what its effect on newspapers will be. The model of paying per article encourages clickbait. Their way of countering this is that you have the option to get a refund if you thought the article sucked, but that will probably only be effective against the most obvious forms. If it's a bit more subtle, this tactic can still be very effective.
This is an interesting thought, but the same incentive exists in ad based revenue sites today, and I don't really see it getting worse. If anything, I'm going to be more careful to click on things I am more certain to find interesting - a bit more restraint will be involved.
Re: Micropayment platform Blendle will launch a US beta in early 2016
#23I've used Blendle and kind of like it, but I wonder what its effect on newspapers will be. The model of paying per article encourages clickbait. Their way of countering this is that you have the option to get a refund if you thought the article sucked, but that will probably only be effective against the most obvious forms. If it's a bit more subtle, this tactic can still be very effective.
How will it not be effective? When I read an article on Blendle (Dutchie here) I don't like or think is worth its money I ask for a refund. They even ask you when you're asking for a refund so they know if the price is too high, article is too long or the content is too bad. It seems like, if anything, it would discourage clickbait...
Re: Micropayment platform Blendle will launch a US beta in early 2016
#24I've used Blendle and kind of like it, but I wonder what its effect on newspapers will be. The model of paying per article encourages clickbait. Their way of countering this is that you have the option to get a refund if you thought the article sucked, but that will probably only be effective against the most obvious forms. If it's a bit more subtle, this tactic can still be very effective.
No, not really. At least in Germany you can return the article if you didn't like it - for example, if it was dirty clickbait garbage.
I use Blendle nearly every day, so far I only got good and interesting articles, a lot from newspapers I have not read before.
Re: Micropayment platform Blendle will launch a US beta in early 2016
#25I have historically been pessimistic on "micro-payments" but I feel like there's gotta be a way to make it work and this is the best approach I've seen so far. It's going to take reasonable pricing, frictionless payments and, most importantly, publisher credibility.
For NYT/WSJ, I could see up to 50c/article. Medium maybe 25c. The Information/Pando possibly up to $1.
Re: Micropayment platform Blendle will launch a US beta in early 2016
#26although i love the fact that this is a dutch startup (waves the red-white-blue) I really feel paying real money for newspaper articles, some persons opinion and so forth is not really going to happen in a world where such content is readily available for free. and a world where you have to go to some trouble to avoid getting it basically thrown at you. In fact I'd pay quite a bit for a service which guarantees to ke…
What we've found at Blendle, is that it's not the regular newspaper articles that sell best, but in fact it's the bigger opinion pieces, and more importantly the more in-depth background articles.
Please remember that these background articles often require months of research and journalists going abroad. These types of in-depth articles are hard to get on most blogs and/or free news sites.
Without these in-depth articles, our news consumption would be very shallow. This is what triggers people to pay for articles on Blendle, they want to be informed, they want to know more about a subject and/or event that recently happened. They probably already _know_ that it happened and what the end result was, but now they are interested in _why_ it happened and _how_ the end result came to be.
Re: Micropayment platform Blendle will launch a US beta in early 2016
#27I've used Blendle and kind of like it, but I wonder what its effect on newspapers will be. The model of paying per article encourages clickbait. Their way of countering this is that you have the option to get a refund if you thought the article sucked, but that will probably only be effective against the most obvious forms. If it's a bit more subtle, this tactic can still be very effective.
This is an interesting thought, but the same incentive exists in ad based revenue sites today, and I don't really see it getting worse. If anything, I'm going to be more careful to click on things I am more certain to find interesting - a bit more restraint will be involved.
... and I don't really see it getting worse
I think Internet 'journalism' is at an all time low.
I'm going to be more careful to click on things
So you are adapting to this state of horribleness by determining for every link if it's clickbait or not. I wish that wouldn't be necessary.
Re: Micropayment platform Blendle will launch a US beta in early 2016
#28I've used Blendle and kind of like it, but I wonder what its effect on newspapers will be. The model of paying per article encourages clickbait. Their way of countering this is that you have the option to get a refund if you thought the article sucked, but that will probably only be effective against the most obvious forms. If it's a bit more subtle, this tactic can still be very effective.
How will it not be effective? When I read an article on Blendle (Dutchie here) I don't like or think is worth its money I ask for a refund. They even ask you when you're asking for a refund so they know if the price is too high, article is too long or the content is too bad. It seems like, if anything, it would discourage clickbait...
As I said, I think it will only discourage the most obvious forms of clickbait. There's still an incentive to make your headlines a bit louder, try to appeal to more people by making false suggestions, etc.
If you're reading 'De Correspondent' you will see a lot of examples of this: the headlines are not necessary clickbait in the same way as BuzzFeed is, but they still over-promise and are often slightly misleading. Especially the ones they share via social media.
Re: Micropayment platform Blendle will launch a US beta in early 2016
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
How will it not be effective? When I read an article on Blendle (Dutchie here) I don't like or think is worth its money I ask for a refund. They even ask you when you're asking for a refund so they know if the price is too high, article is too long or the content is too bad. It seems like, if anything, it would discourage clickbait...
As I said, I think it will only discourage the most obvious forms of clickbait. There's still an incentive to make your headlines a bit louder, try to appeal to more people by making false suggestions, etc. If you're reading 'De Correspondent' you will see a lot of examples of this: the headlines are not necessary clickbait in the same way as BuzzFeed is, but they still over-promise and are often slightly misleading.…
I honestly don't see how that's any different from the age-old "tabloid" papers (like Telegraaf for example.)