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Two major points:
- Traditional print media has continued to decline in terms of revenue and hasn't been able to fully evolve into sustainable digital media, clickbait articles are filling the social media feeds. Catchy content with catchy titles from publishers like Buzzfeed etc continues to garner people's attention and hence pulling away from think pieces, op-eds, editorials etc.
- People are unwilling to pay for news.
Is it possible a pay per article will solve both sides of the problem? i.e. Increase the willingness of individuals to pay for good content in their POV and increase overall revenue streams for news organisations?
Here is how the crux of solution might look like:
- Articles embed a key unique to them (org, publisher, author)
- Users require a browser extension (Desktop) / app (Mobile) with unique key to user.
- Based on the amount of active time spent on the article, auto deduct a minimal amount ($0.02) on crossing a threshold (>50%)
- Users are incentivised for sharing articles, via unique trackable social media links and are fed back in terms of real currency to their accounts.
- Price incentive on a per user basis is dynamic based on current popularity of the content so early adopters have more reasons to be loyal to publisher.
What do you think?
http://browsed.xyz/blog/2016/02/01/what-is-browsed/
Crux of the idea?
Get rid of FOMO. Focus on building a people network and, content will follow. Rather than going to a bunch of websites to finding stuff your folks share everywhere, get them via one stream. Always be implicitly aware of what people in your network are interested in rather than what they want to appear when they choose to share selectively.
How it works?
- Install Chrome/Safari/Firefox extension for your favorite browser.
- Signup using Facebook (Or, some other online network) where you have built your social group.
- Every time you discover new stuff online (links, text, images, videos etc) they are transmitted to people in your network anonymously and vice versa.
- Initially, software will display content to you in the order of frecency with an expiry of 24 hours. But, because extension has access to your local browsing history, it will evolve to digest that data to always order the content based on your recent interest.
- This may include options to allow sharing by applying filters and type of content user wants.
- Also, sharing data exists just in your browser and, platform memory lasts for the period of delivery, similar to Whatsapp.
Concerns?
- Privacy
AFAIK, Most people would love to have a read access to their network info but, will be concerned about providing read access. It is likely that if you intimately know someone, you might be able to pinpoint the person it's emanating from but, that should be OK in future where people are willingly sharing most stuff about them via Instagram, Twitter, Facebook etal. There has always been tradeoff between privacy and access and, I, personally believe that we are moving towards the direction where latter trumps former.
PS: I have been thinking about this idea for few months now. I'd love to get your feedback on this. And, if this sounds something few people will be interested in, can get to work on this.