Micropayments: A rainbow for journalism or a Hail Mary?

Here’s a funny question: Did you pay to read this?

[Bentler]

from the Los Angeles Times Technology blog:

Last month, the Pew Research Center signaled the tectonic shift we’d been expecting had finally arrived. For the first time, more Americans were getting their news from the Web than from newspapers. Another Pew finding rang a louder knell yet ...

...among people under 30, the Internet is now tied with TV as the leading source for national and international news. Printed newspapers ran a distant third, even though they produce a substantial amount of the Web’s news content.

Micropayments: A rainbow for journalism...or a Hail Mary? [latimesblogs.latimes.com]

[edited by: phranque at 2:02 pm (utc) on Jan. 15, 2009]
[edit reason] please see our TOS (#10) [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[Quadrille]

The only people who are enthusiastic about micropayments are those with no viable business model. Usually those failing while their rivals are succeeding.

The Internet is such a low overhead compared to bricks'n'mortar businesses that it's frankly little more than a joke.

Let's make sure it stays that way. Keep Internet Access Free. And I'm not campaigning; it's the panhandlers who are campaigning.

But it pays to keep a lert :)