I really love the idea of micropayments. If somebody posts something that you really value... then it should be stupid easy to give them a penny... or two. So I modified the phpbb software and created a very basic, no frills, micropayments forum. Here's a screenshot... $9.35 = the amount of money in my wallet $0.57 = the amount of money allocated to the post Here's how it works... 1. A member (Bob) paypals you $10 dollars and you update his wallet (a column in the user table) 2. Bob sees that Sarah has just submitted an awesome post. He clicks the quarter button beneath her post and a quarter is transferred, via ajax, from his wallet to her wallet and the value of her post increases by a quarter. 3. When Sarah wants to cash out, she PMs you the amount she wants and you paypal it to her. Clearly it would be better if the paypal parts were automated. As the owner of the forum, you make money when somebody allocates money to their own posts. Theoretically, the income from post "boosting" should vastly exceed any income from banner ads... hence entirely eliminating the need for banner ads. And there's no ad blocker for forum posts. Post "boosting" only makes sense though when you can sort posts/threads by value. Everybody's going to want to sort by value. And everybody who bothers to post content will want their content to be seen by more, rather than less, people. I haven't added the sorting by value functionality yet because I wanted to first establish how much interest there is in facilitating micropayments for forums. Here's the demo... Micropayments Forum. If you register, some money will already be in your wallet so you can see how it works. Here are the files that I modified... overall_header.html (1 line of code) navbar_header.html (~2 lines of code) viewtopic.php (~ 5 lines of code) overall_footer.html (~ 1/4 page of code) viewtopic_body.html (~ 1/2 page of code) ... and here's a new page... ajax_value.php (~ 1 page of code) I'm better at economics than I am at programming. Personally, I see this as potentially disrupting the entire internet in a really beneficial way. Not only do banner ads become a thing of the past... but so does SEO. All results will be crowd sponsored. And millions of talented people who've been creating content for fun will be be able to replace their day job with their dream job. If anybody is fascinated by the potential significance and impact of facilitating micropayments for forums and would be interested in collaborating on this project...then let me know! As the saying goes... many hands make light work. Does anybody have any questions? Or perceive any potential problems?
Potential problems? Yeah, a few... First of, this isn't the first "bright idea" to be conceived within the forum market. That being said, the whole idea isn't necessarily that bad, but... your thinking it will replace banner ads, or get away with SEO is a bit naive, I think - at best. First of, not all areas are want to have micropayments dictate what is shown at the top of the pile. The implementation will be prone to hacking, fake boosting, etc. To actually be used, there has to be automation in the payment and getting funds out again - having it rely on a middle-man also opens up for a lot of fraud. Basically, you're trying to do for forums what Flattr tried to do for websites / blogs / whatever a few years ago. Flattr was created by actual programmers, works, but is still not taking over the world, or even very much in use. So, no, I doubt this will gain any traction.
PoPSiCLe, if you go to the New York Times website... on their homepage you're going to see some headlines/stories/articles that some editor, or group of editors, have determined to be important enough to warrant placement on their homepage. With DigitalPoint it's kinda the same thing. There's a section called "Industry News - Catch up on interesting new discussion and industry news. Page 1 of 191" I'm not quite sure exactly who determines which stories end up on the home page.... but I do know who doesn't determine which stories end up there... the crowd. If this forum facilitated micropayments then on the homepage would be 5 tabs... 24 hours, week, month, year, all time The default tab would be 24 hours. Anybody who visited this website would instantly see the 20 most valuable threads that have been created within the last 24 hours. And who determined the value of these threads? The crowd did with their pennies, nickles, dimes and quarters. Right now you're guessing that this won't catch on. But I'm pretty sure that everybody wants the most valuable content up front. Will there be glitches and hitches? For sure. But none of them will be insurmountable. Flattr didn't catch on because the idea is economically unsound. Imagine if Netflix allowed members to allocate their monthly subscription fees to their favorite content. Assuming a monthly fee of $10 dollars... here's what one of my monthly allocations might look like... I value all this content... but clearly I don't value it all equally. Who values all content equally? Nobody. With flattr... you have to give all the content that you support the same exact amount of money. The people who founded flattr are good programmers perhaps... but they are very bad economists. So flattr and my system are the same in the sense that they both give you the chance to support content that you value... but with my system it's entirely up to you to decide how much support you give to a post. If you kinda like a post... you can give it a penny. If you really like a post you can give it a quarter. If you really really like a post you can give it two quarters. And then on the homepage we'd see the content that members valued most. Crowd valuation is superior to the New York Times method with a few editors determining what's most important. This will be proved eventually. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
I think you're very naive. This system is prone to gaming. Using a few hundred quid to push content to the top wouldn't be much money, and you'd be sure that the content you want to see on the top is what has been paid for. Seriously, you don't see a problem with that? Paid content on top - this is an ad-agency's dream come true. People are not nice, nor altruistic. Persons can be, but people are not. People are sheep, idiots, and have very little grasp of technology as a whole - having this on newsdesks, or important issue-sites, will NOT WORK, as naysayers or opponents could simply pay to push content they don't like down - and the only way to battle that would be to buy the content that's being pushed down up again, and then you have a never-ending battle where the winner is the one with the most money. The concept of this isn't very different from likes and dislikes, only that this cost money as well - problem with these systems, as any other, is that they can be gamed (rather easily). I wish you good luck, but I think you'll need some extremely good business skills to get this up and running, and gaining popularity.
PoPSiCLe, either I'm naive... or you're not a very good gamer... You're in charge of promoting/advertising Awesome Web Host (AWH) and I'm in charge of promoting/advertising Excellent Web Host (EWH). If, each day, I post the same thread in the hosting category... "Hey everyone, have you heard of EWH? We're the cheapest and best and most reliable host around!" What are the replies to my thread going to start looking like over time? "Hey EWH, yeah, we heard of you the first 100 times. Go f yourselves. AWH (link) is a much better hosting service if nothing else because they don't spam the forum with the same stupid thread every day." It's a given that this reply to my thread will be the most valuable reply so it will be the first thing that anybody sees when they click on my thread. My spam strategy is bad PR... my firm loses money and has less money to spend on advertising. Plus, with the daily thread creation strategy I'm dividing my yearly advertising budget evenly among 365 threads. I'm spreading myself too thin... which is a problem because Internet 2.0 is all about depth. What's your advertising/promotion strategy? You create a thread a week, or once a month? It's more like a really well written newsletter where you update people on any new exciting features and other changes. And you throw in some useful information... "Did you know..." Your threads aren't just promotional... they are entertaining and educational. They are the forum equivalent of a charmercial. More and more people look forward to the next one. And when anybody replies to your threads with questions... you answer them to the best of your ability and/or inform your tech people to answer them. People value your firm's engagement and expertise and they communicate this by upvaluing your threads. So all else being equal... whichever host provides the most value for the crowd... will receive the most support from the crowd. And whoever receives the most support from the crowd... wins.