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Mozilla and Scroll Partner To Test Alternative Funding Models for the Web (venturebeat.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: News subscription service Scroll, which is yet to launch to consumers but has received the backing of several top publishers, courted another major player today: Mozilla. The browser maker says it will work with Scroll to better understand how consumers react to ad-free experiences on the web and subscription-based funding models. As part of the deal, Mozilla said it would test features and product ideas provided by Scroll, which itself has been conducting internal tests with a number of outlets. Small groups of Firefox users will be invited at random to share feedback and also respond to surveys, Mozilla said.
I am happy to pay a fair price for content, but am unwilling in any scenario to be subjected to invasive advertising. Netflix is a good example of an ad-free subscription based library of video content.
One of the early promises of the Web was micropayments, remember that? It has yet to happen because the cost of a secure financial transaction is simply too high. I think the best answer is subscription aggregators, who provide access to a libraries of content and track which customers are accessing said content. At the end of the month, the subscription aggregator sends a single payment to each content provider, which represents the sum of all accesses that month.
Various pundits in political and gaming news sphere (of those I follow) generally played around with subscription model to the point where most of the content is free with constant nods to paying patrons on youtube and such. And then they have some kind of a small paywall for extras, with various tiers of payment for more benefits.
It's a model that found its backers.
If you're not willing to pay a few cents a day for a website without remuneration, then maybe you shouldn't have a website. Here's the dirty little secret: All the newspapers exist because someone wants their voice to be heard. No, they're not in it for the profit. That's a means to an end, because newspapers aren't damn near free like servers and bandwidth. All the manufacturer web sites exist because that's the cheapest way to support their products, and you don't sell anything without support. Do you really want the blogs and vlogs that only exist because someone wants your money? People are unwilling to pay for the web because there's already more than anyone can consume in a lifetime. The web doesn't need a coin slot.
Looking at multiple descriptions of how Scroll will work, they explicitly say the Scroll subscription fee won't cover individual news site paywalls -- you'll also have to have a subscription to the underlying site to get unlimited (or, in some cases, any) articles.
So unless I'm missing something, the only apparent benefit from my $5/month to Scroll is to get ad-free content (and, I suppose, less anti-adblocker cat and mouse).