Suggested business model: Vivaldi as a subscription broker
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Tanstaafl.
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Vivaldi employees want to bring food on the table, web content providers want to bring food on the table. Consumers want everything for free, yey the internet, and as a solution we are drowning in ads and are being tracked - which we block, naturally. Producing good content costs money, and ads need to be consumed by masses of people to pay the bills. So content is losing quality, polarization and sensationalism work best - easy to produce, sure to get views. Click click click.
News magazines struggle, too. Enter the paywall - subscription models have arrived on the internet. Turns out people like me are willing to pay for good content! But at the same time, I also want to have access to more than just my one or two subscriptions - I have no fewer than 19 speeddials dedicated to news outlets that are national (german), US, UK, cover sports, tech, and still my need for satire. I do pay for some of them, but I certainly don't want to pay subscription fees for 19 news outlets! Even a less extreme member of society might still count five or six sites they regularly visit and want to support.
To quote from an article I found while pondering about this topic, "most quality news sources in the commercial sector disappear behind paywalls, they are competing for an ever-smaller slice of the small minority willing to pay for news online." and "Bundling is a way of creating a product that appeals to a far greater audience than any particular product can on its own. The problem is finding a way to divide that £10 a month fairly between the various publishers."
Vivaldi could provide both me and the content providers a great service by acting as the subscription broker between me and the news outlet. Essentially I imagine (and there are other ways to do this) that I would pay some subscription fee to Vivaldi that gives me ad free access to any paywall news article on any partner news site until I have reached a certain number of articles. This works as long as I'm synced with Vivaldi, and there is certainly some magic required to make sure that the system works without me being tracked by anyone and the news sites still getting their money. And Vivaldi gets a small fraction for being the broker.
I like this because...
- I have one ad and tracking free subscription (with Vivaldi) that is valid for all partner news sites
- I can access paywall articles on news sources that I consider secondary
- It's hassle free
- Give me some volume discount
News outlets might like this because ...
- this is not in competition with the subscription model and ads they place today.
- they can offer a new alternative to ads (boo!) and subscription (too expensive!)
- they can dare to put more stuff behind a paywall because of this more granular alternative
- they can make money off the folks that want just one or the other article and would not want to get a full subscription - Vivaldi as the lever to access more market
- if this is connected to me being signed in to Vivaldi Sync, they can be rather sure that the system is not circumvented with ad blockers etc., Vivaldi could potentially even block printing/sharing by encrypting prints with the Vivaldi sync PW.
Vivaldi might like this because ...
- it adds a revenue source
- it adds a USP that might draw folks to using Vivaldi
- you could even add a rating system so people and content providers can see if the provided content is of good quality. (Then again, I have yet to see a good rating system on the internet.)
- it fits to and leverages Vivaldi's story of being independent, providing a great free browser with an ethical business model that deviates from all those other browsers and is all about choice, and an accessible internet.
- (EDIT) The other browsers have business models that do not lend themselves as nicely to this (not sure about Edge.)
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@wildente said in Suggested business model: Vivaldi as a subscription broker:
there is certainly some magic required to make sure that the system works without me being tracked by anyone and the news sites still getting their money
How about this:
- You pay Vivaldi, say, 10 to 12 of your local fiat currency, or in cryptocurrency
Behind the scenes:
- Vivaldi converts that to 100 Web Access Tokens (WAT) with a 5% transaction fee
- these are Tokens on a blockchain that supports anonymous transactions
- Each read of a page gives a certain amount of web access Tokens which is slightly higher than what the publisher would get by showing ads
- Any unused tokens could be given out to publishers that the user likes (a like button could be added to pages or the address bar) or claimed by the user, or saved for later
- Vivaldi would grant publishers access if they don’t charge too much, though that “approved publisher” setting could be turned off so that any site that uses the API gets the tokens
- Publishers get paid, users get content
Vivaldi would have to calculate it so that users have a virtually unlimited amount of stories while publishers still make more than ads - but that’s not too hard because income from ads is extremely low.
- You pay Vivaldi, say, 10 to 12 of your local fiat currency, or in cryptocurrency
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@code3 said in Suggested business model: Vivaldi as a subscription broker:
cryptocurrency
Every problem for which a perfectly working solution exists can be solved more complicated with cryptocurrency technology ... ok seriously, encryption will be important here so that may be a good solution. I think the what is more important to start with than the how. There are technical solutions to make sure the transactional part works but first the model needs to be described which the transactions shall support.
Obviously as also described in the article I linked to, there are already brokers out there. Not sure if they can realize pay per view. For Vivaldi, the power comes by being integrated in the tool I use anyway to access the content.
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@wildente , I think that with this Vivaldi becomes the first paid browser, not even Google dares to do it.
I already said that it is already quite difficult to convince people, because Vivaldi is not OSS, if now a premium version is also added, most of the users, especially those of Linux, will send it to hell and switch to another browser .
The only thing maybe a VPN itself, which can be paid -
@catweazle I'm not saying Vivaldi should be a paid browser, I'm saying Vivaldi should offer a service that is handled through the browser. Like the whole Brave system but with benefit to the content providers. If I don't want to use the service I just browse and subscribe or live with ads I don't block.
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@WildEnte @Catweazle First of all, all the cryptography technology for this already exists, second, it requires no user interaction. Third, I believe that this should mostly a separate service from the browser, and the tokens could even be resold by a third party. In that way, publishers are not signing up to have their content managed by a small browser company but by a new forward thinking open source ad free protocol that happens to already be integrated into a browser and could probably be integrated as a browser extension if someone wanted to develop it. I don’t think the optional content bundle will discourage users from using the browser. What would stop users from using the browser is if certain features - like chrome extensions integration or calendar integration - were behind a paywall.
As @WildEnte said the “what” may be the hard part here. Even though the protocol I described may sound complicated it is almost certainly easier than convincing enough publishers to partner, though they may be at least slightly more easily convinced if it is an open protocol rather than a closed Vivaldi-controlled paywall.
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@wildente said in Suggested business model: Vivaldi as a subscription broker:
but with benefit to the content providers
I think you mean benefit to the users.
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@code3 , I still think the only way to implement a payment, is with an addition of a VPN, as Brave and UR have, both have a VPN in the browser, but it is not free like the fake that Opera carries.
If you use the VPN of Brave or UR, you have to pay a monthly fee., but then you have a valid VPN provider.
I can't think of anything else that justifies a payment in a browser. -
@catweazle This is not a payment in the browser but a semi decentralized protocol that gives access to content that would normally be paid. It is bought on a Vivaldi website, not the browser, and could technically be implemented in another browser.
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@code3 , it is clear that Brave and UR do not have an infrastructure with enough servers to have their own VPN, but they have agreed with a provider that pays them a commission for inserting their VPN into browsers, just as Vivaldi has done with Bing and the other default search engines and sponsor links.
When the user registers for the VPN service it pays a commission to Brave and UR. -
@catweazle That’s fine, although personally I do not like the whole affiliate VPN sponsored stuff.
This feature request has almost nothing to do with Tor, Proxies, or VPNs. It is about a protocol that would allow people to pay for content with money instead of ads.
Similar to Sia or Protocol Labs, Vivaldi Technologies could earn money from this protocol. -
@code3 , well, I can only give my opinion and it still depends on the company's decisions.
Although I don't think it goes this way, it somehow doesn't fit Vivaldi's philosophy.
I don't think they're doing so badly either, it's a small company of 40 employees, dog included and more than 2 million users.
Vivaldi even maintains his own football team. -
@wildente There's one big problem here: Browser lock-in. It sounds like this subscription would only work on Vivaldi, and therefore, would lock you into the Vivaldi browser.
That's contrary to the idea that a website should work, whatever browser you're using. An idea that Vivaldi (and Opera, at least, when von Tetzchner was running the show) has always supported.
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@catweazle said in Suggested business model: Vivaldi as a subscription broker:
somehow doesn't fit Vivaldi's philosophy.
Why? No ads, no tracking, pioneering great new technologies, giving back to quality news sources and other publishers.
@Eggcorn That is a valid concern, but Vivaldi can make it cross browser. The code could be packaged as an open source background script that can be added to a web extension. They could use a JavaScript blockchain such as Nimiq (which is environmentally friendly and supports Nimiq OASIS fiat swap and has private transactions in the roadmap). An agreed amount of NIM could be transferred to the publisher by the extension after spending a certain amount of time on the page. Extra NIM could be given to publishers using a like button built into the browser. And the user could pay using PayPal, cryptocurrency (NIM or ETH or BTC), or a credit/debit card. Vivaldi could make money through the arranging of partnerships and being the OASIS swap client.
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@code3 said in Suggested business model: Vivaldi as a subscription broker:
JavaScript blockchain such as Nimiq (which is environmentally friendly
How can JavaScript be environmentally friendly or unfriendly?
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@eggcorn Nimiq (a cryptocurrency), not javascript. You know why, for instance, Bitcoin is an environmental disaster, yes?
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@code3 said in Suggested business model: Vivaldi as a subscription broker:
i think you mean benefit to the users.
No, content providers. Brave blocks their income source (Ads) with no direct replacement. The indirect replacement is that Brave offer is a share of their own income source (ads) that is distributed by goodwill of their users. Worst model ever for a content provider.
@eggcorn said in Suggested business model: Vivaldi as a subscription broker:
Browser lock-in. It sounds like this subscription would only work on Vivaldi, and therefore, would lock you into the Vivaldi browser.
I imagine this to be a Vivaldi Service (hence I posted in the services section). Neatly integrated in the browser but as @code3 said they could offer an extension on other browsers or find some other way (like readly does).
@catweazle said in Suggested business model: Vivaldi as a subscription broker:
Although I don't think it goes this way, it somehow doesn't fit Vivaldi's philosophy.
This should be done openly, transparent, and if you don't want to use it the browser and all websites will still work as they do today. It is just a different and convenient way to get money from consumers willing to pay to content providers that generate high quality content. Nothing wrong with that.
The real challenge is going to be convincing content providers to do this. There was a time when I could buy individual articles on several sites, they all have stopped that.
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@ayespy said in Suggested business model: Vivaldi as a subscription broker:
You know why, for instance, Bitcoin is an environmental disaster, yes?
High electricity usage on the Bitcoin mining servers?
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@wildente , no, apart from a huge waste of electricity and consequently a environmental problem, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrecy are increasingly crystallized as an economic bubble that can burst with dire consequences. That's why I don't think this fits Vivaldi's philosophy and a lot of people are going to look for another browser if Vivaldi gets into this kind of business, sponsors, like Ecosia included.
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@catweazle said in Suggested business model: Vivaldi as a subscription broker:
@wildente , no, apart from a huge waste of electricity and consequently a environmental problem
Neither did I bring up cryptocurreny, nor do I think it makes sense to discuss the technical realization before the business model is drafted, nor do I think the concept hinges on cryptocurreny technology. To quote myself from above:
@wildente said in Suggested business model: Vivaldi as a subscription broker:
Every problem for which a perfectly working solution exists can be solved more complicated with cryptocurrency technology