Why is the Revue model preferable to a blog with a tip jar and RSS?
I understand why Twitter wants in on a lucrative game, but I don't understand the value proposition for writers or readers. I struggle to see how, as a regular person on the internet, I benefit from a "public square" that will hijack my brainstem to maximize engagement, sell my attention and browsing habits to 3rd parties, and suspend my account with no warning if I run afoul of a black-box censor.
It's preferable because people don't want to have to click through multiple screens to do PayPal/Visa Checkout authentication to give somebody $3.
Nobody knows what RSS is either. Even back in mid-00s, I would sometimes struggle to add a blog to my Firefox feed (this was pre-Chrome). On some sites you'd click the RSS button and it would work. On other sites clicking it would display incomprehensible XML markup, causing me to abandon the site.
Tips/micropayments are bad customer experiences. From Stratechery (multi-line quote):
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I am instinctually skeptical of micropayments for a whole host of reasons:
- First, you have to have attach a payment method; it is hard to overcome that level of friction for just a few cents
- Secondly, if said payment method is a credit card, you need to deal with the fact the fees on a credit card transaction start around $0.29
- Third, there is the psychological burden imposed on customers who need to continually choose whether or not to make a purchase
To date the only sort of business that has succeeded with micropayments are free-to-play games: the App Store supplies the payment method (and eats the credit card fees), most games obfuscate the money spent (by selling in-game currency), and even then the strategy succeeds by hooking a small number of “whales” who play the game compulsively; most never pay.
This, in my estimation, would never work for a newspaper or magazine: there is too much competition when it comes to content, the price of any one piece couldn’t be priced high enough to overcome fees, and getting people to pay is hard. Moreover, while a subscription model caps the amount of revenue you earn per customer, it also reduces the likelihood said customer will explore alternatives: it is set and forget, while a micropayment asks for consideration every single time.
I understand why Twitter wants in on a lucrative game, but I don't understand the value proposition for writers or readers. I struggle to see how, as a regular person on the internet, I benefit from a "public square" that will hijack my brainstem to maximize engagement, sell my attention and browsing habits to 3rd parties, and suspend my account with no warning if I run afoul of a black-box censor.