Kachingle and Social Networks Could 'Save' News
Kachingle is a User-Driven, Voluntary Way to Add Value to the News
Mar 27, 2009
These same news consumers will also be telling the entire online world about the writers and news websites they support by posting the Kachingle logo on their social networks -- on their FaceBook pages, at My Space, or by 'tweeting' about it on their TWITTER accounts. And news websites themselves will encourage this trend by posting a Kachingle link that displays the names of all their supporters.
All this will happen, that is, if the future of payments for online news in general, and for Kachingle in particular, unfolds the way Cynthia Typaldos, the CEO and founder of Kachingle, envisions it. Typaldos is a widely recognized internet entrepreneur who specializes in web collaboration and the development of social networking software.
"Sprinkle change on the blogs you love," says the tag line of her newest venture. Kachingle sets up the user to decide how much they're willing to spend on web content.
Kachingle is in trial previews at select blogs and news sites now. It will be available to everyone in web publishing from the smallest personal blog, to the largest of the mainstream media's websites (think New York Times, CNN, the local daily paper) when it is launched later this spring. It has been featured at National Public Radio, and praised in a column by online media consultant Steve Outing at Editor and Publisher magazine.
The Debate Over Payments for Online News
Meanwhile, the issue that has been driving it -- how to financially reward those who report, write, and disseminate the news online -- has been making big headlines. A national conversation about how to pay for news is taking place as traditional news companies engage in more and more staff layoffs, and downsize their product, and slowly fail.
Central to the conversation are proposals to charge for online news content, and even though that concept has been tried and discarded by many news companies in the past, it seems to be back with a new name: "micropayments." For various bloggers and news industry opinion makers, sides are being drawn and positions are hardening around this form of payment for content -- and why it will work this time around. Or why it won't.
Making the arguments in favor of micropayments in a Time magazine cover story ("How to Save Your Newspaper,") Time's former managing editor, Walter Isaacson, wrote: ".....a newspaper might decide to charge a nickel for an article, or a dime for that day's full edition, or $2 for a months' worth of web access. "
The response from Outing, in his column at Editor and Publisher is typical of the opposing view: "Ugh. This approach hasn't worked. It won't work. Is completely counter to the nature of the internet. It will hasten newspapers' death spiral."
Kachingle Might Be One Solution
Enter Kachingle into this conversation. Bill Mitchell, the online director of the The Poynter Institute, gives this new device high marks, noting that Kachingle allows publishers to solicit contributions to their websites in a way that avoids some of the problems of micropayments. Any web publisher, he explains, whether a personal blog, or The New York Times or Google will be able to invite contributions via a Kachingle "medallion" or link on its pages.
"This is not a business model that will generate the level of revenue newspapers enjoyed from advertising or circulation in days gone by," cautioned Mitchell, "but it might just be one of the models news organizations rely on."
For Mitchell, the genius of Kachingle is that it replaces "a pricing decision by a publisher, with a user's behavior determining what that content is actually worth.....They go to Kachingle to apportion their contribution among sites they select, with monthly amounts shaped by the number of days they visit each site."
Outing was even more enthusiastic: "..... other than the initial effort of signing up for Kachingle and thus deciding to financially support online content, there is no mental transaction cost to the online user in visiting a news site or blog. Click, read, share any content as you've always done with no barriers in the way. The only mental effort expended is one time per Web site: Do I financially Support this site or not? If I support it, I make one click."
If Outing and Mitchell are correct , news consumers will soon be seeing Kachingle links at the blogs and news sites they visit. And if Typaldos is correct, those consumers will click on that link to send financial support the sites they most often visit.
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