Ready for Pay-Per-Comment? : The Commerce360 Blog

In my own browsing of the archives of DaveNet, I came across this fascinating post by Esther Dyson from December 1, 1994 which introduces an idea we may now call pay-per-comment. One could also argue that the post actually anticipates pay-per-click years before GoTo (which become Overture and was the example that was used to create Google Adwords) by introducing the notion that if you pay to be read/heard it filters content, creates value, and increases the odds of relevance.

From her 12/1/94 post:

It's very simple. We all keep on getting the newsletter for free -- but it costs us, say, $10 to write back. Most of us are pretty short of time, but we're always ready to say something when other important people are listening. Sometimes, we're even humble enough to want to test our ideas against other smart (or at least knowledgeable) thinkers.
It's the way the world is heading, Dave. There's too much noise out there anyway. The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted. The job of the future is pr guy, not journalist. I'm too busy reading, so why should I pay for more things to read? Anything anyone didn't pay to send to me... I'm not going to read.
Yes, in a world full of content and advertising and pr, I still want to know what your friends and mine are thinking, but I want only what they think is so good that they'll pay to have me read it -- because they honestly believe it will raise their stature in my eyes.

It's an interesting idea even today. If leaving a blog comment cost something - say $1 - wouldn't that filter the comments in a useful way? And eliminate comment spam to boot? Assuming that the blog owner still retained full editorial control - so you had to pay and be deemed reasonable and relevant to get posted. I think I would read comments more thoroughly and probably write them more frequently and conscientiously.

Top blogs could charge more, any blogger could give the money to charity, there lots of details to work out. But it's a darn interesting idea. Thanks Esther (12+ years later).

Update: Just noticed Bryan Eisenberg has a discussion of comments. Wonder how this idea would rate.

Comments

We did this for email years ago with Trusted Sender. The world wasn't ready for it for email, which had a much bigger problem with spam than the Web does today (its even bigger today). They're still not ready for it, as others have proposed similar schemes after us and been rejected just as harshly. Also, this sort of thing requires a rock-solid reputation/non-repudiation system in place which has yet to be created for general purposes.

To be fair, the Internet was built on the ability to communicate with people you've never met in person so cheaply that its considered free, so the reaction of the market to this idea is to be expected.

If you're interested in this at all, read up on Penny Black from Microsoft: it was a technical, non-monetary means to the same end and is a pretty good example of this sort of thing.

Posted by: Toby DiPasquale | April 1, 2007 6:53 PM

The concept of "garbage subtracted" is so dead-on, because it builds on the ultimate point: increased relevance. The problem I have is that money is not necessarily the arbiter of relevance. I'm much more interested in what Josh Spear of CoolHunting has to say than People magazine, but People has way more money.

What we really need is a a "quality score"/digital reputation for commenters/web surfers that determines their likelihood to contribute relevant content or discussion. Obviously, you could take a ton of variables into account for this if you wanted to create an internet or network wide reputation: Digg, blog posts written, Amazon reviews submitted and starred, etc. If you are focused on your blog, I might suggest we create a system you create an index of comments approved/submitted. If you combined that with a thumbs-up/down or star rating of the person's comment, you might get somewhere...

Posted by: Alex | April 6, 2007 8:57 AM

I agree that this is something worth pursuing. I would think that a trust score could be linked to emails and if a certain email falls below a certain metric then it gets sent to the spam box. Yahoo, Google and others could generate the database of emails along with askimet and determine the relevance of the commenter.

However the issue remains that anyone can pick any email to use and completely bypasses this system. If we do the same with urls it doesnt take into account those that dont post with urls.

Paying per comment does work in this scenario. I would also use this and donate all the funds to a charity of my choice. The problem with this is that I have helped a few people here and there through comments that would not of paid for the advice.

Overall I think its best just to moderate your own blogs and to try and somehow give value to quality comments.

Posted by: Hornswaggled | July 3, 2007 5:35 PM