Seems to be a riff on flattr / kachingle / contenture / others I can't remember right now. The key difference is that they value-add through the Readability reformatting service.
I've seen this called a number of things -- crowd funding, social micropayments. I had the same basic idea (Contenture was closest) back in August 2008. By carefully hiding the idea I have parlayed my insight into literally zeroes of dollars.
Personally I call it microsubscription.
One thing that Readability have solved neatly is the problem of trustworthy allocations by requiring users to go through their application. My own secret sauce (apart from the business model) is a prototype secure protocol for tracking users in a fraud- and theft-resistant fashion without relying on a trusted application -- just a web browser.
While announcements like these continue to fill me with fear and dismay, watching the rise of Facebook over MySpace et al has taught me not to be such a giver-upper and to get into it. After the fashion of Messrs Page and Brin I am planning to do it as an honours project this year. Might as well double up on the benefits.
I've seen this called a number of things -- crowd funding, social micropayments. I had the same basic idea (Contenture was closest) back in August 2008. By carefully hiding the idea I have parlayed my insight into literally zeroes of dollars.
Personally I call it microsubscription.
One thing that Readability have solved neatly is the problem of trustworthy allocations by requiring users to go through their application. My own secret sauce (apart from the business model) is a prototype secure protocol for tracking users in a fraud- and theft-resistant fashion without relying on a trusted application -- just a web browser.
While announcements like these continue to fill me with fear and dismay, watching the rise of Facebook over MySpace et al has taught me not to be such a giver-upper and to get into it. After the fashion of Messrs Page and Brin I am planning to do it as an honours project this year. Might as well double up on the benefits.