The company behind Adblock Plus is acquiring micropayment service Flattr
-I feel strongly that the mental friction of any payment is the main issue. No matter the UI, payment model or price, micropayment services can't escape forcing mental anguish on the user with the question "is this worth it?"<p>-This is why the unlimited Netflix / Spotify model is so good.  Sure, the content owners could get more revenue from the heaviest consumers with a pay-per-click model, but only at the expense of all the sparse users would rather just pay a monthly fee than have to think "is this click worth it?" every time they want to consume additional content.<p>-I'll predict that within the next few years, the major publishers will come together and form their own subscription company with a revenue share similar to Spotify.  Not sure why it's taking so long, but that day can't come soon enough for me. Why are the publishers letting AdBlock Plus and other potential startups start a business that they could own?<p>Here's my thought process:<p>-People read tons of different publications.<p>-Publications generally prefer subscription fees to ad revenue<p>-People don't want to deal with micropayments<p>-People don't want to pay for (or manage) multiple subscriptions<p>-Giving away your product for free (purposely or with weak paywalls) and asking for donations is probably not a long term sustainable strategy.<p>If the WaPo had 1 $25 subscriber and the WSJ had 1 $25 subscriber, the total industry revenue is $50, but each consumer only gets half the content (although much of the daily news content is roughly identical).  If the WSJ and WaPo shared subscribers, the consumers would get double the content while the industry costs would stay the same.  When consumers see additional value for their subscription dollars, they are more likely to sign up, increasing the number of potential customers.  The industry will lose the revenue of the big spenders, who subscribe to both WaPo and WSJ... but I don't think many of those are digital subscriptions, and I think that's likely to be offset by the torrent of new customers.