[pjc50]

Surprisingly, tiktok is better at this: it surfaces new content to people based on factors other than existing popularity.

> far rather pay an honest few cents for a page view or a video roll

I don't think this holds true for most people. PPV TV has always been kind of a minor thing, and eclipsed now by all-you-can-stream services. The feeling of continually inserting coins, or the taxi meter running, is uncomfortable to many people.

[mbreese]

> PPV TV has always been kind of a minor thing

This is true, but I think fails to be a good counter-example. PPV has always been expensive and focused on single events. What we haven’t seen is AWS style small payments.

Imagine if instead of paying $100/mo for cable TV, we could pay $0.25/hr. If you watched TV 24x7, you’d pay more, but the vast majority of people would pay much less.

The main problem with smaller amount PPV and micro transactions in general is that it is hard to get the billing/accounting right. But this is something that could vendors get right. You only pay for what you use, and what you get is billed in small enough increments that it makes sense for everyone involved.

How this could be applied to online videos, I’m not sure.

[krapht]

AWS style small payments existed at coin-operated arcades. They're all dead, Jim.

Micropayment news services have existed (Blendle). Unpopular.

Pay-as-you-go prepaid cell phone service is also niche. So is the a-la-carte gym membership. It's not that billing/accounting is difficult. It's that it plain straight up makes less money. SAAS vs one-time upgrades, etc.

[thaumasiotes]

> Pay-as-you-go prepaid cell phone service is also niche.

The reason for that is that it's much more expensive than paying by the month. I wanted pay-as-you-go specifically because I have nearly zero need for cell service, but would prefer to be reachable even if I'm not at home.

But you can't get a pay-as-you-go plan with pay-as-you-go pricing. T-mobile's monthly plan now is "$15" (actually something like $16.60) per month. The pay-as-you-go plan would cost less than that, given usage rates, except that it also costs $1 for each day you use it to any degree. The incredibly high minimum fee overwhelms the already small advantage of not paying for service you don't use -- as soon as you use any service, you get charged for more than a full day of every service, and then you have to pay a usage rate on top of that!

[osmarks]

It might be somewhat irrational, but I prefer the fixed-cost-for-unlimited-use model, as it makes the cost of looking at a new thing zero. If I have to pay per use, I'll be discouraged from exploring new content I might like or might not and will look at things similar to what I already see.

[lillecarl]

One problem is that this would deter people from watching, as they would only be watching what they want to see. Bad for business.