So Google is planning to roll out later this year a micropayment system for web content called Newspass. The concept is a single, standardized system for many publishers to put a “pay to read this story” button on their web pages.
Now, I’m on record as not a fan of paywalls online (they’re often considered for the wrong reasons and with a lack of economic understanding). As bad as that is, micropayments are worse.
People who have been paying attention have learned that valuable websites are created through building a loyal community …

You have less than one year left to talk about mobile devices as the “future” of media.
A lot of people have been talking about the eventual dominance of mobile. Some people have been planning. How many are truly ready?
We’ll know next year.

Digital Capital Week kicks off with a big party tonight at and around Long View Gallery in NW. There are a ton of great events (including one hosted by TBD) over the following week for the DC area digital/tech community.

A friend who recently started working for a journalism institute e-mailed me for advice about how to grow the institute’s Twitter following. My response applies to both institutes and institutions, including newspapers, and somewhat to individuals as well. So I thought I should share it.
Here is a summary of my advice to him

Jeff Jarvis got some prime access at Davos to the top executives at Google and has a great post at Buzzmachine detailing the questions and answers. The whole thing is worth a read, but I want to quickly highlight 7 points  I found the most interesting/relevant.
– More AdSense transparency. Google will “consider” disclosing the revenue split numbers behind the AdSense program.
– Dissing the iPad. “You might want to tell me what the difference is between a large phone and a tablet,” Schmidt said.
– Apps are everything. “The phone is defined …

Two big events will dominate the news on Wednesday. Apple is announcing a much anticipated new tablet computer, and President Obama is giving his biggest annual policy address, the State of the Union.
Which is most important? Let’s break it down:

The New York Times has decided that direct consumer payments for content must be a part of its online revenue mix. The metered paywall plan announced today was envisioned as a safe way to test the waters, keeping a mix of free ad-supported traffic and paying subscribers. But the model actually is a big gamble — with the best chance of working, but also the biggest damage from possible failure.
Begin with an admission, as David Carr notes in an insightful and honest post, that no one knows for sure how …

The paywall debate is about to move from words to actions. In the biggest large-scale test of whether a news website can successfully charge readers for access, The New York Times is about to announce an online subscription model, New York magazine reports.
So, will it work?
Much of the answer depends on how exactly it is structured, which we don’t yet know. What Gabriel Sherman reports is that it will be a metered model, where a user can see a certain number of free pages before being forced to subscribe.
What that …

From an article in the Telegraph:
(Google CEO Eric) Schmidt … to him the revenue model the newspaper industry will have to use comes after a pretty simple, and essentially binary, decision.
“The simplest model to think about is that your readers are eventually going to consume the majority of your products in online devices. The fact of the matter is that is what the reader is choosing.
“The problem is how do you monetise that reader?
There are two choices. One is that you can do a subscription and the other is to …

Journalism is about asking and answering questions. So for journalism the “metaquestion” — the question underlying all other questions — is, what questions shall we ask?
Until now, that metaquestion was answered by an analog process. It leveraged no network or algorithm. It basically consisted of editors speculating what they think the public should know, and reporters talking to informed people. That was fine, for the time.
But we can do better now.
That metaquestion can now be answered in powerful new ways that take advantage of the collaborative web. In short, the …