The Interledger Community 🌱: Akita

Akita — Grant Report #2 (Final Report)

Elliot — Sun, 27 Jun 2021 03:26:38 +0000

Hello again Web Monetization community! @sharon and @elliot coming at you with our final report 😮

Project update

Since our interim grant report, we've been:

taking feedback for 'A Web Monetization Story'
developing our project site
fixing bugs in Akita and deploying the extension to Firefox and Edge add-on stores
planning and co-hosting the Akita x Skittish Informal Grantee Hangout
attending MozFest and Future of the Browser

We also ended up extending our grant period by a few months, as we underestimated the time we needed to complete everything we outlined.

We're really grateful for the opportunity to explore Web Monetization and be part of an energetic community aligned on improving the state of monetization on the web. Through this experience, we've learned about the opportunities and challenges in bringing such change to the internet and hope that our project has helped others learn alongside us.

Continue reading for some more details on what we've been up to!

What we achieved

Our three key objectives for our grant period were:

creation of a website,
building the Akita extension, and
planning and engaging in outreach initiatives.

For an overview of these objectives, you can check out our Interim Grant Report. In this section, we'll go over what we were able to accomplish for these objectives since our Interim Grant Report (which was released February 1st, 2021).

Website: 'A Web Monetization Story' and Akita Project Site

[✅ Done] Analyze and release website feedback

We created a feedback form which we linked on the last page of the 'A Web Monetization Story' tutorial. We also linked to the survey here on this forum and on other platforms to ask for thoughts on the website and tutorial. If you're interested, you can read more about the results here: Akita Project Feedback Report. Overall, we received positive feedback indicating that 'A Web Monetization Story' helped improve people's understanding of Web Monetization—particularly the meta tag and the JavaScript API.

Akita Project Feedback Report

Sharon for Akita ・ May 24 '21

#feedback #opensource #software #research

[✅ Done] Add a collection of our Web Monetization content to the website

We developed a simple homepage for The Akita Project, which links to our Akita extension, 'A Web Monetization Story' and Community Outreach efforts. You can check it out here: akitaproject.site!

Extension: Akita

[✅ Done] Release the Akita extension on the Microsoft Edge Add-ons Store

Early February 2021, we released Akita to Microsoft Edge Add-ons Store!
- Edge Add-ons Store Listing
- GitHub Release v1.0.1-beta

[✅ Done] Post about the Akita public beta release with request for feedback

Following our release to Edge Add-ons, we asked Web Monetization community members to support us by taking the Akita Beta release survey. At the time, we had released the extension on the Chrome and Edge extension/add-on stores and were hoping to get some feedback while we continued development and worked towards releasing on the Firefox add-ons store.

Support us by taking the Akita Beta Release Survey

Elliot for Akita ・ Feb 24 '21

#feedback #opensource #software #research

[✅ 🟡 Done-ish] Analyze and release extension feedback

At the end of May 2021, we posted about some of the initial feedback we've received about Akita, but we only received a couple responses, so we plan to post another feedback report once we have a more substantial amount of responses. In our latest updates to the extension, we've added a request for feedback to our UI, so that users are prompted to let us know what they think.

[✅ Done] Release the Akita extension on the Firefox Add-ons Store

In June 2020, we first tried to submit Akita to the Firefox Add-ons Store, but our extension failed some of the tests and warnings due to our leveraging of some newer JavaScript language features and some unsafe code. It seemed that Firefox was a bit more strict with their expectations for the extension compared to Chrome, so we deferred publishing to the Firefox store in favour of developing the extension features further. In March 2021, we revisited submitting to the Firefox store and created a GitHub Milestone for Passing Firefox Submission Tests. Once we knocked out those issues and wrapped up with development, we created new store listing extension preview images (which we also use for Chrome and Edge) and resubmitted at the end of May 2021. Tests passed and our extension was accepted! 🎉
- Firefox Add-ons Store Listing
- GitHub Release v1.1.1-beta

[❌ Removed] Add a Web Monetized site discovery feature to the extension

We requested a Scope Change to remove this feature from our deliverables, as we felt that we could provide more benefit to the Web Monetization community by using the rest of our grant time planning and hosting an informal grantee hangout, instead of adding another feature to the extension.

Other

We started our repo Wiki so we can keep a glossary of terms we use in development. So far, we've added 'Adapted Site' to our glossary: github.com/esse-dev/akita/wiki/Glossary.

Outreach Initiatives

[✅ Done] Post two more blog posts

Our goal here was to connect with the community, share our progress and potentially get some feedback! Since our Interim Grant Report, we've posted the following blog posts:
- 9 Months Into Our Web Monetization Journey: a shortened version of our Interim Grant Report for DEV Community.
- Support us by taking the Akita Beta Release Survey: a request for feedback on the Akita extension.
- What the WOOF 🐶 is Web Monetization? — Akita: Our short write-up for the Akita Project for the Web Monetization MozFest showcase.
- Akita Project Feedback Report: A report on the feedback we've received for 'A Web Monetization Story' and the Akita extension.

[✅ Done] Plan outreach for February and March May

Before we applied for a project deadline extension, we had planned to do some more major outreach initiatives in February/March, but ended up extending our project and planning a larger outreach event in May.

Web Monetization Community MozFest Space

In March 2021, we reached out to the Grant Team to see if there was any community outreach we could help out with. It just so happened that the team was busy planning Web Monetization activities for MozFest, and were looking for a grantee welcome message for the MozFest Attendee Welcome Page on this forem. We wrote a little blurb which you can check out on the MozFest Welcome Page if you like!

Akita x Skittish Informal Grantee Hangout

In our discussions and ideation, we imagined hosting a grantee hangout, showcase or educational session on a spatial audio event platform. We had recently used Rambly and Gather Town in our personal hangouts with friends, and thought it'd be a fun medium for a grantee event. Between the start of March and sometime after MozFest, we stumbled across Andy's grant report for Skittish and we were so excited about Skittish! We were absolutely delighted to hear that there was such a delightful spatial audio event platform in the works right in the Web Monetization Community. We were able to connect with Andy in March to express our interest in some collaboration ideas and started doing the planning in April. Then, we spent the next month planning the event, designing our Skittish event space, working out the logistics (timing of event, invited speakers, etc.) and getting very stoked for the hangout day. Come hangout day, it was a wonderful gathering of our best adorable-3D-animal-selves, with open discussion on Web Monetization, wins and challenges in the space, and just exploring the delightful Skittish space.

Future of the Browser Unconference

Amber reached out mid-May for some content for the Future of Browser Unconference (May 26th, 2021) and we were happy to share some of the video/demo content we had created for Akita and 'A Web Monetization Story'. You can watch the full conference playlist here and our video for the conference here.

In the last few weeks of our grant period, we also had some conversations with fellow grantees and community members over email and video call, which we really enjoyed. As always, feel free to reach out if you'd like to chat with us!

Communications and marketing

Since we wrote our interim project report we've tweeted, created a project website and LinkedIn page, hosted a grantee hangout with the help of Andy Baio and the Grant team, posted a few articles here on the Web Monetization Community, done an interview on our project, and shown off our work at a conference. Here's a link roundup of some of the communications and marketing around our work!

Akita x Skittish Informal Grantee Hangout

Eventbrite Ticketing: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/grantee-hangout-tickets-153405966375
A little mention in Andy's May 2021 Skittish Updates.
Some Tweets about the event: // Detect dark theme var iframe = document.getElementById('tweet-1395223041936826369-232'); if (document.body.className.includes('dark-theme')) { iframe.src = "https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1395223041936826369&theme=dark" } // Detect dark theme var iframe = document.getElementById('tweet-1395087454462529547-832'); if (document.body.className.includes('dark-theme')) { iframe.src = "https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1395087454462529547&theme=dark" }

Web Monetization @ MozFest 2021

MozFest Web Monetization Community Welcome Page

What the WOOF 🐶 is Web Monetization? — Akita

Sharon for Akita ・ Mar 7 '21

#mozfest #opensource #software

Future of the Browser 2021

Our video on Akita and 'A Web Monetization Story' is showcased on the Future of the Browser site

General Social Media/Platform Communication

Twitter: esse_dev, Sharon, Elliot

Asking for Feedback / Communicating Feedback

Akita Beta Release Survey mentioned in "What we achieved" above
Akita Project Feedback Report mentioned in "What we achieved" above
AkitaFeedback@gmail.com

This time around we didn't prioritize posting on DEV as we realized it wasn't the right audience for what we wanted to communicate and get feedback on.

What’s next?

With the grant period coming to a close for the Akita project, and after more than a year of part-time development, we are going to take a break. During the break we want to relax, learn, take a step back, and figure out how the Akita project fits into what we both want to do in our careers and our lives.

Even though we won't be actively developing our project for now, we absolutely both want to stay a part of the Web Monetization space & community, and we want to keep our eyes on the community's projects, the development of technologies in the space such as Interledger and Rafiki, and the larger social and technological space of the exchange of value on the internet.

We would be more than happy to receive any messages about Akita, Web Monetization, or anything really, from any of you. You can reach us at any of the places we list in Get in touch with us! at the bottom of this post.

What community support would benefit your project?

Although we won't be actively creating new things as part of the Akita project, the things we created during the project remain available and open source. Both the Akita browser extension and 'A Web Monetization Story' could benefit from feedback from the members of the community they are made for (a.k.a. people like you, the reader). Here are the links to give feedback:

The Akita browser extension
- If you’re a Coil user, please fill out this Akita feedback survey
- If you’re not a Coil user, please fill out this Akita feedback survey instead
'A Web Monetization Story' website
- Feedback survey

If we receive bug reports or small improvement requests we would be happy to take the time to improve the browser extension and website. Feedback also helps us both grow in our careers as Open Source Software Developers. Speaking of Open Source, you can contribute code, issues, or even new features to our projects on Github. We would be more than happy to review your proposed code changes, or address and comment on your issues:

Contribute to the Akita browser extension on GitHub

esse-dev / akita

A browser extension that gives you insight into your engagement with Web Monetization.
Contribute to 'A Web Monetization Story' on GitHub

esse-dev / a-web-monetization-story

An interactive, story-based Web Monetization tutorial for online creators.

Lastly, if you're interested in our work and want to see where the Akita project—and Sharon and Elliot—go from here, follow and reach out to us on our social media accounts linked below.

Get in touch with us!

Special thanks to Chris, Erika, Ayesha and Desigan from the grant team for supporting us monetarily through the Grant for the Web, and through encouragement and collaboration.

Akita Project Feedback Report

Sharon — Mon, 24 May 2021 20:23:24 +0000

Introduction

As part of the Akita Project, @elliot and I created 'A Web Monetization Story' and the Akita browser extension. We've asked users of both 'A Web Monetization Story' and the Akita extension to fill out surveys. The goal of the surveys is to try to understand:

what parts of Web Monetization people are struggling with,
how the projects we've created are helping people understand and engage with Web Monetization, and
what parts of our projects we could improve. Below are the user feedback reports from the surveys.

'A Web Monetization Story' Feedback Report

‘A Web Monetization Story’ is an interactive, story-based Web Monetization tutorial that seeks to help creators understand how simple it is to enable Web Monetization on their own sites.

We’ve asked for feedback by linking to a survey on the Grant for the Web Forum, DEV Community and Twitter. We also received feedback during the development of 'A Web Monetization Story' for Betahack in August 2020.

We originally created the survey using Typeform (but migrated to Google Forms since Typeform started limiting number of responses) and included the link on the last page of ‘A Web Monetization Story’, as well as on the platforms mentioned above. If you’d like to share your thoughts on ‘A Web Monetization Story’, we welcome you to fill out the survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdUzTD8Z4Tz_KO_DSZUJ0-6H_0_-vgWpi9qnFrwSAjPRnJvQg/viewform! So far, we’ve received 9 responses which we’ve summarized below, grouped by question.

Were you using Web Monetization before you came across 'A Web Monetization Story'?

5 people chose "No, but I was already interested in it"
3 people chose "Yes"
1 person chose "No"

Which categories would you place yourself in?

6 people identified as Developers
5 people identified as Online Creators
1 person identified as an Influencer
1 person wrote something else (not included here to protect their privacy)

What was your overall impression of 'A Web Monetization Story'?

Average response: 4.78 / 5

How would you rate your Web Monetization understanding before/after visiting 'A Web Monetization Story'?

Before visiting 'A Web Monetization Story':

Average response: 6.89 / 10

After visiting 'A Web Monetization Story':

Average response: 8.56 / 10

Which parts of Web Monetization did 'A Web Monetization Story' help you understand?

5 people selected "The Monetization Meta Tag"
4 people selected "The Web Monetization Javascript API"
3 people selected "How Web Monetization works"
1 person selected "How you can leverage Web Monetization"
1 person selected "Payment Pointers/Digital Wallets"
1 person selected "Web Monetization Providers/Senders (like Coil)"
1 person selected "Other" and wrote "I didn't learn anything new, but enjoyed your presentation!"
0 people selected "Why Web Monetization matters"
0 people selected "The Web Monetization Community"

Was there anything in 'A Web Monetization Story' that was not explained in a way that helped you understand? Do you have any questions remaining after visiting 'A Web Monetization Story'?

1 person said they knew about Coil, but were wondering about other providers.
1 person suggested expanding 'A Web Monetization Story' into a choose-your-own-adventure demo.
1 person asked how a static site or blog can use Web Monetization. They wondered if the meta tag was enough or if JavaScript was necessary.
1 person said that although we say where to go to get a payment pointer, an explanation of how to actually get the payment pointer is missing.
5 people said nothing or expressed that the explanation was sufficient.

Were you able to navigate through 'A Web Monetization Story' easily? Did you get lost at any point?

Everyone expressed that it was easy to navigate and that they did not get lost.

Do you have any other questions or feedback for us?

1 person said that 'A Web Monetization Story' should let people know that Web Monetization is not at a point where you can make substantial money from it, since there are not enough Coil subscribers. This person said their Web Monetized site gets many visitors per day, but the Web Monetization income they get is mostly from when they visit their own site. They also said that the time and effort required to get involved in Web Monetization is totally worth it, and that we don't want to scare people off. They concluded by asking how we can make people aware that Web Monetization is in the early (low money making potential) stages while still communicating that it is worth it.
A couple responses with words of encouragement.

Other Feedback (not from survey)

We developed ‘A Web Monetization Story’ as part of Betahack ‘Fix The Internet’ Hackathon. Some of the helpful feedback we got during the hackathon:

Interactive storytelling interface is awesome
Interaction could be easily transitioned for other use cases: training employees for a certain workflow, introducing a new app feature, service focused on providing businesses to build this for their platforms
Value proposition of ‘A Web Monetization Story’ interface: intuitive way to introduce consumers on how to use the new platform/workflow
Possible prototype: provide an adopter of the interactive tutorial interface with a form/markdown file to upload and tag images/captions, interface would convert/animate the form/images into components of the story Story could highlight and interact with DOM elements of the webpage during the onboarding/training process
Could use this format to enable onboarding and education through incentive

Akita Extension Feedback Report

Akita is a browser extension that presents your top visited monetized sites, how much time you’re spending on them, and how much you're contributing (or could contribute) to them.

We asked for feedback by linking to two surveys on the Web Monetization community, which we also shared on Twitter. One survey was for people who use Coil, and the other was for people who do not use Coil.

We created the surveys in Google Forms. If you’d like to share your thoughts on the Akita extension, we welcome you to fill out one of the surveys:

If you’re a Coil user, please fill out this Akita feedback survey.
If you’re not a Coil user, please fill out this Akita feedback survey instead.

So far, we've received two responses from Coil users, and no responses from non-Coil users. Since there is very little data, we give some broad interpretations from the responses below.

Both people responded positively (gave at least a 4 out of 5) to the following questions:

Would you say that it's difficult for you to find Web Monetized sites related to your interests?
Would you say that Akita helps you understand how your Web Monetization Provider (e.g. Coil) distributes micropayments to the websites you visit?
- If you answered no, can you tell us why not? If you answered yes, can you share how Akita helps?
Would you say that Akita gives you a better understanding of which websites you support through Web Monetization?
Would you say Akita encourages you to spend more time on Web Monetized sites?
Does the Akita tutorial provide an effective overview of Web Monetization?
Does the Akita tutorial provide an effective introduction to the Akita extension?

Both people responded negatively (gave at most a 2 out of 5) to the following question:

Do you feel like the recommendations in "These monetized sites could use ❤️" are useful to you?

Conclusion

Summary of Feedback

We saw that 'A Web Monetization Story' helped improve people's understanding of Web Monetization overall, and particularly helped people understand the meta tag, the Javascript API, and how Web Monetization works. Although 'A Web Monetization Story' was easy to navigate, people were left wondering about providers, whether or not it was necessary to use the Javascript API, and how to get a payment pointer. A few people expressed that the 'A Web Monetization Story' format could be expanded upon, and another person expressed that the reality that Web Monetization is new and still hard to make money off of was left out.

We received overall positive feedback on the Akita extension, but learned that the "Sites that could use ❤️" section was not very useful. We used this information in our decision to prioritize hosting the recent Grantee Hangout event over developing more site discoverability features in the extension. We may also remove the "Sites that could use ❤️" section in the future if we find another use for that space in the UI.

Learnings

A major takeaway from our surveying experience so far is that we’re not promoting our surveys enough. As a result, we have not gotten a significant number of responses. From ‘A Web Monetization Story’ surveying, it seems that it’s effective to include the survey link as part of the project. In ‘A Web Monetization Story’, we include the survey link in the last page of the site, so users are prompted to share their thoughts immediately after using it.

We have not received many responses to the Akita browser extension survey (only 2 responses from Coil users and no responses from non-Coil users). We intend to address this lack of responses by adding the survey link into our extension, so that users will be able to head to our survey from the extension itself. This should help us get to the non-Coil users of the Akita extension, who likely aren’t hanging around the Web Monetization Community Forem or Twitter communities (where we’ve been asking for feedback). We’ve implemented adding the survey link to Akita and will be pushing this change in our next release to the Chrome, Edge and Firefox add-on/extension stores.

Going forward, we plan to:

seek out more avenues to request feedback (i.e. other forums and Slack/Discord communities)
directly integrate/link our feedback collection into our projects.

Final Thoughts

Our grant period is coming to an end this month, so we’re wrapping up development and will be putting together our final grant report soon. Thank you to everyone for sending us your feedback—we really appreciate it!

What the WOOF 🐶 is Web Monetization? — Akita

Sharon — Sun, 07 Mar 2021 05:43:38 +0000

10 months ago, we learned about Web Monetization. A few keywords stood out to us: open, fair and inclusive. These words weren’t something we were used to seeing amongst monetization on the web, which generally involves targeted ads, paywalls and other unfortunate things.

But we found ourselves struggling to understand and find resources to learn about Web Monetization. To tackle this problem, we began the Akita project. We created resources which introduce Web Monetization through easy-to-use tools, storytelling and community outreach. Scroll down to see what we've made!

Our Team

Hi there! We’re @elliot and @sharon, the co-creators of the Akita project. We’re both software developers, but also find ourselves designing, speaking, writing and illustrating. Here’s our socials if you’d like to reach out!

Elliot: Twitter | Website | LinkedIn
Sharon: Twitter | LinkedIn

Akita Browser Extension

Whether or not you’re using a Web Monetization Provider such as Coil, you can get started with Akita to find out how you engage with Web Monetization on the internet.

GitHub — Our open-source code repository for the extension.
Install on Chrome
Install on Edge
YouTube Demo Video
Request for Feedback — Please let us know what you think of the extension!

'A Web Monetization Story' Website

Check out our interactive Web Monetization tutorial for online creators. We give you the basics of how to add Web Monetization to a site through the story of Auden and Chicken.

Website — Try out the interactive tutorial!
Demo Video
GitHub — Our open-source code repository for the website.
Process — How we built the website.

Community Outreach

Over the past six months, we've spoken at two conferences, posted two articles and engaged with the community on a bunch of platforms. We hope to see you around the community!

“Doing My Bit To Help Build the Web Monetization Community” — Blog post on Sharon’s Web Monetization journey.
"Cultivating awareness and understanding around Web Monetization" — Elliot’s talk on our efforts in the micropayments space.
Twitter — We post updates here!
DEV Community — We blogged about our early stage Web Monetization efforts here.

Friends of Akita

Being a part of Web Monetization is awesome for a lot of reasons, but the supportive and open people is a big reason we love it. Check out @thomasbnt's list of Web Monetization resources if you're interested in what the community is getting up to!

Link Roundup

Support us by taking the Akita Beta Release Survey

Elliot — Wed, 24 Feb 2021 04:59:14 +0000

Hi, we're @sharon and @elliot— the people behind the Akita project. We recently released Akita on the

Chrome Web Store 🎉
Edge add-ons store 🎉

and we invite you to install Akita and try it out! (Akita is also coming to the Firefox add-ons store soon)

About the Akita project

Akita is an open source browser extension that gives you insight into your engagement with Web Monetization. Akita presents your top visited monetized sites, how much time you’re spending on them, and how much you're contributing (or could be contributing) to them.

Request For Feedback

We want to hear from people in the Web Monetization community so that we can understand how to make Akita a better resource. We’d love it if you would take Akita for a spin and then share your thoughts on your experience. Currently, Akita can be installed on the Chrome Web Store and Edge add-ons store (links above). We will collect the survey results, use them to inform our development process, and post the anonymized results later—after receiving a collection of responses.

If you’re a Coil user, please fill out this Akita feedback survey.

If you’re not a Coil user, please fill out this Akita feedback survey instead.

If surveys are not really your thing, we’re happy to take feedback in the comments here or you can email us directly at AkitaFeedback@gmail.com.

We really appreciate you trying out Akita and sharing your feedback with us!

Akita — Grant Report #1

Sharon — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 06:17:10 +0000

Hi Web Monetization community! @elliot and @sharon here :)

Project Update

We're four months into our six month Grant for the Web project, Akita. So far we've:

created "A Web Monetization Story" for helping creators on the web engage with and understand Web Monetization;
improved the Akita browser extension and released it on the Chrome Web Store (stay tuned for a post asking for feedback!); and
participated in: Creative Commons Global Summit 2020, Future of Micropayments Conference 2020 and hackathon communities to talk about Web Monetization!

We've been enjoying coding, designing, writing and chatting as part of the Web Monetization community. Some of our big wins have been placing 2nd🥈 in the BetaHack "Fix the Internet" hackathon with "A Web Monetization Story", having our projects and presentations featured on developers.coil.com and receiving our first issue reported by a community member on Akita. Our main struggle has been balancing development of the Akita extension, along with community outreach and development of our website "A Web Monetization Story".

Progress on objectives

Our three key objectives were: creation of a website, building the Akita extension and outreach initiatives. In this section, we'll outline and summarize each of these objectives. In the Key Activities section, we’ll go into more detail and provide links for each objective.

Website

In August, we had the opportunity to participate in BetaHack, a hackathon to "Fix the Internet", where we built our website "A Web Monetization Story". We originally planned to participate in BetaHack as an outreach initiative, but our work for the hackathon evolved into the website in our grant proposal.

In our original grant timeline, we planned to develop our website's MVP (Minimum Viable Product) in September, but we instead decided to go all-in during the hackathon building, open-sourcing and collecting feedback on "A Web Monetization Story" in August.

See the following website milestone statuses or look at the Key Activities section for links and details.

[✅ Done] Designed and built a website ("A Web Monetization Story").
[✅ Done] Collected a first round of website feedback.
[📋 To do] Analyze and release website feedback.
[📋 To do] Add a collection of our Web Monetization content to the website.
[✅↪️ Changed] Help users of the web understand and engage with Web Monetization — we saw an opportunity to instead specifically help creators with "A Web Monetization Story".
[✅↪️ Changed] Add a Web Monetized site discovery feature to the website — because "A Web Monetization Story" is aimed towards creators, we decided to include a curated set of resources on Web Monetization rather than a Web Monetized site discovery feature as we had originally proposed.

Extension

We originally built and open-sourced the Akita browser extension for the Grant for the Web x DEV Community hackathon from late May to mid June of 2020. In our proposal, we planned to release the Akita extension on browser extension stores in July 2020, but were rejected from the Google Chrome Web Store and had to push back the release.

Over the past four months we've fallen behind on Akita extension development while we prioritized building "A Web Monetization Story", spent time learning about open-source and business, jumped on outreach initiative opportunities and faced personal obligations (such as Elliot finishing university and finding a full time job).

[✅ Done] Released the Akita extension on the Google Chrome Web Store.
[🏗️ In Progress] Post about the Akita public beta release with request for feedback.
[📋 To do] Analyze and release extension feedback.
[📋 To do] Release the Akita extension on the Microsoft Edge Add-ons Store.
[📋 To do] Release the Akita extension on the Firefox Add-ons Store
[📋 To do] Add a Web Monetized site discovery feature to the extension.
[🧘 Stretch Goal] Release the Akita extension on the Mac App Store for Safari
[❌↪️ Removed] Add a historical data visualization feature — We don’t plan to add this feature because we don't think it provides value in helping users understand Web Monetization better — it is more of an accounting tool.

Outreach Initiatives

Over the past six months, we've spoken at two conferences, posted two major articles and engaged with the community on a bunch of platforms 🙂. We're always on the lookout for more opportunities to grow the Web Monetization community!

[✅ Done] Elliot presented a lightning talk at the Future of Micropayments conference.
[✅ Done] Sharon was a panelist at the CC Global Summit "Can Web Monetization support digital creators?" roundtable.
[✅ Done] Sharon published "Doing My Bit To Help Build the Web Monetization Community" on HackerNoon.
[✅ Done] Posted about our process building "A Web Monetization Story" for BetaHack.
[📋 To do] Plan outreach for February and March.
[📋 To do] Post two more blog posts.
[📋 To do] Publish website and extension feedback.

Key Activities

This section is a collection of links for the specific items that were carried out for each objective, and provides some more detail on key activities.

Website: “A Web Monetization Story” (AWMS)

Built for the Betahack “Fix the Internet” Hackathon
- GitHub repo
- Basic Web Monetization code introduced in AWMS tutorial
- Devpost hackathon submission
- Demo Video
- Won 2nd place overall! Winners Announcement
Feedback on AWMS
- Feedback session (with Reggie) during hackathon — helped us focus on the story behind the tutorial, to help creators relate to our character Auden
- Betawork Camp Pitch/Feedback from Danika and Fahim of Betalab
- DEV Community post requesting feedback
- Grant for the Web forum post requesting feedback
  - Also chatted with @chrislarry and @erikad about including AWMS in Web Monetization onboarding :)
Other Mentions of AWMS
- On HackSultan’s thread on HashNode thanks to @cyberdees!
- Coil Developers Blog Resources
- @thomasbnt’s Awesome Web Monetization under Tutorials

Extension: Akita

Notable Advancements
- Implemented changes for our development milestone, which contained items we wanted to complete before releasing Akita on the Chrome extension store. For all closed issues and merged pull requests for this milestone, you can check out our GitHub Milestone
- Received our first user-raised issue! We fixed the issue as part of our development milestone
- Fixed several bugs related to using Akita on Adapted Sites (i.e. Twitch, YouTube, monetized iframe) bugs: issue #79, issue #97, issue #101
- Created V1 beta release on GitHub, which contains all the changes for the milestone
- Wrote a Privacy Policy
- Released Akita on Chrome Web Store!
- Reviewed code/asset licensing of content hosted in our GitHub repository, such as external assets
  - Added new documentation and attribution for assets from external sources (not created by Elliot or Sharon) — see our external sources directory
Other Mentions of Akita
- Coil Developers Blog Projects
- @thomasbnt’s Awesome Web Monetization under Tools
- Defold Forum Thread “We are hosting a Web Monetization game jam”
- Itch.io Forum Topic Thread “Web Monetization support added to itch.io uploads!”
- ts-defold/tsd-template-web-monetized GitHub repo README

Outreach Initiative

Blog Posts
- HackerNoon Blog Post: Doing My Bit To Help Build the Web Monetization Community
Conferences
- Sharon was a panelist for the Creative Commons Summit 2020 discussion on: Can Web Monetization Support Digital Creators? in October 2020
  - No replay video, but Sharon makes a 2 second cameo in the very beginning of the Summit wrap-up video
- Elliot was a speaker for the Future of Micropayments conference in November 2020
  - Elliot and Sharon prepared a presentation on: Cultivating awareness and understanding around Web Monetization, highlighting our efforts in the Web Monetization space with Akita and A Web Monetization Story
  - Elliot’s talk replay video
Personal Discussions with Friends, Family, Coworkers
- Explained our efforts behind the Akita project, what Web Monetization is and the goals of Grant for the Web
- Took note of feedback, suggestions and questions about Web Monetization
- Encouraged them to explore the technology, get involved in the open source efforts and check out our work :)
Other Mentions
- Sharon received 3rd Place for Best Web Monetization Innovator Award in the 2020 Noonies
- Coil Developers Blog Resources
  - Cultivating awareness and understanding around Web Monetization Video
  - Doing My Bit To Help Build the Web Monetization Community

Communications and marketing

We won’t go into too much detail here, since specific blog posts/links were included in the Key Activities section above.

In general, we’ve been posting to our personal Twitter accounts (Elliot’s Twitter, Sharon’s Twitter) on any news related to our grant project efforts. We’ve recently created a Twitter account for esse-dev, an unofficial “organization” which represents our dev work as a duo. We plan to make development updates related to Akita and "A Web Monetization Story" (such as releases) on the @esse-dev Twitter account, so that information can be seen in a central spot.

Much of our discussion as it relates to development can be found in our open source repos for Akita and "A Web Monetization Story". We make use of GitHub issues to log bugs, enhancements, general feature development and facilitate any further discussion on implementation. We have also created an issue to explore setting up GitHub Discussions in our Akita repo.

We’ve had a couple opportunities to participate in online conferences related to Web Monetization (Creative Commons Web Monetization Panel; Future of Micropayments Conference), which we’ve really enjoyed! We are keeping an eye out for more opportunities to get involved in this format, as we find the engagement with audience members to be especially helpful and enjoyable.

Lastly, we have made use of DEV Community, Hacker Noon and the Grant for the Web Forum to post and discuss our efforts with the broader community. DEV Community and Hacker Noon have a primarily software development-centric audience, which helps us reach developers who may be interested in exploring Web Monetization. Going forward, we plan to share our major updates on both the Web Monetization Forem and DEV Community, i.e. create a duplicate post on DEV Community.

Links to Our Socials

What’s next?

Here are our To-Dos for the remainder of our grant period:

Website
- [📋 To do] Analyze and release website feedback.
- [📋 To do] Add a collection of our Web Monetization content to the website.
Extension
- [🏗️ In Progress] Post about the Akita public beta release with request for feedback.
- [📋 To do] Analyze and release extension feedback.
- [📋 To do] Release the Akita extension on the Microsoft Edge Add-ons Store.
- [📋 To do] Release the Akita extension on the Firefox Add-ons Store
- [📋 To do] Add a Web Monetized site discovery feature to the extension.
Outreach
- [📋 To do] Plan outreach for February and March.
- [📋 To do] Post two more blog posts.
General
- [📋 To do] Identify KPIs and set milestones based off feedback
- [📋 To do] Continue learning about: the tech around Web Monetization (Interledger, blockchain), running a business, licensing, etc.

What community support would benefit your project?

Our goal with the Akita project is to create content and resources that help our users better understand and engage with Web Monetization. So, the most helpful community support we can receive is you trying out our stuff and sending us your feedback! We want to know how (and if) our projects are helping you.

If you have some spare time, check out "A Web Monetization Story" and fill out the survey at the end to let us know your thoughts! (If you’ve already checked out the website, but missed the survey, you can fill it out here: "A Web Monetization Story" survey).

Coming soon: we’ll be posting an update on the Akita extension on this forem, with download links and a feedback form.

We’re continuously looking out for opportunities to speak at conferences, engage in community calls and participate in Web Monetization advocacy efforts, so feel free to reach out to us if there’s an opportunity that we can get involved in!

Finally, we’ve created a Twitter account for us to communicate updates on our progress going forward — we’d appreciate it if you gave us a follow: @esse_dev. Not much going on there yet, but stay tuned! :)

Additional comments

Over the course of the project we've learned about open content and open source licensing, incorporation in Canada, privacy policies and browser extension development, among other things. Elliot gave his first conference talk and Sharon published her first browser extension: Akita!

Shout out to the Web Monetization community! We've appreciated all the support we've received since we started on Akita nine months ago. It's been awesome to speak at conferences, receive feedback from the community and meet so many cool people.

Thanks,

the esse-dev team (Sharon and Elliot)

The Interledger Community 🌱: Akita

Akita — Grant Report #2 (Final Report)

Project update

What we achieved

Website: 'A Web Monetization Story' and Akita Project Site

[✅ Done] Analyze and release website feedback

Akita Project Feedback Report

Sharon for Akita ・ May 24 '21

[✅ Done] Add a collection of our Web Monetization content to the website

Extension: Akita

[✅ Done] Release the Akita extension on the Microsoft Edge Add-ons Store

[✅ Done] Post about the Akita public beta release with request for feedback

Support us by taking the Akita Beta Release Survey

Elliot for Akita ・ Feb 24 '21

[✅ 🟡 Done-ish] Analyze and release extension feedback

[✅ Done] Release the Akita extension on the Firefox Add-ons Store

[❌ Removed] Add a Web Monetized site discovery feature to the extension

Other

Outreach Initiatives

[✅ Done] Post two more blog posts

[✅ Done] Plan outreach for February and March May

Web Monetization Community MozFest Space

Akita x Skittish Informal Grantee Hangout

Future of the Browser Unconference

Communications and marketing

Akita x Skittish Informal Grantee Hangout

Web Monetization @ MozFest 2021

What the WOOF 🐶 is Web Monetization? — Akita

Sharon for Akita ・ Mar 7 '21

Future of the Browser 2021

General Social Media/Platform Communication

Asking for Feedback / Communicating Feedback

What’s next?

What community support would benefit your project?

esse-dev / akita

A browser extension that gives you insight into your engagement with Web Monetization.

esse-dev / a-web-monetization-story

An interactive, story-based Web Monetization tutorial for online creators.

Get in touch with us!

Akita Project Feedback Report

Introduction

'A Web Monetization Story' Feedback Report

Were you using Web Monetization before you came across 'A Web Monetization Story'?

Which categories would you place yourself in?

What was your overall impression of 'A Web Monetization Story'?

How would you rate your Web Monetization understanding before/after visiting 'A Web Monetization Story'?

Which parts of Web Monetization did 'A Web Monetization Story' help you understand?

Was there anything in 'A Web Monetization Story' that was not explained in a way that helped you understand? Do you have any questions remaining after visiting 'A Web Monetization Story'?

Were you able to navigate through 'A Web Monetization Story' easily? Did you get lost at any point?

Do you have any other questions or feedback for us?

Other Feedback (not from survey)

Akita Extension Feedback Report

Conclusion

Summary of Feedback

Learnings

Final Thoughts

What the WOOF 🐶 is Web Monetization? — Akita

Our Team

Akita Browser Extension

'A Web Monetization Story' Website

Community Outreach

Friends of Akita

Link Roundup

Support us by taking the Akita Beta Release Survey

About the Akita project

Request For Feedback

If you’re a Coil user, please fill out this Akita feedback survey.

If you’re not a Coil user, please fill out this Akita feedback survey instead.

Akita — Grant Report #1

Project Update

Progress on objectives

Website

Extension

Outreach Initiatives

Key Activities

Website: “A Web Monetization Story” (AWMS)

Extension: Akita

Outreach Initiative

Communications and marketing

Links to Our Socials