The Interledger Community 🌱: Juha Viitala

Web Monetized Multimedia — Final Report #2

Juha Viitala — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 01:44:25 +0000

Project Update

Micropayments and actual pay-per-use have been the “holy grail” of web monetization during the last decade. We have been thrilled to contribute our part in trying to solve this problem, or at least evaluate some aspects of the ecosystem that one day could make this a mainstream use case.

When we were starting the project we were studying the current state of Web Monetization - we realized that adding a simple Web Monetization for your website is easy, but building a more complex web monetization platform, like a video-sharing platform or a news website, requires additional logic.

Then we started building the WMM project - which is a new technology allowing content creators to easily receive money from their digital goods. wmm-components includes a collection of components that allow creators of media (whether video, audio or text) to start receiving money with a simple installation and configuration file.

Progress on objectives

The main objective of the WMM project is to promote web monetization through a platform-agnostic library of streaming multimedia web components, and to show the extended possibilities of the API with hosted demo websites and blog posts that guide the community in applying the technology into their projects.

The deliverables were to create a set of components with proper documentation of each selected media type: streaming video, audio and text, and after each milestone to write a blog post describing the project status.

The last phase of the project involved polishing the components and the documentation. We also researched future use cases for web monetization.

Key activities

During the final phase of the project we finalized and published the main milestones: the web-component library and its source code. You can find those from here.

Web Monetized Multimedia documentation
https://eqlabs.github.io/wmm-components/docs/

Web Monetized Multimedia GitHub
https://github.com/eqlabs/wmm-components

Articles describing the development process, and some highlights from the creation of the video and the audio components:

DJ, put the records on

Short study of monetizing the streaming video

Communications and marketing

What’s next?

Now that the milestones are ready we are eager to find more people to test and develop the components further and provide feedback. It’s time for the open source community to get involved in the project with our support.

Recently, we posted an article based on a short study of streaming video monetizing:

https://community.webmonetization.org/wmmultimedia/web-monetized-media-future-583c

In the era of influencers, online lectures and vast amounts of streaming content this looks like a low hanging fruit for further development.

What community support would benefit your project?

As noted previously, it would be important for the future of web monetization to have a wider variety of wallets, and more cryptocurrencies supporting it. This is surely something that will be resolved in the near future.

Additionally, we would like to find more contributors and users for our library. Please have a look at our GitHub and the documentation. Join the revolution.

Additional comments

The project finished a while ago, but due to some communications twists we are now happy to present our final report.

Relevant links/resources

Here is the short presentation of the WMM brand work

https://www.behance.net/gallery/132187109/Web-Monetized-Media-Branding

Web Monetized Media - Future

Juha Viitala — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 22:59:17 +0000

We have envisioned live streaming as a future use case for Web Monetized Media. Live streaming is becoming more and more popular and Web Monetization has a great potential in providing income for live streaming artists and businesses.

Here we will go through a technical proposal on implementing a live streaming application with Web Monetization.

WebRTC

We suggest using WebRTC as the backbone for streaming content. WebRTC has matured into a stable and well supported technology which brings many advantages to more traditional methods of streaming.

WebRTC is a peer-to-peer technology that can stream content directly from the artist's computer to receiving audiences computers without dedicated servers. With an increase in audience size the audience’s computers could be used as relay nodes passing the stream to new audiences. Thus, the stream could be shared to greater audiences without investing in heavy video servers.

The decentralized nature of WebRTC fits well with the decentralized philosophy of Web Monetization and Interledger.

Still, there would be a need for one centralized server called a bootstrap node that initialises the connections between peers and manages the network structure, to make sure all audience computers receive the stream properly.

Payments

The same centralized server could be used to verify payments. With small modifications the code found in wmm-utils could be used to verify receipts sent by each audience computer, and disallow sharing of the stream unless the payments meet given criteria. As of now, this could be done by calculating the cost per minute of streamed content.

For receipts to work correctly, a receipts verifier service that connects to the Interledger network is required.

User interface

For the audience the UI can be relatively simple, utilizing standard and elements for displaying the content, and depending on the audience, a different style of branding.

For the streamer, the UI should be somewhat more complicated. Firstly, there’s the source of the media, whether it’s from webcam, screen capture, etc.. There should be an UI for changing the source on the fly and possibly also an ability to mix multiple source streams into one. Effects, text etc., the list of editing possibilities is endless, and naturally, using existing open source libraries such as moviemasher.js could save a lot of time on implementation.

Marketplace

Another problem to solve is how the streams are shared, and how the audience finds them. The obvious solution is to create a single marketplace in the spirit of YouTube and cinnamon.video for searching and browsing through streams.

With the decentralized nature of the technology stack, it might be worth trying to also create more decentralized marketplaces. By building an open protocol the streams could be shared on many different marketplaces, and their spread wouldn’t be hindered by any single gatekeeper.

Also, sharing private streams simply by sending a link to the audience could be a niche worth exploring.

Conclusions

Web Monetization enables new ways of creating revenue that is not plagued by the problems of controlling and manipulating the users, as is often the case with advertisement. The combination of Web Monetization with live streaming seems like an obvious match and by building on open protocols the potential for such technology seems definitely worth exploring.

Web-monetized Multimedia 2.0 - Progress report

Juha Viitala — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 09:05:21 +0000

Project Update

Last week we published the first version of the library with the first set of web components including sample media and documentation. Please take a look on https://eqlabs.github.io/wmm-components/ - there is still a large amount of work in the pipes. ☺

We now have ¾ of the project behind us. So far we’ve been working on video, audio and plain text components. The last bit of the project involves fine tuning the components and documentation. We are also digging into some future use cases for web monetization. That’s going to be fun, and it would be super cool to get ideas from the Community as well. Please leave a comment.

Progress on objectives

Our focus for web-monetized-multimedia is to build a library of Web Components enabling users to build and deploy multimedia content with wider possibilities in monetization. We believe that leveraging web monetisation to cover the different medias more widely enables a plethora of new use cases and areas to utilize. This would also encourage more developers to start implementing components, contributing to open source – resulting in wider adoption amongst end-users as well.

The objective of our project is to promote web monetisation through a platform-agnostic library of streaming multimedia web components, and to show the extended possibilities of the API with hosted demo websites and blog posts that guide the community for applying the technology into their projects.

Key activities

So what have we been doing to make this happen?

We started the project by taking a closer look at what is going on, what has been done and how should we approach this.

Cinnamon Video was a good project making sense what is “monetizing content” all about. And it works as a good “Web Monetized multimedia for Dummies” explainer for various stakeholders.

As an example of a good & modern documentation site, we used Shoelace as a benchmark. https://shoelace.style/.

We started by building the backend component that verifies the transactions and sends the media to the browser only if a required amount of value has been transacted. This gives content creators more security in controlling their creations and allows modifying the user experience based on the value of transactions.

Figuring out the best way to implement backend verification was one of the bigger hurdles during our research phase. We started experimenting by connecting to interledger network using moneyd, but later opted to using receipt verification instead. Interledger livenet connections are currently permissioned because of fiat gateways, and thus using webmonetization.org's receipt verifier enables a much simpler implementation for newcomers. Still, more advanced users can install their own receipt verifier service and get even more security and robustness in their system if they so choose to.

When creating the code for the project we had quite a clear plan for technologies being used. The main ones being Web Components in the UI (for video, audio and text components) and node.js backend for serving the media and verifying payments with the recipe service.

To allow easier control of the requirements to show the media, we’ve implemented features like “price per minute” for video and audio and “price per word” for text content. Of course these are somewhat advanced features since the main way of making Web Monetization payments at the moment is using a Coil wallet, which controls the amount of XRPs being sent. Still, the idea is to be future proof for the time when Web Monetization is a widely accepted standard and there are many wallets with different amounts of payments being made.

One nice feature with keeping track of the payments is to give new users free “tokens” into the system, and giving them access to the media freely until they run into a paywall and are instructed to install the Coil wallet.

Communications and marketing

Most of the comms so far have been done for the Web Monetization community. We have written three blog posts so far prior to this.

Intro: Web-monetized Multimedia
https://community.webmonetization.org/wmmultimedia/intro-web-monetized-multimedia-2ii9

So, you are watching videos, where the money goes?
https://community.webmonetization.org/juhaviitala/so-you-are-watching-videos-where-the-money-goes-1lij

Enabling the content creators
https://community.webmonetization.org/wmmultimedia/enabling-the-content-creators-2f0j

What’s next?

We still have plenty to do with the video, audio and text web components. One of the most important aspects of the project is proper documentation. We have been using Docusaurus for documentation and it’s been super useful. https://v2.docusaurus.io/docs

Last part of the project is super exciting, we are really going to mess around with the future possibilities for web monetization and come up with some crazy future use cases. There are already quite a few we’ve been playing around with. Cloud gaming, virtual worlds, AR-contents, live streams, you name it.

What community support would benefit your project?

As we are mainly concentrating on bridging the web component library with the receipt verification, we haven’t been able to focus on the user experience side that much. What we have found out is that it would be important to get more wallet options. What kind of wallet projects are going on? What is happening on that side?

Please throw out ideas for future web monetization use cases!

So, you are watching videos, where the money goes?

Juha Viitala — Wed, 17 Feb 2021 10:24:47 +0000

Many startups make bold arguments when pitching their companies or products. We are the “Uber of cleaning”, “Netflix of education” or “we are disrupting the $100b industry x”. It’s good to have ambitious goals but many times obstacles are high, old habits die hard, market entry is too expensive or network effects too difficult (expensive) to reach.

We are building solutions for content monetization and micropayments. Optimally, these would create astonishing business opportunities around streaming video and other content related industries. Currently we are working to publish a web component library for video and audio monetization, with easy ways to integrate payment streams for any website or platform.

If we look at the money flows and numbers, there is room for disruption, but we want to take a more conservative approach. Providing new kinds of tools for content publishers and attracting more people to try micropayment models will eventually make a change, but it will be more iterative than disruptive. So we won’t be next Netflix, but disintermediation, decentralization and P2P are trends no one should underestimate.

The Streaming Industry

MediaKix reports that “the streaming industry is estimated to reach $124.6 billion by 2025,” while Grand View Research reports that “the global video streaming market size is expected to reach USD 184.27 billion by 2027”. Interesting fact behind the statistics is that “the live video segment is expected to portray the maximum and fastest growth over the forecast period.”

For video content the subscription-based business model is ruling the industry, which is used by most of the prime players from Netflix to Prime Video. Another is an ad-based business model used by most of the live streaming services.

Then of course, we have p*rn! It’s difficult to find numbers around adult content streaming but if we take a broader look, it is a global, estimated $97 billion industry and the largest site alone received over 42,000,000,000 site visits during 2019 alone. Adult entertainment is attracting a huge number of crowds but business models are surprisingly simple.

Product market fit

One good feature with subscription services is the fact that you don’t have to worry how much content you use. This is great especially for heavy users. From a content monetization point of view, we see the streaming video on demand market very difficult. But around it would be a number of interesting fields to utilize micropayments.

Live streaming around various platforms. For smaller broadcasters it is difficult to find a business model; ads aren’t generating true revenue and tickets sales aren’t possible for most of the time
Niche content producers. Domains specific video channels may distribute high value added material but again are difficult to monetize.
Content platforms collecting interesting media around certain topics. Too small to adopt monthly fees and too small to generate serious ad traffic
Smaller live events: school sports games, church choir, charity events.
Online keynotes, presentations and lectures
Influencer channels, people of interest

And of course, when talking about video streaming, circle close to adult entertainment. For individual / amateur publishing there are no good incentives or business models. Micropayments would enable sufficient revenue even from one viral hit. This would encourage smaller content producers and platforms to utilize monetization models. Site traffic is guaranteed. ;D

Bumps on the road

There are still a number of things hindering the progress; lack of wallets available, the restriction that you must use cryptocurrencies, user experience complexity, lack of publishing tools and of course, all new ways of doing things take a bunch of pioneers and a lot of time.

We are trying to solve some of these issues and provide easier means for publishing monetized media. We would like to hear if you’re working on the wallet side or enabling a broader selection of cryptos for sending and receiving payments.

Intro: Web-monetized Multimedia

Juha Viitala — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 09:07:48 +0000

Everyone is probably familiar with the old classic term Multimedia from the early days of the internet. The multimedia concept can be traced to Paul Nipkow, a German scientist who invented the early version of television. Paul invented the first video disc “Nipkow disc” in 1884 at age 24. (1)

In the first Wikipedia article in 2001 while after the launch of the Wikipedia Multimedia is described: A term used to describe media for which multiple means are used to convey information (audio, video, text, vector graphics, interactivity). Often used to describe any computer media. (2)

In the early years of Multimedia the term "rich media" was synonymous with interactive multimedia. Over time, hypermedia extensions brought multimedia to the World Wide Web (3) or information superhighway!

Multimedia has a quite extensive history and for the past decade the term is more or less vanishing from general use. Or maybe it's just me who has nostalgia for Multimedia as I took a community college course about Multimedia back in 1995 in Finland :D

So that’s it for history..

We at Equilibrium have been working with the Interledger protocol in several projects, as well as following the progression of Web Monetization, micropayments and media payment transactions closely. We feel that it has vast untapped potential, and finally both psychological and technological barriers are collapsing. Psychology-wise many players in the media field are now understanding that we need new tools and practices to tackle old problems. By working together and collaborating with the whole ecosystem we can benefit all parties and stakeholders. Technological development has taken us there. We are starting to have a sufficient tech stack to solve many of the problems the media and industry is facing.

Ok, getting to the point!

While studying the current state of Web Monetization, we realized that adding a simple Web Monetization for your website is easy, but building a more complex web monetization platform, like a video-sharing platform or a news website, requires additional logic.

Basically, we are working with the same puzzle pieces as the early internet, like text, pictures, audio and video all over again.

Project goals

The project focus of web-monetized-multimedia is to deliver a Web Component Library that enables its users to build a multimedia content platform with new possibilities for monetizing various types of content.

Web Monetization has been one of the most prominent use cases for Interledger. The ever-growing community and more and more complex projects are looking to utilize the feature. Therefore, we are seeing growing demand for easy-to-use-tools for developers to build more complex platforms that utilize Web Monetization.

Some existing Web Monetization projects are touching on Multimedia, but not as deeply as required for modern media platforms, like video and music streaming web apps.

Leveraging Web Monetization to cover multimedia more widely would enable a massive amount of new use-cases and areas to utilize Web Monetization. This would encourage more developers to start implementing components and result in wider adoption in end-users as well.

There seem to be a few existing libraries for this, like react-web-monetization, monetizer and web-monetization-scripts. The available libraries deserve more developer recognition, and we aim to test these libraries out, contributing to the development with bug fixes.

Our main goal during the six-month timeline is to create multiple examples of Web Monetization applications, including video and audio streaming use case examples with optional advertisement support, and an example of a multi-publisher blog, with an accompanying web components library. We chose web components because they can be used in many front-end contexts, including React and Vue.

Broader vision

As mentioned, these challenges don't just impinge on Web Monetization but the whole media industry. Our long term vision is to be able to integrate these practices and building blocks to established news outlets. The concept of "micro payment" is often tried and often failed. We strongly believe that with the right set of tech, tools and practices, we can overcome the old obstacles and benefit the whole ecosystem.

Juha - I’ve been following the rise of the networks and internet from the late 80’s and spending most of my career around multimedia innovations. Excited to be part of the grantee community!

(1) http://www.mediaeng.com/mmevolution.html
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Multimedia&oldid=268102
(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia