The Interledger Community 🌱: Tessel

MicroMemberships - Subscriptions for values based content and services — Grant Report #20210262

Tessel — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 13:41:40 +0000

Waag Futurelab contributes to open, fair and inclusive technology. We developed the the Public Stack model to reveal the underlying assumptions and design process of technological innovations, to advance technology that truly empowers citizens and is built on public value(s). One of the layers of the Public Stack model pays attention to business models. What business models are underlying the technologies that we use? But also, how can we make sure online business models are facilitated by an open, fair and inclusive technology stack? These questions informed our research on online business models in the projects MicroDonor and MicroMemberships.

The MicroMemberships project, spanning from January till July 2022, allowed us to conduct research into web monetization memberships models that are built on public values. This implies a.o. open standards, transparency of data use and underlying revenue models. Does web monetization in the shape of micro memberships have the potential to provide for an interesting – as well as open, fair and inclusive - business model for creatives and content makers? How could these be used by content collectives?

This was a follow up project of MicroDonor, an investigation into micro donation based web monetization, on which you can find all publications on our website.

Project Update

The MicroMemberships project was a highly engaging period of six months, in which we have been able to follow our curiosity and through which we have gotten in touch with a range of artists and developers working on similar research topics. A wonderful result by itself!

It took some time to get started due to the complexity of the concept of MicroMemberships and many potential directions for exploring what MicroMemberships could be and what they could mean for the practice of creatives. Finally, we have been able to investigate how MicroMemberships could contribute to open, fair and inclusive online business models for creatives by: (1) conducting desk research on existing business models that contain elements of the MicroMemberships model, (2) conducting interviews iterating the concept with a mock-up interface of MicroMemberships, (3) designing a public co-design event and (4) writing on our findings in a blog series and concluding publication.

We have now finished our activities for this project, culminating in a publication which you can find on our website.

Progress on objectives

MicroMemberships is an exploration following our research in the MicroDonor project. In MicroMemberships our main objective was to provide a substantiated answer to the question whether and how MicroMembership models contribute to a more fair, open and inclusive internet and provide a business model for content collectives and their audience. Over the course of the project, we have redirected our focus. Instead of focusing on the implications of MicroMemberships for audiences, we have focused on understanding what MicroMemberships imply for the relation between maker, audience and membership tech stack. We did so by looking at different layers of the potential MicroMemberships stack within our Public Stack model; looking at the relation that is facilitated between maker and audience, the underlying business model and the tech stack that is used.

We not only redirected our focus on the question at hand, but also diverted from the original plan in terms of activities. We originally planned a live public co-design event in which we would co-create a value ladder for MicroMemberships and facilitate a dialogue with three initiatives highly interesting for furthering the concept: Pia Mancini from Open Collective, Calum Bowden from Black Swan and an artist and writer currently interested in the relation between online business models, blockchain technology and collective forms of producing literary art. Due to our international guests we chose to host the co-design event online. Unfortunately, we had to cancel the event due to the small number of registrations for this online event, due to tiredness of online events post-covid and challenges in reaching our audiences to attend these kind of niche events again. We are hoping to get input from an interested, more targeted audience at a later point in time.

Key activities

The activities that make up this project can be summarized under four categories.

1.Conducting desk research on online business models that contain elements – either relational, economic or technical – present in our concept of the MicroMembership model. Think of Patreon, Coil, Adyen and Open Collective. What we have learned from this is that time and again we a platform dynamic evolve: intermediaries capitalizing on the data they gather in transaction management or capitalizing on a closed tech stack that facilitates the transactional relation between maker and audience. Read more on the findings in our first blog.

Another part of our desk research focused on the promise of a tech stack for MicroMemberships built on the blockchain. Although we have become mainly critical of current ‘Web3’ applications due to centralization of the current ecosystems and the closedness of such systems - locking users into one single currency, which is moreover highly vulnerable to speculation-, we understand that certain applications of Web3 are interesting for creative makers. In a second blog we discuss how both the concept of DAOs and NFTs help us further the concept of fair online business models.

In another blog we also discuss the potential impact of DAO mechanisms on the practice of creatives – making the relation between maker and audience more dynamic.

Our third blog discusses how services that claim to be a solution to the platform dynamics of Big Tech, are themselves often platform solutions as well. Offering their services as ready-made templates and in predefined categories, they push towards creation of certain content and foster competition between makers within this narrow scope of possibilities.

2.Interviewing potential stakeholders, iterating the concept of MicroMemberships with a mock-up interface.
As presented in our progress report, we interactively furthered the concept of MicroMemberships by iterating the concept using a mock-up interface.

We discussed the concept and the topic of online business models with artists, with Pia Mancini (co-founder and CEO of open collective) and with Alex Lakatos, tech lead for the Interledger foundation and currently working on Rafiki, a wallet that enables users to make Interledger payments to a variety of peers.

All in all, we iterated the concept with stakeholders and investigated several business models and tech solutions for online financial support for creative makers. We looked for elements that could contribute to open, fair and inclusive online business models, specifically enabling content collectives to financially support their practices. Based on open standards for transaction management, we formulated provisional conclusions about the necessary elements for open, fair and inclusive MicroMemberships, which can be found in the concluding section of our publication.

3.Designing a public co-design event
As said, we designed a public co-design event to get input from a interested audience in this niche topic on the values that should be central in an online business model for creatives like MicroMemberships. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, this has been postponed.

4.Writing on our findings in a blog series and concluding publication. The blog series can be found here. The final publication can be found here.

Communications and marketing

All of the writings that followed from this exploration is publicly available on our website. We expect that the concept of MicroMemberships will in the future inform contributions by Waag in context of our broader work on the Public Stack and Digital Public Spaces and as such will reach broader communities. In the previous months, the exploration has been shared with our audience through newsletters.

What’s next?

This project was an interesting, more conceptual follow-up of MicroDonor. MicroMemberships resulted in connections to both artists and developers interesting in developing open technology that can support creative communities in receiving financial contributions from their (online) audience. It was great to get in touch with people that also value openness and transparency, solidarity and cooperation. What the project leaves us with, is a desire to continue our exploration into web monetization within the Public Stack model more concretely and start prototyping. We hope to get in touch with the web monetization community in our efforts to make that happen!

What community support would benefit your project?

We are happy to hear if you are working on similar questions or if you know of artist collectives that are also interested in open, fair and inclusive web monetization to support their practice. Feel free to contact us anytime if you would like to exchange ideas or brainstorm on next steps to take. Mail Julia, Taco or Tessel [at] waag.org.

Relevant links/resources (optional)

Project summary:
https://waag.org/en/article/exploring-micromemberships/

Previous work we build on:
https://community.webmonetization.org/microdonor
https://publicstack.net

Inspiration mentioned in the report:
https://opencollective.com/
https://trust.support/feed/black-swan
https://daoblackswan.com/home
https://so-far.xyz/issue/platform-design-user-centred-design-the-architecture-of-alienation
https://rafiki.money/

Fair online revenue models for creative makers

Tessel — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 10:32:50 +0000

Big tech is doing it wrong

Blog by: Quirine van Eeden

Imagine you are a creator and you want to present or sell your illustrations, writing or video to an online audience. You want to earn some money by presenting your work online, but how do you do that without using online platforms with perverse revenue models? After all, the online world has become a place where commercial tech giants set the rules. As part of our mission to make the internet a public space again, we’ve started the 'MicroMemberships' project to investigate what open and fair online revenue models should look like. In this blog series we provide insight into a number of well-known online revenue models for creative makers, investigate to what extent they are open and honest and explain a number of promising innovative ideas.

The work of artists can increasingly be found online. As a result, these creative makers enter into all kinds of new relationships with their audience, including in a financial sense. The most common variant is that the public gets to see the creator's work for free and the creator earns income through advertisements or donations. Another form is that the public pays – periodically or otherwise – for content that is behind a paywall.

These payment methods influence the relationship between the maker and her audience. Platforms are able to monetize this contact in all sorts of inventive ways; with the emergence of the above-mentioned type of online revenue model, the relationship between maker and audience is increasingly becoming transactional. Think of an artist who, for example, has to keep the click rate high online. The emergence of this type of transactional relationship in the arts is also fueling a wider debate. This concerns, for instance, the question of whether this transactional relationship (expressed in numbers) should be a benchmark for measuring the success of an artist in order to be eligible for grants or subsidies. Or whether such revenue models should even serve as an alternative to current scholarships and subsidies. That is why the time is now to critically examine these online revenue models and their underlying values.

Online platforms not only influence the interaction between the creator and the audience. When you enter the internet as a creative, virtually every digital space to present your work has been appropriated by a company. There's a lot of human interaction going on, but the tone and shape is dictated by the design choices, filtering algorithms, and preferences of a handful of tech companies. As platforms, these tech companies know how to bring together and organize the supply and demand sides of a market and thereby have created an indispensable role for themselves.

Over time, by integrating all kinds of services, platforms have become serious ecosystems that dictate the rules of a particular market (which are mainly beneficial to them). Platforms dominate the market and have made you as a user structurally dependent on it (the so-called 'vendor lock-in'). This platform dynamic has a number of characteristics.

The platform tries to attract large numbers of users to their service, for example by making the service free. By going big, platforms benefit from network effects and minimal marginal costs.
The platform uses closed technology. In this way it shields its revenue model from the outside world, in the service of shareholders and the owners of this technology.
The platform collects large amounts of data to construct a granular picture of their users. This allows it to deliver a personalized offer (and new services) leveraging user profiles that it has created. In some cases, products are also offered on the platform.

For a while, the corona crisis seemed to be fertile ground for new revenue models that could break the omnipotence of these large platforms. The 'creator economy', in which creators monetize their online content, took off enormously. Through Twitch, Patreon and OnlyFans, creatives could offer their work through subscriptions, tips or crowdfunding, making their income streams less dependent on the tech giants. These revenue models also made it possible for creative makers to no longer have to use tracking. Yet these platforms turn out to be more of the same. The platforms have similar service models, pursue comparable scale with their hunger for data and use closed technology.

This platforming dynamic is particularly problematic for artists for whom artistic freedom is of great value. Platforms offer their services in such a way that the work and the interaction between the artist and the audience is forced into a mold. Platforms are designed to use simplified, universal parameters to categorize and qualify each user's behavior (more on that in one of our next blogs, or see artist Aiwen Yin's essays. The architecture forces us to create profiles using interests and traits suggested by the platform. The work we post on our timeline has to fit the pre-prepared personas and hashtags. The architecture of such platforms leaves little room for previously unclassified persons, ideas or work. In addition, the content policy is currently very arbitrary. Platforms can block content and users at their discretion. While a platform like Patreon likes to position itself as a place where creators can build independent careers, podcast producer Anshuman Iddamsetty told the New Yorker that erotic self-portraits have faced some unexpected barriers.

In our mission to make the internet a public space again, we are investigating within the 'MicroMemberships' project what open and fair online revenue models for creative makers can look like. We use 'MicroMemberships', a revenue model in which artists can organize themselves in collectives and which the public can join for a small amount per month, as a possible model to properly answer this question. We will tell you more about this in the coming blogs. Our preliminary suspicion is that artists probably don't even need that much to organize themselves well online and present their work; a payment service and a simple database would probably help them on their way. Complex platforms (and their perverse dynamics) may not be required for that at all.

Postponed ~~On Thursday June 23~~, we organize a public MicroMemberships event at Waag. Speakers Pia Mancini (open collective) and Calum Bowden (Black Swan) will share their experiences with existing revenue models. Together with the public, we will then investigate what new revenue models could look like. This way we try to become less dependent on Big Tech. Join our research!

More information and registration

MicroMemberships - Subscriptions for values based content and services — Interim Grant Report

Tessel — Mon, 16 May 2022 15:10:27 +0000

Hey Community! We at Waag, Amsterdam, are excited to share our progress on the MicroMemberships project. MicroMemberships (possibly facilitated by the web monetization standard) focuses on the potential of small recurring payments as an open and fair business model for groups of artistic content creators. The core question is how – and in what shape – MicroMemberships contribute to an open, fair and inclusive internet and how these can be used by content collectives and their audience.

Project Update

Overall, the project is going quite well. It evolves at a slightly slower pace than expected, because it took us some time to really get a grip on the complexity of the concept of MicroMemberships. We have decided to work on the project in a dual process. We are on the one hand comparing MicroMemberships to existing businessmodels and technical solutions and on the other hand iterating our concept with different users/artistic makers (experiencing problems with currently existing web monetization options).

In the past months we have focused on pealing of the layers of MicroMemberships as a concept, and we have designed a mock-up interface of MicroMemberships (see below). The mock-up allows us to discuss the social and financial aspects and technical stack of MicroMemberships with artistic makers. Simultaneously, we are working on a blog series that reflects these discussions and preparing for a public event to discuss the findings and questions that arise during our exploration. Over all, the world of web monetization keeps us busy, interested and motivated.

The exploration builds upon MicroDonor, in which we focused on the potential of microdonations for (open-source) makers and organisations that try to operate according to public values. One of our findings in the MicroDonor project was that microdonations are merely complementary to other revenue models, as they do not generate structural support. MicroMemberships might tackle this problem because they provide a more stable income flow.

Our previous research also suggested that so-called ‘content collectives’ could counteract the perverse incentives of the commercial internet. In collectives, makers of low volume but high-quality work (or content) could bundle forces. It would not only provide a way to create new values-based networks, but also diminish the precarious position of individual creators on the labor market.

Progress on objectives

Our main objective is providing a substantiated answer to the question whether and how MicroMembership models contribute to a more fair, open and inclusive internet and provide a business model for content collectives and their audience. We wished to focus on three topics in our research – governance of the Membership and transaction system, governance of the content collectives, and implications for audiences in terms of content availability and costs.

We are still investigating the meaning of openness, fairness and inclusivity in the context of MicroMemberships. But over the course of the research trajectory, the focus and methods have slightly evolved.

We are still interested in governance of a MicroMembership system and in the role of content collectives in relation to this monetization model, but we have redirected our focus on the implications for audiences towards understanding what MicroMemberships imply in terms of the relation between maker, audience and the membership tech stack.

Similar to MicroDonor, we have framed the concept of MicroMembership within our Public Stack model*. We are working on understanding a web monetization membership model based on micropayments, looking at different layers of it’s ‘stack’: the relation that is facilitated between maker and audience, the underlying business model and the tech stack that is used. These layers provide a frame to assess better what openness, fairness and inclusivity mean in the context of MicroMemberships.

*The Public Stack, developed as part of the Roadmap Digital Future, is a model that helps to uncover the socio-technical layers of any technology. With the Public Stack we advocate for technology that is based on shared public values (as opposed to technology that is developed out of commercial interest only or based on surveillance principles).

Key activities

As said, we work on answering our questions by several activities. Substantiating our assessment of MicroMemberships and preconditions for it to be open, fair and inclusive, we have conducted a couple of light case studies. The cases are businesses and business models that contain elements - either relational, economic or technical – existing in the MicroMembership model. Think of Patreon, Coil, Adyen and Open collective. Desk research and interviews provide the back bone of the case studies. We’ll discuss what we’ve learned from them in upcoming blogs.

In order to collectively research the concept of MicroMemberships for it to contribute to better web monetization, we have designed a mock-up interface of a MicroMembership ‘wallet’. The wallet illustrates what aspects are up for discussion. In the first view (below, left) we see a potential wallet of a person contributing to its favorite maker collectives. A point of discussion here is: who decides the monthly amount? Does the content collective require to be of a certain size? And should it last for at least a certain amount of time, say, one year?

The view in the middle illustrates the question of reciprocity and value for money. Does the member get something in return for its payments? Or can the payment be viewed as donation and sign of affiliation to a maker you respect? Transparency about the spending of the money is often expected in return for (recurring) donations, but question remains how much transparency is needed. It is interesting to look at the transparency that Open Collective is facilitating with its service. Related to the question of reciprocity: can others view what collectives you as a member support? That could provide some status for the member, but perhaps that would drag MicroMemberships again into a digital space that emphasizes individualization, vanity and competition for attention.

The view on the right, middle field, poses a question about the tech stack: what technology is used for the money transfer? Is it an open protocol or are we locked into a closed ecosystem of one platform offering the service? This is a question that we can ask for all elements of the tech stack; think of the paywall, a CRM, the transaction processing, the communication possibilities for engaging audiences as community, etc. And do we – as some want us to believe – depend on cryptocurrency for the openness or decentralization of transactions? This will be discussed in the second blog we’re preparing.

In interviews with artists, we learned from their experiences with web monetization options and membership models that are currently out there (think of Twitch, Tiktok, Youtube, Patreon and Substack). We have used the mock-up in these interviews to discuss conditions for MicroMemberships to be fair, open and inclusive. Surely, their perspectives have sharpened our exploration and brought in new perspectives on the problem at hand. Artist and system designer Yin Aiwen – who wrote a wonderful essay series on platform design and its dynamics – brought in the question of the relation between the artist and the community that enjoys the art. We spoke about how solidarity and cooperation could be central to the relation between artist and audience and discussed commons.art, which aims to realize this. What type of relation between artist and audience do MicroMemberships facilitate? And what is then the relation between one artist and the other? Many platforms currently encourage competition between artists. Aiwen’s immediate response to our mock-up: can the collectives in the left view also support each other? Artist Derk Over shared with us numerous experiences with current platforms that artists can use them to present their work and generate income. Besides competition, Derk Over brought in the question how artists can preserve independence and autonomy while using these platforms. Could MicroMemberships overcome this effect or would it push content makers still to view their content as commercial product for an audience?

We will further explore these questions and conditions in an upcoming public event.

Communications and marketing

The blog series are still under preparation, as we needed some time to really understand the question at hand. On our website, we have shared the main aims and outline of the project.

What’s next?

In order to receive input from a broader audience on the concept of MicroMemberships, we are planning a public event in summer. In order to discuss the conditions for open, fair and inclusive MicroMemberships, we will be using gaming as method to question the existing rules and define new ones. We hope to report about this soon!

The upcoming blog series will reflect our findings so far. They will focus on aspects of MicroMemberships that we deem crucial choices (or dilemma’s) for its openness and fairness. Think of the dependency on cryptocurrency technology, the role of collectives versus individual makers, and the expression of reciprocity in the relationship.

What community support would benefit your project?

We would really enjoy to get in touch with others that are especially interested in open and fair web monetization for creatives or others that have knowledge about membership models! Feel free to contact us to arrange something, we would be interested to see how our projects overlap and where we can learn from each other.

Relevant links/resources

Project aims:
https://waag.org/en/project/micromemberships

Previous work we are building on:
https://community.webmonetization.org/microdonor

Inspiration mentioned in the report:
https://opencollective.com/

MicroMemberships

Tessel — Tue, 26 Apr 2022 11:44:22 +0000

In this project we explore innovative online revenue models for creators such as journalists, artists and creators of online content. We look in particular at the revenue model of 'micro-subscriptions' (micro-subscriptions). Microsubscriptions can take different forms, but we have not yet come across an open and honest variant.

The idea of microsubscriptions is that you structurally pay a small amount to individual creatives or to a group of makers that joins forces. Think of collectives of independent artists, cultural organizations, independent broadcasters or a collective of writers that matches your interests. The organizations in such 'content collective' all receive a small part of the amount that you pay monthly via a subscription. With such collectives you can potentially reach a larger audience and ensure a structural income for makers who release work on a less frequent basis.

Microsubscriptions builds on previous research into innovative revenue models for makers. In Microdonor, we conducted research into the question whether microdonations are a suitable revenue model for open source developers and 'content creators'. Our findings from that research included that microdonations complement other revenue models, because they do not generate structural support for creators and that content collectives can provide outcomes. These and other findings can be found in the final report.

The core question of our exploration is what 'open, fair and inclusive' microsubscriptions look like, in particular for content creators. How could these content creators best organize themselves, and how do they become less dependent on Big Tech? Which assistive technology should you use for this? How long should a micro subscription run? And would you as a user want to get something in return for your subscription (as done by Patreon)? We answer these and more questions in a blog series and together with artists we design a 'wallet’.

This project fits within our mission to make the internet a public place again. Powerful platforms such as Meta and Google make the internet a place where people are exploited and manipulated. That's why we want the internet to be a place again where people can meet and exchange ideas without commercial giants spying on or influencing. In this project we are researching online revenue models that serve the independence of makers and that manage to circumvent these tech giants.