The Dutch tech whiz who could save journalism | Hacker News Reader

The Dutch tech whiz who could save journalism

politico.eu

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Klöpping is an interesting character to me. From his appearances as a 'tech whiz' on one of the biggest (if not the biggest) Dutch talk shows I get the (possibly wrong) impression that he's the type of 'tech whiz' that isn't so much really good at any particular 'tech', but rather that he's really good at knowing about tech. But I might be wrong.

And I have to say: he really is pretty good at what he does. I don't recall ever hearing him explain something or write about something in tech that was outright wrong, which in my experience is quite rare even for 'good' tech journalists. I find myself often cringing at how they get some detail wrong, as well as cringing that I'm probably one of a small group of extreme geeks who would even notice it.

On some level, despite him actually being good at his stuff, I feel an kind of vague dislike for him at times. I suppose that feeling comes from the fact that he's not just very knowledgeable in a field that I consider 'mine', but that he's so damn good at explaining it an somehow making it 'cool'. And perhaps it's because it underlines how important presentation and social skills are alongside 'raw' skills. I suppose I'd feel similar about someone like Kevin Rose had he been a very public face of 'my tribe', rather than mostly operating within it.

It's not a feeling that I would describe as justified or good. Mostly just interesting that it's there at all. When it comes down to it I love having a 'spokesperson' who doesn't misrepresent the things I love.

(As it's quite likely that he, at very least, lurks on HN: Hi Klöpping, sorry that I think you're an annoying little punk sometimes without good reason. I really like what you're doing with Blendle; any way you could allow it to integrate with Instapaper?)

Doing my best to balance my inherent tech optimism and pessimism on Dutch TV, while trying to make it interesting enough to have it be on TV at all, all the while trying to take not too many short cuts to make people like yourself not too angry -- I'm still learning how to do that :).

I knew it!

Anyways, don't worry about pissing those of us who are on the nerdier, less-social side of the spectrum. That's our/my problem, not yours. And from my experience it's definitely not that you're 'off' or oversimplifying the things you talk about. You strike a good balance.

(sadly, I just can't stand DWDD anymore... I blame De Snijtafel.)

"When it comes down to it I love having a 'spokesperson' who doesn't misrepresent the things I love."

I echo this. I've noticed I have a natural inclination to dismiss anyone who talks about the tech-field on Dutch TV, since most of them are wrong and thus according to my lizard-brain get undue credit.

You usually keep properly representing the way I see the tech-world and I'm thankful for that. Not too mention you do it with enough enthusiasm that my mother understands why you are exited about it.

I think you are doing fine! It's refreshing (as the parent says) to see someone who knows tech, but can also explain it to the general population. I think it increases enthusiasm and reduces stereotyping.

One thing that I am missing in mass media, though, is more of the critical/political aspects of hacker culture. E.g., it would be great if the worries of the tech community in the privacy/security balance debate could be represented from the tech community's side. It seems that Glen Greenwald is one of the very few visible journalists to do so.

Of course, such topics are not as 'sexy' as the new iPhone ;).

I didn't know Blendle before, but I gave it a go after reading this article and have to say I'm impressed. Being the news junkie that I am, though, I can totally see how I would end up spending more than €50/month on this. Not sure if that's worth it for me to be honest.

I would totally buy a fixed cost contract though. My Spotify and Netflix are about €9/month, so if I could get quality journalism for €9/month (or even €20/month) I would totally be on board. But paying €0.25 per article... not for me.

I spend about that on a digital NYT subscription. It's not as good as a "netflix for news", but it fills out the gaps in internet coverage pretty nicely.

I think Blendle (or something like it) is a necessary step on the way to netflix-for-news, but I'm happy to wait this one out.

Their daily "best article" mail is quite good, I read more diverse and higher quality articles than I would have otherwise. I think they are still experimenting with pricing, I don't mind 0,25€ but some articles (looking at you Spiegel) were 1,99€, which is insane - I requested a refund, which luckily takes just a click. Annoyingly they don't show prices beforehand.

> Annoyingly they don't show prices beforehand.

Is that even legal in EU consumer law?

http://www.consumerhelp.ie/pricing-rules

"Shops and service providers must display their prices, and there are rules on how they must be displayed. You have the right to clear and accurate information on the prices of goods and services so that you can compare prices and make informed choices."

Perhaps the no-questions-asked money back policy changes this? Just guessing.

I fear that exactly this is the problem. There is a pretty big market for good journalism to be read online. People don't want to be bound to one source (traditional subscription) but I don't see micro transactions working here. Blendle has been pretty vocal about the number of users but I fear most of them aren't return customers. The interface and idea is good but a flat fee could skyrocket this.

Blendle co-founder here. A flat fee is definitely something we're thinking about. But, the publishers have to be comfortable with it (and for newspapers, most of the time they are charging >$15 per month for a digital sub). Also, as an option, we'd always like to offer pay-as-you-go for users who don't want a subscription (a problem we set out to fix in the first place).

If you read a lot from a single paper you could buy the complete paper, if you've read article from that paper the price for that single article is removed from the paper's price. Some papers are quite cheap, for example, De Volkskrant (Dutch paper) is only 0.89 euro, a single article costs maybe 0.25, if you've read that article the paper will only kost 0.64.

But if you read a lot of different papers, that would still be quite expensive indeed

I've posted this before, but I'll say it again:

A fun thing about Blendle is that it is open source. At least, the front-end is, and probably unintentionally.

They left their Webpack source maps on the server [1]. Chrome automatically unpacks the source map into a directory structure in the 'sources' debug view. It's nice to see how they are building their React application.

On two separate occasions, four months ago and a year ago, I've sent them an email about this, but never got a reply back.

[1] https://www.blendle.com/js/app.js.map

I am looking forward to micropayments but I sure hope it will be platform independent. Blendle is just another platform like iTunes, App Store, Netflix etc.

Platforms are good for the platform's founders and investors and they take care of the transaction cost and do provide some marketing although I often find platforms limit my choice instead of expanding it.

I don't mind the existence of platforms if they don't have exclusivity on content. But I would love an alternative, where you could pay content creators 2, 5, 10, 20 or a few hundred cents directly.

I can chat, phone or email anyone directly for free or almost for free, even with advanced security. Why can't I pay them for free or low cost? Isn't the tech involved in sending or receiving a secure email with attachement more advanced than the tech that makes sure one bank credits the same amount someone else's bank debits?

The standard knock against micropayments is mental transaction costs--going back well over a decade. I think it's fair to say that the cost of doing the payment transfer isn't really an issue; even if it is with current systems, that can be dealt with.

However, there is an issue with having to explicitly decide to pay 5 or 10 cents every time you want to read something online. And if it involves having to get an email with attachment sent to me, the mental overhead and friction is even worse. It's not that people will never buy but there's a huge difference between free and just a few cents.

That's why batching needs to be used, so all those little 5-10c transactions get accumulated and sent as one larger one. Then once a month or when you've read $5-10 worth of articles you'll be charged. This usually means that there will be one, or a handful of, providers so that you won't have an outstanding tab or credit at too many places.

So there we get back to a subscription magazine model. It's easier mentally to have one, or a few, subscriptions charging a fixed amount per month to read content. Unfortunately even if you do pay $5-$10 per month for a subscription, the publication can make more money from you by selling ads in the publication.

That's practically what we do by using a wallet -- it's basically batching of payments (with less risk for us, asking for an upfront payment after a user has spent the $2,50 he gets for free when he signs up).

Maybe. I still have to decide at the point of download whether I want to pay, albeit a small amount, for the article in question. I don't say it can't work. For a long time, it's how we paid for telephone service. And it works for music/movies, although those goods each have their own unique characteristics--even if subscriptions are becoming more popular. (Music you reuse; the movie watching experience is something of a commitment.)

Of course, subscriptions have their own issues especially if the content sources are fragmented.

We don't want to force users to consume premium journalism on our platform, that's why we're working on a button that publishers (or any author, really) can put on their own site too http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/10/18/blendles-secret-weapon-...

I like what they're doing - I do not want to take out a full subscription to all the possible news sources just to read a couple of articles a month.

However, their "iTunes for Journalism" model is not the best one; "Spotify for journalism" is better: fixed monthly price and all you can eat. I do not want to expend the mental energy thinking about whether an article is worth the 0.25c.

Blendle also has to recognize that the value is different - you can replay a song many times, but an article loses value very quickly - read it once, maybe go back to it for reference, and that's it. Pricing needs to take this into account.

It certainly adds some cognitive overhead to the user.

I think a solution might be buying credits, e.g. you have bronze/silver/gold credits, and each article could be priced at 1 bronze/silver/gold credit (because the price being e.g. 3 credits would keep the overhead). This layer of abstraction removes the user from thinking in terms of money (e.g. this article cost 0.25 euro), a bit.

In terms of monthly subscription, I would assume pricing articles individually makes it easy to deal with the publishers? X people read it at price of $Y, so you get X*$Y minus some fee, can't get any easier. It would get much more tricky if trying to split the monthly cost.

We thought about credits. It might work, I'm doubting about this one because if feels a bit user-unfriendly to make it less transparant. What do you think?

I much prefer the transparency of an actual price. The cognitive overhead of converting credits in your head to euro is much higher, and I suspect most of us do so anyways (I know I do at festivals, for example, at least until a certain level of inebriation).

Furthermore, credits can come across as a bit 'sleazy' to the consumer. Every person I know assumes that, in general, credit-based systems are implemented to make more money (again, festivals: I just want another beer, not buy another ten credits if I just need one more to get my fucking drink!).

I agree. Credits wouldn't make it any more careless, only more tedious. I think only 'an all you can eat' would be a more attractive system than the current one.

Though, it seems to me that even in the current model what is missing are very strong network effects. It would be interesting to see if adding additional incentives increases/improves sharing. For instance, what if an article becomes free after N friends read it after sharing? It might cause people to share articles that their social circles are very likely to read.

Another interesting feature would be a share-once link. Sometimes you read an article that you want to share with someone specifically. You don't want to be an *ss pointing them to a paywall, so you pay the Euro 0.25 for them :). It's not only a convenience, but also a potential way to bring in new customers.

After giving more thoughts... Yeah, credits certainly have a bad reputation so you might lose some credibility from the user point of view.

In addition, if you have tiers of credits (so you have 3 distinct credits, rather than just replacing euro sign with a credit sign), you lose plenty of flexibility.

So yeah, I can see why you rejected this option :)

I would agree if not for the fact that their money-back policy is so lenient (and easy to use) that it feels like you're not paying up-front at all. As such, I much prefer the iTunes model over the Spotify model, as I'd much rather occasionally click on the 'money back' button than pay for stuff I don't read.

Its lenient, for now. But I view it as a workaround to the no-mental-cost of an all you can eat. With a fixed-monthly model you do not ever need to think about asking for your money back. Let alone asking for it, even if its a click.

A fixed monthly cost is in the interest of everyone: by removing the "barrier to entry" of an article it removes any friction for someone to explore new content and new sources. New publishers win, new authors win and all users win.

>A fixed monthly cost is in the interest of everyone

Subscriptions are only great for users if they get enough value out of them--otherwise they're just another monthly/annual money leak. For example, I go back and forth on the streaming music services. I'll use them to explore some new music or play something I want to hear but don't own--but then I'll be traveling or otherwise occupied and won't use them for 2 or 3 weeks.

Exactly. Ideally I'd see both. Subscriptions for those who make enough use of Blendle and on a consistent basis, and micropayments for people like me who will occasionally read an article that interests them.

Blendle co-founder here. I must admit that micropayments sounds exhausting when you think about the model. But we really tried to make the UX very pleasant, and I think we succeeded (and about 1/5 of the users who register take out their credit card and top up, so apparently they agree :)). But, at the same time, prices should be fair. We're always looking at refund percentages to make sure that they stay fair.

Thanks for taking the time! An all you can eat Spotify like model removes all friction and allows me, as someone who loves to explore new content, to not have to worry at all about refunds or such stuff.

I am sure you are operating under constraints with the publishers but I do strongly encourage you to push for a fixed monthly model: by removing all "barriers to entry" of viewing an article, users can freely explore new content from new authors and publishers.

Regarding pricing, a song takes many man-hours to produce. Consider the man-hours that go into an article and the fact that a song can be replayed many times. Sure it must be fair but 0.25c per article is not sustainable for me considering the amount of content I consume.

I am subscribed to a number of magazines (Economist, Foreign Affairs, Private Eye and a couple of news papers) which I know I will read. But others (New Statesman, Spectator, FT) I only care to read an article or so a month; with a fixed monthly I can view all the publications using your service, with per-article pricing I would only consider you for the "long-tail" articles/publications. And frankly, I can safely assume that you much prefer that I read all the content on your platform...

I use it and it works really well. For the price of a cup of coffee, I read a week of the best articles from a whole range of newspapers and magazines. And when you accidentally clicked a link or an article is really bad, you can ask your money back with a single mouse click.

I use Blendle occasionally in the Netherlands and it works amazing. In my case, it allows me to read articles I would otherwise simply not read. I'm not willing to pay for a subscription to a magazine or newspaper just because I like one article. Buying a single article however, for 0.25 euro, works perfectly fine for me. Especially because Blendle provides the infrastructure for paying, so the transaction takes very little effort.

First thought after reading this: let's say there is a good overview of markets from a known economist, written in a few hours, vs. a deep look into corruption in charities/government/whatever that took many months of research and investigation. Why would these two articles cost the same few dozen of pennies? Wouldn't it devalue more time-consuming work?

Of course you can draw parallels with music. A track with an orchestral recording vs. solo piano recording, or a rock band vs. purely computer electronic music, all cost the same $1/€1/£1. At the same time concert tickets for a fully-blown symphonic orchestra are usually more expensive than that of a piano concert (adjusted to fame/importance, etc.)

Maybe it is not a problem after all. Or maybe it is, time will tell.

First off, they don't have to cost the same amount of money. And second, the amount of work/quality affects the reputation of the publication, which in turn affects the amount of people that pay for the article and the price that can be asked for it.

On Blendle, I've not paid pennies for articles that seemed interesting but came from low-reputation publications, and I've paid more than a buck for articles that didn't immediately catch my eye, but were published in a top magazine.

The known economist would probably point out that the supply of known economists is much smaller than the supply of journalists capable of undertaking a research investigation, not least because known economists have spent a decade or more honing their craft and developing their reputation. Both parties are, as I understand it, free to vary their prices if they think they can earn more at a higher price point.

With the thirty percent cut they leave a big opportunity for others to step in. While the music industry may have little choice when iTunes made its debut there are far more sources of journalism and many of those have well developed web based outlets.

How well does this product do with independents? Tech has opened the door for everyone to be a journalist and perhaps through a tool like this some could get more exposure?

To be honest, with good web familiarity I don't need an aggregator for news. I don't even care for Apple's attempt which in itself my impact Blendle

I think that this kind of business model hides an threat unless anonymous payments are provided: you will completely loose your privacy as everything you read is now connected to your more or less real identity and actually nothing prevents them to serve you the ads, especially because you are now identified better than before.

I think this is also the reason why Apple installed the ad-blocker - they want to enter into this market and grow it as it appears that ad-based business model is not working for them.

Yes, I also find this really concerning.. I use Blendle to look up articles relating to pedophilia, to see how it's portrayed in the media. Now Blendle is giving away €2,50 on signup, so I can create new accounts as I go along... but I really wouldn't want to connect my regular account with it, and I would for my usage, but there really is no way to do it.

If you're wondering how the subject is portrayed... very badly. Almost always the molester stereotype, especially in British media. You might want to read up on these threads if you want to get a better picture:

- https://parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/18782/what-sho...

- https://www.quora.com/Pedophilia/What-does-it-feel-like-to-b...

If this works (the cynic in me feels people don't read anymore), and the numbers that I've heard through the rumor mill indicate it does with about 100-150k paying users with decent return payments + a 30%, it might be a decent attack vector into the dreaded academic publishing landscape eventually. Their 30$/article fees are just a tad bit on the ridiculous side.

i hope they succeed it would be much better if people started paying for their entertainment again instead of getting bombarded by free stuff. however this is probably why they won't succeed.

We're at 650.000 users in NL and DE, out of which 1/5 actually pay with real money. It's not everyone, but it's a start :).

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