Kim GaskinsKim Gaskins is the Director of Content Development for Latitude, an international research consultancy exploring how Web technologies can further enhance human experiences. She recently published Kachingle: The Future of Free?, an analysis of Kachingle inspired after the Lattitude team was “intrigued by the simple elegance of the idea.”

First, we simply like the notion that people are willing to pay for something of value to them. (Latitude Research has written extensively on Radiohead’s In Rainbows album “experiment,” which implemented a pick-your-own-price model for fans–free included–and went on to rake in the digital profits nevertheless).

We like that if Kachingle, or another comprehensive, voluntary-pay model was widely adopted, it might raise the standards for content quality (or connect them more directly to the people actually engaging with the content); it’d tie content quality, user engagement, and user loyalty more concretely to revenue.