Andrew Warner of Mixergy did a video interview with Kachingle founder Cynthia Typaldos last week and its now available for viewing on his site. The discussion covers more than just Kachingle –Andrew took Cynthia back to her work at the dawn of the web era when she founded GolfWeb, one of the seminal content, online communities and ecommerce sites and she explained her thought process behind such an original concept.
Cynthia also discusses her second startup, RealCommunities, and then finishes with her current startup, Kachingle.
Paul Gillin of the aptly-named Newspaper Death Watch weighs in with a response to the recent CJR article on Kachingle (he used a very old version of the logo but its okay):
Lauren Kirchner does what reporters do too rarely: Updates us on last year’s hot news. In this case, the subject is Kachingle, a tip-jar-style service that lets readers contribute micropayments to the Internet publishers they like without having to make a conscious effort to do so. The service was all the rage when announced in early 2009 (we gave it several paragraphs in February), but its star seems to have faded since.
Kachingle has signed up about 300 publishers, but none whose title begins with the word “The.” Kachingle founder Cynthia Typaldos said she’s been getting a great reception from news organizations, but the sales process seems to die at the executive level. Kirchner speculates that Kachingle’s transparency – visitors can see which sites inspire the most contributions – may be one barrier. But more likely it’s just bureaucratic intransigence: “Fitting a little Kachingle widget seamlessly onto a homepage isn’t actually as easy as it sounds, if the homepage you’re talking about is nytimes.com.”
Barbara Iverson, founder of the nonprofit local news site Chicagotalks, has used Kachingle since this past January. So far, Chicagotalks has only received about $50 total from its fifteen “Kachinglers,” but Iverson still likes the idea so much that she recorded a promotional video for Kachingle’s home page. “I think this is an idea that’s going to come within the next five years,” Iverson said. “I just expected it a lot sooner.”
What Iverson loves about Kachingle in particular, as opposed to something like a PayPal tip jar, is that it’s completely mindless. Once you sign up for a Kachingle account, that’s the last time you ever have to visit the Kachingle page. You don’t have to sign in to PayPal each time you visit a page, and you don’t have to decide what amount or percentage of money you would like to donate.
Kachingle founder Typaldos is emphatic that this is the only way that a micropayment system will work. “The mental transaction cost has to be practically zero,” she said. (You do, of course, have to sign up once, hence the “practically.”)
Die Presse is one of the major daily newspapers in Austria and this article covers the recent German launch of our service. Two of our early adopters, Bill Mitchell (Poynter Entrepreneurs) and David Röthler (http://politik.netzkompetenz.at/), are quoted. Mitchell explains that neither paywalls nor advertising will provide sufficient revenue for major media companies but crowdfunding (a la Kachingle) just might. Röthler says he likes Kachingle’s simplicity, transparency and social recognition.
Vor allem für den Online-Journalismus, aber auch die Blogosphere insgesamt gibt es eine spannende Alternative zwischen Paid Content und Kostenlos – das sogenannte “Crowdfunding”. Diese Methode verbindet auf intelligente Weise Web 2.0 und Micropayments. Ein bereits funktionierendes Beispiel ist der von Silicon-Valley-Unternehmerin Cynthia Typaldos gegründete Crowdfunding-Service “Kachingle”. Content-Provider wie Blogs oder Online-Magazine können sich bei Kachingle registrieren und ein spezielles Widget auf ihren Seiten installieren. Wenn den aktiven “Kachinglern” der angebotene Inhalt gefällt, klicken sie ganz einfach das Medaillon an – und zählen damit zu den offiziellen Unterstützern dieser Seite. Die Umverteilung der aus der Crowd gesammelten Funds richtet sich danach, wie oft eine Seite im Abrechnungszeitraum besucht wurde. Ein ähnliches Prinzip verfolgt auch Pirate-Bay-Mitgründer Peter Sunde mit dem Projekt “Flattr”. “Flattr is a wordplay of flattr and flatrate. With a flatrate fee, you can flattr people”, sagt Sunde und setzt statt auf Piraterie & File-Sharing nun auf eine ganz legale Variante zu Paid Content. Im Moment ist Flattr allerdings noch in der Private Beta-Phase – doch wenn das Modell so populär werden sollte wie weiland die Pirate Bay, wären wir wohl einer Kulturflatrate wirklich schon sehr nahe.
English translation: 5th Crowd Funding – on the way to the grassroots cultural flatrate
Especially for online journalism, but also the blogosphere, there are a total of exciting alternative between free and paid content – the so-called “Crowd Funding”. This method combines in an intelligent way, Web 2.0 and micropayments. A working example of the already founded by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Cynthia Typaldos Crowd-Funding Service is Kachingle. Content providers such as blogs and online magazines can register with Kachingle and install a special widget on their pages. If the active “Kachinglers” like the content offered, they simply click on the medallion once- and rank among the official supporters of this page. The redistribution of funds collected from the crowd depends on how often a site has been visited in the accounting period. A similar principle also follows Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde with the project “flutter”. “Flutter is a wordplay of flatrate. With a flatrate fee, you can flutter people, “said Sunde and does not rely on piracy and file-sharing now in a completely legal alternative to paid content. At the moment, however, still flutter in the private beta – but if the model should be as popular as once the Pirate Bay, we probably would be a culture flatrate really very close.
Das Ziel Crowdfunding für gute Internet-Inhalte möchte der Online-Dienst Kachingle ermöglichen. Vergleichbar ist der Ansatz mit einer freiwilligen GEZ-Zahlung, aber in diesem Fall bestimmt der Nutzer selbst, welche Inhalte Anteile erhalten und wie viel er zahlen möchte. Umfassende Diskussion über den Dienst wurde in deutschen Blogs beispielsweise bei Der Spiegelfechter und im Kulturmanagement Blog geführt.
English (via Google Translate)
The goal of Crowd Funding for good Internet content is enabled by the online service Kachingle. Similar to the approach of voluntary pay-TV licensing, but in this case what content will receive shares and how much to pay is determined by the user himself. Extensive discussion of the service has been in German blogs such as Der Spiegel fencers, and in arts management blog led.
In other paid-content news, the Chicago Reader has an informative profile of the interesting startup Kachingle, which allow users to pay a flat fee to read a number of sites, then designate how much of their money goes where and trumpet to their friends where they’re reading.
A service that allows readers to voluntarily tip as many news sites as they want launched publicly last month, and the money is already rolling in. Not.
According to the Chicago Reader, Kachingle, which is a new service that combines crowdfunding and social networking, the product isn’t yet “the wave of the future…The scale of the profits might astonish you. To the World Security Institute’s four-year-old Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, $54.95. To the veteran Center for Investigative Reporting, $20.86. To the Boulder Daily Camera, $22.45. And to the hottest site of them all, Carta.info, $117.16.”
So now we wait and wonder if this new thing is finally the thing that saves media.
