How we are building the best micropayment infrastructure for online content…
...worldwide (< typically Dutch modest startup mentality)
We’re pleased that Reporters Online is the first platform to be fully embedding our micropayment technology. In the last half year, we’ve tested the technology thoroughly with a selected subset of Reporters Online content and are pleased to go into this next phase.
The technology Reporters Online is using is our DecPub (Decentralized Publishing) implementation. It is a micropayment and ownership implementation leveraged by blockchain technology. Using the Decentralised Ledger Technology (DLT) blockchain enables us to implement other interesting capabilities for the media industry next to being able to provide a more affordable infrastructure for micropayment for content.
One of the interesting use cases is, for instance, content syndication, of which our first prototype was shown in our first newsletter (sign up for our newsletter by clicking: here).
Currently we are shaping, refining and testing this mechanism with the help of our great partners like Reporters Online.
Content Syndication
In our first newsletter we embedded this Katalysis Minion Demo video:
Okay okay… now WHAT is THAT all about?
When developing our WordPress plugin to monetise content, we often go the question: ‘Alright, but how do I get more traffic’? Our answer was always, and still is:
“Katalysis is on a mission to democratise the value of online content. We are not in the business of helping you actively to get readership. That relationship is between you, the journalist and/or platform, and the reader.
We are in business to develop an easy to use infrastructure for content creators to help monetising AND distribute your content. And with those software tools we provide you the means to be able to increase your readership!”
The technology underneath our plugin makes sure there is always a link back to the original creator. That means we’re opening up a way for content syndication, such that the original creator can and will always be remunerated.
Let’s zoom in:
On the left you see the payment widget for the freelance journalists at Reporters Online. Do you see the little check box ‘Send to online newsstands?’ ?Well, when you check this box your content will get a special tag in the ‘smart contract’ our software automatically creates. A smart contract is a special agreement made and stored on the blockchain when you upload your content to the Reporters Online network. (For more detail how this works please read our post here.).
The tag states that your article will be available to all the participants in the network to be re-used on their websites, with the pre-defined agreements as stated in the smart contract. For now this feature is still in testing phase and the only functionality now is that Reporters Online will provide your article to be shared on third party platforms such as Blendle (see the Reporter Online manual here).
Here come the Minions
What you see on the demo video is how we embed a minion to an article. The idea here is that the minions represent journalistic pictures stored with the tag on the blockchain to be re-used in journalistic articles. Aside from just being simple images, however, these minions could represent full articles. For instance, if I want to write a website on the topic of ‘blockchain and cryptocurrencies’, I can scrape all the articles tagged with the blockchain- and cryptocurrency tag, articles previously tagged by the freelance writers as okay to be ‘shared on other newsstands’ from the blockchain ecosystem, and re-use them on my website. When those articles are read on my specialised blockchain-site the journalist who provided me the re-use of the article will automatically be remunerated!
Next steps
So, there you have it. One of the interesting use cases our technology will be able to provide in order to enrich great journalism. A lot of development and testing is still needed (fyi.. we’re hiring!), and we will update you when this feature is available. Also, we will elaborate more on how the value flows will work in later posts. We have decided to enable the tagging feature right now, however, so you can sign up for your article to reused when the full feature rolls out.
And… yes, you read it well… it’s just ONE of the many interesting use cases! ;-)
Interested in learning more? Feel free to reach out to us: hello@katalysis.io
