
The Dutch tech whiz who could save journalism - bootload
http://www.politico.eu/article/the-dutch-tech-whiz-who-could-save-journalism/
======
mercer
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?)

~~~
alexandernl
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 :).

~~~
mercer
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.)

------
akie
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.

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
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.

~~~
draugadrotten
> Annoyingly they don't show prices beforehand.

Is that even legal in EU consumer law?

[http://www.consumerhelp.ie/pricing-rules](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."

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

------
Confiks
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](https://www.blendle.com/js/app.js.map)

------
flexie
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?

~~~
ghaff
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.

~~~
daemin
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.

~~~
ghaff
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.

------
noir-york
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.

~~~
gedrap
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.

~~~
alexandernl
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?

~~~
mercer
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!).

~~~
danieldk
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.

------
edwinjm
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.

------
rolfvandekrol
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.

------
mojuba
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.

~~~
mercer
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.

------
Shivetya
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

------
eveningcoffee
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.

~~~
singletonaccnt
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://parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/18782/what-should-i-do-
if-my-15-year-old-son-is-sexually-interested-in-younger-boys)

\- [https://www.quora.com/Pedophilia/What-does-it-feel-like-
to-b...](https://www.quora.com/Pedophilia/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-a-
pedophile-1/answer/Ben-Kirssen)

------
kriro
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.

------
timwaagh
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.

~~~
alexandernl
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 :).

