Last month I wrote a piece about Kachingle, a micropayment service for news websites that launched last year; although some smaller local papers and several personal blogs have signed up, the service hasn’t really caught on with any major news organization. When I spoke to founder Cynthia Typaldos for my piece, she insisted that “People have to be patient. It’s going to start slow…. Now, obviously, if we got a really big site, that would completely jump-start this. You know, like The Huffington Post or The New York Times or something.”
Well, apparently she wasn’t willing to wait. Because this month, Typaldos started a campaign to “Stop the Paywall,” directed specifically at The New York Times’s blogs. “Did you hear about the looming paywall at the New York Times?,” she wrote in an October 13 press release. “We did. Here at Kachingle, we are committed to keeping the web open and social.” It went on:
And now you can support the New York Times blogs you love directly, with a voluntary contribution of just $5/month. You simply install a Firefox or Chrome browser extension, which puts a small Kachingle bar medallion at the top of each NYTimes blog page. Sign up once and then you are instantly providing financial support to your favorite blog every day you visit. It’s that easy. And with the real-time Leaderboard, it’s fun!
In other words, since the Times didn’t want to put a Kachingle medallion on their homepage, Typaldos did it for them, offering a “browser extension” that would allow her users to donate to the Times blogs through Kachingle. The users would reward their favorite blogs with visits, and in turn, with portions of their $5 per month subscription. From that, Kachingle would collect its usual 15 percent fee (half of which pays for the PayPal transaction), and the remaining 85 percent would go to the Times blogs’ authors. The “Leaderboard” page on the new “KachingleX” site ranks the Times blogs on a scoreboard, showing which ones have the most support from “Kachinglers.”
The only problem? The Times never agreed to the arrangement. This would prove to be a kink in the plan. In the press release, Typaldos writes that “A strong response will show Janet Robinson and the rest of the New York Times executives that paywalls are ‘fundamentally a retrenchment approach…,” seemingly implying that although the Times isn’t quite on board yet, it might actually be willing to “stop the paywall” if Kachingle would just sign up enough users and collect enough money on its behalf. An informational Q & A published on the KachingleX site has this exchange:
Q: Did the New York Times agree to this?
A. Our KachingleX browser extension works independently from the New York Times site. In a word, no. But we hope they will like it!
(The Q & A also explains that the payments will be going directly to the bloggers, rather than to the Times Company, and “How that person chooses to share is up to them.”)
I noted today that Kachingle tweaked the pages to avoid any overt design similarity, and stopped using the actual Times Blogs graphics on its "LeaderBoard" page. The idea that anyone would mistake Kachingle's "Stop the Paywall" pages as being affiliated with the Times is laughable. What's curious is that the Times execs issued an ultimatum -- take the whole campaign down or we'll send a cease-&-desist letter; no, we'll file a lawsuit -- when a less messy solution would be to tell Kachingle to remove the specific things they object to, such as using the NYT Blog graphics, and otherwise ignore a small campaign that annoyed them.
If as you say, Lauren, it may be difficult for "this little start-up to get out of this alive," then that's incredibly mean-spirited by the Times execs who ordered their lawyers to file suit -- knowing that it could kill Kachingle with legal fees. One of the reasons I admire Kachingle (and Flattr and other online-content revenue-model experiments) is that they're trying something different. We need more of that. I'm dismayed that a reputable old-media company would try to shut down an innovator trying to demonstrate alternative models to the benefit of all manner of news (and other) websites and blogs.
I love the NY Times and the quality product it produces. But I've lost quite a bit of respect for its executives for the ham-handed way they're handling this. Why are these smart media people acting so dumb?
FYI, I reached out to NYTimes.com's main paywall executive, knowing that the Times PR department wouldn't let him respond. My request for answers about why they're taking this approach to Kachingle was forwarded to the PR guy who can answer, but I've yet to hear back.
#1 Posted by Steve Outing, CJR on Tue 19 Oct 2010 at 11:47 PM
>> ...it’s hard for me to see how this little start-up is going to get out of this thing alive.
It's hard to see? Try "It's impossible to see..."
The Kachingle business model will have the The New York Times sue it out of existence. If Kachingle was a duck hunter - her plan would be to take the safety off, point the shotgun at her foot and pull the trigger.
Not a good plan.
#2 Posted by F. Murray Rumpelstiltskin, CJR on Wed 20 Oct 2010 at 12:09 AM
The Times is great because it's run by smart people.I trust them to keep extraneous trash away from me while I'm on their site. If you're going to risk everything in an attempt to court the Times, you better be as smart, if not smarter than they are. And your product will have to offer something other than a way to pick people's pockets, and it will need to be invisible as well. Kachingle, thank goodness, never had a chance.
Typaldos' assertion that her motivation is to keep the internet "open" is totally disingenuous. I struggle to understand how the author of this item could think otherwise. Typaldos is a huckster attempting to cheapen other peoples' experience online to the advantage of her private well-being. Her startup should sit down.
#3 Posted by Casey Chapple, CJR on Wed 20 Oct 2010 at 02:59 PM
I guess it's an advantage to have a full subscription for something so the regular reader doesn't get "screwed" by groups like Kachingle etc. I received a number of notices asking me to subscribe to NYTIMES but I paid no attention to who was basing these since I had just paid my $200+ for 3 months and knew I didn't need any of this. Also, if people read Times regularly they'd know that the pay wall wasn't to be started until early 2011--Is that here already??!!??
#4 Posted by Patricia Wilson, CJR on Wed 20 Oct 2010 at 06:09 PM
Yes, this is a strange case. Everything about Kachingle is strange, and actually sad about Kachingle. They are going to wait a very, very long time before this "catches on". If users care about a site, they will visit it repeatedly, thus resulting in ad dollars for the site. Kachingle's hypothesis is that you can see what other people Kachingle and it will be a status symbol. Um...try free social media outlets like Facebook or Twitter.
And the folks at Kachingle seem perplexed that big publishers do not want to put their big Kachingle badge on all of the pages on their site, which would be necessary to have their program gain any traction. They evidently do not understand web businesses and that what they are asking for is very valuable real estate that could be way better monetized with simple AdWords.
I do agree with the author here that Kachingle has noble intentions. I don't think they really meant any harm with this "stunt". I just think they are so incredibly out-of-touch with consumer behavior and website management.
#5 Posted by Logical Person, CJR on Thu 21 Oct 2010 at 12:32 AM
This reminds me of my experiences with the NYTimes and Dot Earth Defender.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/new-comment-design-coming/?apage=2#comment-42447
(more history in comments at http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/announcing-the-new-york-times-community-api/ - egads it was depressing)
#6 Posted by Anna Haynes, CJR on Fri 22 Oct 2010 at 10:58 PM
The problem is that people base a lot of their decisions not only on current information but archived articles. The Web is just that, a WEB. What part of Web do you people not understand?
I will subscribe to news outlets which actually report the truth rather than giving the audience a case of ADHD in contradiction to statements made last week.
I have taken political science classes that cost me a ton of money - had no library access - to get articles and make notes. The already existing archive pay wall was a complete disaster.
Are students going to need to subscribe to every publication just to write a god damn paper?
The complaints are not only disingenuous but downright dishonest. Nobody here is getting charged twice. If you don't Kachingle anyway you don't pay there. RED HERRING!
Now I recognize some issues:
NYT pays iits writers already - duh - so getting money that way is kinda hokey since the Times does own those articles and you can't have your employees making extra cash on articles you already paid for.
NYT is scared that if its authors get paid independently then they can continue to carry their reputation if sometime in the future NYT decides the authors made their corporate masters cry (advertisers, Mockingbird supervisor). NYT can no longer threaten to fire your ass for posting the truth because people also use Kachingle or Flattr or Pyrabang as a reputation accumulation proxy therefore it is impossible for NYT to soft-blacklist the authors. NYT can fire them and Kachinglers will make their up their own mind by switching to the author's brand new wordpress without missing a beat.
That's the real issue here. Too bad. By next year there will be deluvian explosion of these kinds of services. Get on board now or sink. Either way I'm getting me some popcorn to watch the show.
Go ahead sue Kachingle - the platform will be copied and copied and copied until there's an initial setup to those who are not early adopters.
I'm sorry but I'm LMAO already at the next few years of media.
#7 Posted by Anti Vigilante, CJR on Wed 27 Oct 2010 at 02:53 AM
From 350 F3d 640 Assessment Technologies of Wi Llc v. Wiredata Inc case, which you can read at OpenJurist.org http://tinyurl.com/334e4qh
" ...for a copyright owner to use an infringement suit to obtain property protection, here in data, that copyright law clearly does not confer, hoping to force a settlement or even achieve an outright victory over an opponent that may lack the resources or the legal sophistication to resist effectively, is an abuse of process. "
id imagine you could find a judge who'd make the same argument re: trademark, etc.
#8 Posted by decora, CJR on Thu 23 Dec 2010 at 12:31 AM
and is optimistic that the scuffle with the Times will do Kachingle “a potentially big favor” by getting it some attention in the blogosphere. I am inclined to disagree.
... he wrote. In his blog.
#9 Posted by DaveB, CJR on Mon 21 Nov 2011 at 03:52 PM
Kachingle continues to limp a along, never successful but unwilling to die. I worked there briefly and I had an awful time -- the level of infighting was ridiculous.
Recently on App.net I got into a conversation with one of the guys at Flattr, and he made a good point about the need to keep things simple: Flattr is successful because their idea is so simple, whereas Kachingle is constantly adding new "features" that no one understands. Check out this conversation I had with the guy at Flattr:
https://alpha.app.net/lkrubner/post/1817623
Flattr's model is basically "this is a Like button that sends a little money". The idea is easy to get. Kachingle offers you a mind numbing array of options: how much do you want to pay each site, who is the beneficiary, should they store the money in escrow, if their is money is excess, which charity would you like it go to? I think they could be accused of over thinking it.
Still, I worked their part-time for a month thinking I could help them. But I could not help them. No one can help them. I posted some of the details of the sad story here:
http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/a-sad-time-at-kachingle
#10 Posted by Lawrence Krubner, CJR on Sat 23 Feb 2013 at 06:30 PM