Extending the pricing conversation (actually, preceding it -- not sure how I missed this one), Clay Shirky weighs in on O'ReillyNet with The Case Against Micropayments, in which he applies many of the same arguments about user's preference not to think, which causes them to pay more for flat-rate pricing than they would for metered, to why micropayments have failed — despite how much technologists want them to. "Micropayment systems have not failed because of poor implementation; they have failed because they are a bad idea," says Clay. So what will work? He argues, the same things that always have:
The sad thing is, he's probably right. Then again, he may be wrong. And it just may be a lunatic you're looking for.
Micropayment advocates often act as if this [simple payment for cheap things] is a problem particular to the Internet, but the real world abounds with items of vanishingly small value: a single stick of gum, a single newspaper article, a single day's rent. There are three principal solutions to this problem offline — aggregation, subscription, and subsidy — that are used individually or in combination. It is these same solutions — and not micropayments — that are likely to prevail online as well.
The sad thing is, he's probably right. Then again, he may be wrong. And it just may be a lunatic you're looking for.