Crowdfunding the creation of the next version of LFGSS

booze

Ardbeg, but who's counting?

The comparison with twitter is interesting. The turmoil they are currently going through will, no doubt, end up as a Harvard Business School case study on the difficulties of monetising success online. In particular, it is interesting how the independent developers that were so integral to Twitter's early success are now a risk to their business because they stand between twitter (and its advertisers) and the users.

How is Microcosm different? A sponsored tweet can be ignored by a twitter client. Similarly, what's to stop a Microcosm client "capturing" an affiliate link and replacing it with its own affiliate link?

that Microcosm is run on it's own servers, like tumblr is. You have a tumblr, and use their service, you don't run your own. Therefore there is no way that the affiliate links can be swapped to their own ones.

Of cause, you need to capture people posting their own affiliate links, and hijack them, but that's a step beyond the starting point.

--edit--

ah, I see what you mean. the threat of being cut out of the API approved list if you do so? If it's there from the start, then it's less of an issue. Also, I suspect it could be quite tricky to code, and would only net you a minimal amount of people.

How is Microcosm different? A sponsored tweet can be ignored by a twitter client. Similarly, what's to stop a Microcosm client "capturing" an affiliate link and replacing it with its own affiliate link?

You should note that firstly I don't regard affiliates as the only possible revenue stream. Things like classifieds fee-for-listing on successful sale, tickets to events, helping to operate community market places all would have small revenue streams for payment processing and basic costs in the 5-10% area (less if I can push down other costs like the payment provider).

There is a risk that affiliate schemes could be circumvented, but it would take a lot of effort on behalf of the client.

They would need to follow every link ahead of rendering, and determine the end destination. Then replace each instance of the original URL with the end destination.

Without operating a centralised system this could mean up to several hundred links per page in the worst case but still tens of links in the best cases.

That would be untenable due to wait times in servicing the entire link chain (an affiliate link is a redirect). And on mobile, it simply wouldn't work (even with 4G as latency issue and TCP backoff still isn't solved).

If they chose to build a centralised store of origin links to destination links then they might be able to overcome the affiliate links, but it would've required a capital investment to do so, ongoing opex costs. That is, it's hard to do, requires real expense, and remains only a temporary workaround (but at least this could work for a while whereas link re-writing in the client by following the redirect chain would not).

So now I've covered how someone might do it and the difficulties involved, let's ask:

Why would they want to?

Affiliate links are the most benign form of advertising in that they track nothing by default.

The third party has no real presence on this site and cannot identify you or what you've viewed just because you've viewed an affiliate link.

Should you choose to click an affiliate link and visit, say, ChainReactionCycles, then they would see you... but only because you visited CRC. At which point the affiliate link is doing nothing more than the shop would do anyway, likely place a cookie to create a shopping cart.

That is... you had no less privacy than if the affiliate link did not exist, the affiliate link doesn't even personally identify you, it simply matches completed sales to original referrer.

The next point is that the stores want affiliate links. You might think that if they have the sale and can avoid paying out 1% of their value that they would. Except, the stores want to build trade and want to build an audience for their trade and affiliate fees do this very well for a very low cost associated with each transaction (no up-front fees).

With affiliate links preserving privacy, being in the interest of both Microcosm and the sellers, and being so technically difficult to circumvent effectively and permanently... I really don't think there's a great deal of risk.

What I'll actually just do:

I will simply put into the API agreement that aside from processing for rendering, that no changes may be made to the content itself (including links).

I'd then deny API access to anyone that does go to the effort of trying (and failing) to strip out affiliate links.

I presume that the same argument holds for modifying affiliate links so that they are the beneficiary? Why wouldn't a regex replace of buro9 with mashton do the job?

Not the way I plan to do it.

Due diligence has now started, I have 2 weeks to get together 27 documents, some of which are lengthy and complex, others very trivial. After which I imagine that Christmas will interfere but that Seedrs will require a bit longer to look over the documents.

I do not expect to actually receive any of the investment until late January, early February, in the meantime I anticipate having to cover the rent and first stipend to Matt as well as other basic costs from the patron contributions via http://signup.microcosm.app/

Therefore, if you pledged to be a patron and thought it wasn't important to do so now the investment has been notionally raised, wrong... your contributions are actually far more vital as they help us get through the first 2 months until the investment actually arrives.

I'm a bit poorer than I thought I would be after getting married and then not being able to work, so I doubt I'll have what I pledged, I'll try and get something together for you though. Either that or get a quick divorce, take half her stuff and give you half of that.

Ah, that's cool.

I never ever want anyone to give, invest, or anything in a way that jeopardises their own position.

I'm sure I can find a fiver, I'll put some more in the pot when it's there.

Has anyone else stopped donatibg now that they have invested? Can we get stars anyway?

mmm, I need to email about the username(s*) that I'd like to reserve too

Investment was all made in my name on behalf of both MrsMrDrem and I (& babyMrDrem, although she doesn't know it yet) for tax reasons. I'm hoping that David will be kind enough to sort this with me, otherwise I'll have to go via the suscription route...

*TBC

Why would you stop buying the forum a beer? I dont understand? Just because we have invested doesnt mean that we can suddenly stop. In fact, surely by doing that you are making its imminent survival more difficult?

Plus the LFGSS forum gets the donations by stars and not Microcosm I believe.

True dat. It was a coincidence from when the paypal change happened. I am just tryng to ponce a free star.

No free stars to investors.

Stars were always intended to be simply recognition for those that contributed to the community by helping to support the site. And to indicate whether those who profited heavily from the classifieds (the traders) were supporting the site.

Investing has it's own rewards, namely you get shares and those shares are hoped to increase greatly in value.

As CB says though, they are different things and actually even though the investment is almost secure the site still has to stand on it's own for a while. In the worst case that might be for good (what if the venture fails?), in the best case it would be for 6-8 months.

The need for donations hasn't vanished because of investment in Microcosm.

On the "When are you going to ask investors for their username"... which no-one had asked but someone should've. I plan to do it once the money is received, post due-diligence. This may be January or even February.

Usernames seem like a petty thing at present, to my mind anyways

Spends last £5 reserving Clever Pun

But what would you be called then Clever Pun?

Not so clever now are you!

Very Clever Pun.

GrottyCotter?

'Stupid Pun'?

No, hands off, that one's mine.

hahahaha

"Not Very Punny"

The more I think about Microcosm, during my lucid, future-gazing moments, the more potential I see...
#vestedinterest #amirichyet?

I'd been wondering if I could effectively shift an entire blog style website over to it, and deciding that I probably could, and that it could work quite well for that, but I wasn't sure what analytics info would be provided.