Maybe, this can also be used as a model of user's payment for content.
Currently, the advertisement model is:
- the site collects a pool of ads and distributes them to the visiting
machines. The user pays for a page view with extra few seconds wait for
downloading the ad, smaller viewing space, and distraction. The ad, as
always, works (gets clicked on) 1% to 5% of the time. The advertisers
pay the site and then try to figure out how much use they got out of this.
The MIPsucking model would be:
- the site collects a pool of computations to be performed and distributes
them to visiting machines. The user pays with unused machine cycles and
time to load the script. (The script load time can be made unnoticeable
as well, as the script, unlike the ad, can be downloaded *after* the
page load.) No screen space, no user distraction, works 100% of the time
(with the exception of interrupted connections) The companies who ordered
the computations would get immediate results - exactly what they paid for.
The MIP payments may also be viewed as more "democratic" as they will
extract greater payments from more powerful users, while ad viewing is
more taxing for people with slower modems and smaller screens.
Maybe, this technique will become the prevalent method of payment for
content browsing? Or at least, the user would be able to specify, in
some browser option, the payment method: "ads, MIPs, microcash, other" ?
I wonder what kinds of computations can be performed this way.
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Alexander Chislenko Home page: <http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html>
Firefly Website recommendations: <http://my.yahoo.com> ---> "Firefly"
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