Gwu-participants-mankins

In-a-Moon implements software for "Browsing 2.0". In Browsing 2.0 users use the Internet exactly like they do now, with the exception that the sites they visit have an opportunity to earn revenue by the mere fact that the browser visited the site. So Browsing 2.0 is like the current web experience, except we hook up a "behind the scenes" payment methodology. In Browsing 2.0, we're trying to get content providers to earn money to support their content.

The other main part of Browsing 2.0 is a fair distribution of monthly fees. We do this based on usage. We take a large sample (a month), and proportion out the payment at the end of the month based on the month's usage. We call this the "Trail Economy", as it pays content providers based on browser's trail.

In In-a-Moon, we view the act of browsing as being an implicit indicator of consumption, and use this as a marker for monthly distributions. No explicit "yes, pay this site" type checks are required, in In-a-Moon, this is implicit.

It's been said that subscriptions (and micropayments) will never work due to the substitution effect. In-a-Moon basically agrees with this position, however we realize that for the Trail Economy and Browsing 2.0 to really be meaningful, we have to have more money in the system.

For this reason, In-a-Moon chooses to allow content creators to dynamically wall and unwall their content. Or said another way, we allow for the easy creation of doors and manage the automatic opening and closing of the doors. We do not believe that most content should be behind doors. However, we do believe there is a class of content that is premium, and as such, consumers should be willing to pay for. Our technology is called the "Dynamic Threshold" and we use this open/close door to drive consumers to sign up for our service.

That's the basics.

The next step of Browsing 2.0 would be to have an ecosystem of payment providers like In-a-Moon and Kachingle. We believe that it's best for everyone (consumers, producers, payment providers) if we do this. For this, we've designed a set of "Federation" protocols that allow us to share basic access and trust information without disclosing consumer or producer information. This of course leads to being able to share revenue from each other's customers and being able to provide universal coverage for consumers and producers. A federation of payment providers will allow the cost the consumer pays to reach market price quicker, as well as allow innovation and cure vendor lock-in for producers.