DoubleRecall (YC S11) Nabs $1.6 Million For Alternative To Paywalls

http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/12/doublerecall-funding/

by transburgh • 14 years ago

62 21 14 years ago

techcrunch.com

Swizec• 14 years ago

Congratz guys!

If you ever need someone taking up room at your place again, you know where to find me.

CWIZO• 14 years ago

Swizec should mention that he was an intern at DoubleRecall last summer.

jrkelly• 14 years ago

Forcing people to read ads -- check off another world-problem solved :p This stuff bums me out. Guessing this a solid group of engineers; could be working on something that matters instead.

tadruj6• 14 years ago

I'd rephrase this as: Enabling people to skip the paywall by doing a minimal thing which is a little more than a click.

Behavior design matters and is a great challenge for engineers.

asr• 14 years ago

If your phrasing were where this is going I'd have no issues with it, but I think (if this is successful) it's going to be much worse:

"The idea is to create experiences that ... are targeted and clickable enough for brands to actually make money and potentially avoid using a paywall altogether."

The most likely use case is to make pop-over ads 100x more annoying, not to complement a paywall. I would hope user revolts would kill this, but I'm not optimistic...

eli_gottlieb• 14 years ago

Correction: behavior design matters and is a great challenge for our established banking system, which only wants to deal in Big Money (much like how many start-ups now only want to deal in Big Data).

aresant• 14 years ago

I never get this attitude.

Without mechanisms for publishers to monetize visitors, publisher quality deteriorates or becomes untenable for independents.

In a world where nobody wants to pay for content, this is a minimally disruptive, novel way to pass revenue directly into the hands of publishers that are working hard to create content.

Retric• 14 years ago

I would much rather pay a few cents than watch an Ad on Hulu. It got so bad I simply stopped watching Hulu all together. Now yet another start up has tacked the hard monetization problem by crating even more annoying advertizing. And you don't see anything wrong with this picture?

PS: Advertizing is basically a zero sum game. It's a multi billion dollar industry, but most people spend most of what they make and better advertizing does not change that fact.

fauigerzigerk• 14 years ago

I agree that there is a problem to solve. But I'm not sure if this approach does anything other than shift some advertising money around. Does it really change the equation or the size of the pie? I don't think so. Whether or not it's minimally disruptive depends on how it is used - like all advertising.

It's perfectly OK for a startup to do advertising stuff, but I agree with jrkelly that this is not what the world needs engineers for. It's just a way to make some money and I wish them luck with that.

zaidf• 14 years ago

could be working on something that matters instead

Sorry, but what does this even mean? You may it seem like there is a universally accepted definition of the word "matters" to which these folks are not living up to.

d5tryr• 14 years ago

Interesting the amount of value that is attributed to a user typing a slogan.

tadruj6• 14 years ago

Inception is currently very underpriced behavior goal.

We do our best to measure it and wake-up the brands. They're quite entertained by other flashy & wavy stuff on the screen at this time.

starfox• 14 years ago

Congrats guys! There is easily millions of dollars worth of value in this idea, even if it's not for everyone.

avree• 14 years ago

Google's currently doing a similar thing with their new Customer Insights—on sites like ZAGAT.com, instead of seeing a paywall, the user is asked to answer a survey question.

OJKoukaz2• 14 years ago

SolveMedia.com has been doing this for sometime now. What's different here?

tadruj6• 14 years ago

With DoubleRecall you don't prove that you are a human, but you prove that you've read the message so you get something in return = quality content.

OJKoukaz2• 14 years ago

Yes, I'm getting something in return, I get to take the desired action on the publisher's site. That's the case with any CAPTCHA. With the old CAPTCHA, I was at least helping convert printed books to digital formats. How is Double Recall different from Solve Media? It's obviously the same business model.

DoubleRecall (YC S11) Nabs $1.6 Million For Alternative To Paywalls

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