Does it make sense to give cents? Microsoft is asking that same question. SE Roundtable points to The News Tribune reporting:

Chairman Bill Gates wants to spread some of the wealth from Internet advertising.

“When you use a search engine, if somebody is making lot of money from advertisers they ought to share it with you,” Gates said on the business news channel NDTV Profit.

In the digital business space, I think paying users has a lot of viability. Web 2.0 strategies are fundamentally dependent upon a solid user base; instead of paying for lots of advertising, why not pay for user attention? Could this result in superior word of mouth marketing? If so, could paying users actually result in a lower cost of member acquisition? In addition to value via cost savings, could there be value generated if users are incentivized to produce content? In other words, should companies dependent upon peer production strategies (aka user-generated content) begin to "buy" the content they are dependent upon? And is this all not a part of the advantages presented by lower coordination/communication costs that are inherent in the digital economy?

Well, I'm trying this out myself over at ActoGuitar, so I guess I'll find out first hand.

Other great conversations on this topic: Michael Parekh; Nick Carr; IP Democracy; Vrypan.net; BubbleGeneration....and on a related topic, Anil Dash wants Flickr to pay (Scoble talks about it too).

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