Yeah, well the thing with Medium could happen however it needed to happen: tip jar paradigm that I suggested, mandatory payment to see beyond a teaser as I proposed for other publishers, or any other scheme that seemed suitable. The point would be for there to exist a micropayments system within Medium that everyone agreed worked okay, whether they used it much or not. If that one thing were in place the rest could develop from there … tips or fees, large amounts or small, whatever worked in the market.

I haven’t followed it closely, but I have a sense that there are already a number of systems-services out there that are vying to become the leader in the general micropayments market, and that at some point (hopefully soon) a clear winner will emerge … must like Facebook has done vis-a-vis their competition (whatever happened to MySpace?) At that point I can easily see the publishing industry as a whole getting involved too, as I mentioned earlier. Or maybe not, as I also mentioned earlier.