Quickie Review: WatchMyBit

I heard about WatchMyBit on last night's episode of Free Talk Live (CEO Doug Scribner called in and talked a bit about it). No referral/affiliate link here, just a recommendation, based on four suppositions:

• You like to watch videos;
• You hate having the videos you watch prefaced by, interrupted by, or visually cluttered with, ads;
• You're willing to pay something for the content you consume; and
• You use Bitcoin.

You can probably figure out what WatchMyBit is from those suppositions. Creators upload content. Users pay for that content using Bitcoin instead of putting up with ads.

One of the nice things about Bitcoin is that it makes micropayments practical. In my own case, I had to create a new wallet at blockchain.info and move a little coin out of BTC-E, which has a minimum withdrawal transaction amount that's too high for this purpose, but if you're a regular Bitcoin user who has a smartphone, you probably use a phone-based wallet that handles small amounts (I'm a cell phone Luddite at the moment). But once you can send tiny amounts, you can spend tiny amounts at e.g. WatchMyBit.

As a test, I paid 21 cents (USD) to watch the premier episode of Scribes, a sitcom that prominently features Jane Lynch (of Glee fame) and Danny Trejo (of too many productions to list fame). Great show, but enough about the content.  Let's talk about the platform:

Clean video. No streaming lag. Very nicely done. So there's really nothing more to say about that.

Side note: WatchMyBit does also host audio, so my plan is to make episodes of The KN@PP Stir Podcast available through it for those who want to support my work but prefer to pop for ten cents an episode rather than make large contributions or sign up for a monthly subscription payment (cough ... sidebar ... cough). More on that later.