In a response to my amorality post, Om Malik offers some interesting, and troubling, thoughts about the so-called age of participation that many Web 2.0 pundits are heralding. Malik points out that there can be a very fuzzy line between participation and exploitation. He wonders whether the culture of participation isn’t in the end just a way to:
build businesses on our collective backs. So if we tag, bookmark or share, and help del.icio.us or Technorati or Yahoo become better commercial entities, aren’t we seemingly commoditizing our most valuable asset – time. We become the outsourced workforce, the collective, though it is still unclear what is the pay-off. While we may (or may not) gain something from the collective efforts, the odds are whatever “the collective efforts” are, they are going to boost the economic value of those entities. Will they share in their upside? Not likely!
He quotes Yannick Laclau, who points out how companies built on open communities, like eBay or Craigslist, will sell out those communities if it’s in their business interest to do so:
In the early days, when all is new and in beta and people are blind by the tech-love of seeing innovative stuff, these issues are for the most part ignored. But as we start to see sizable traffic and revenue patterns fluctuate, many existing players might feel that being “open” is rather little more than an invitation for a competitor to steal their lunch.
Could it be that Web 2.0 is just a high-tech means of exploiting the work of the masses for the benefit of the few? I don’t know, but I agree with Malik when he says, “It is something we need to discuss.”
This is interesting. To consider it exploitation doesn’t fit — feels just too reactionary, too obsessively contrarian, party-pooping.
Recall, when Television came up in the late 1940’s it took about 30 years for us to iterate toward the natural potential of the medium…and we are still iterating with Reality TV. For example, even into the 1960’s some TV programs were merely moving pictures of actors reading a “Teleplay” into large condencer microphones. So, it took a while to disover the Medium.
Despite that Web 2.0 crystalizes a lot of excitement about the new new thing — which it does legitimately — we haven’t yet figured out where all these linkages get us. The result is not conslusive. And I feel that to define it by economic value in terms that VC use misses a large part of the point. I believe we are not in a very good seat to see what the rich link-o-sphere can produce.
Certainly in business, return and economic profit matter. However, when we talk about Web 2.0 we are talking about technology moving — mapping — to the social plane, perhaps exponentially exaggerating our individual social scope(s) or horizon(s). If there are business implications for this, that’s neat; but the business frame excludes too much of the picture.
The question of what happens to these pools of user information, I admit, remains interesting. Especially if a certain tier of Google shareholders should renounce their pledge to not be evil ;-)
for these exact reasons, the best web 2.0 companies will be those that allow consumers/collaborators to profit from their work — actually, not just allow, but facilitate and encourage such profiting.
It’s exploitation when there is no consideration exchanged between parties. Consideration does not have to be money. It can be bragging rights, direct attribution or anything else that is understood to be valued by a community. Web 2.0 certainly implies that there is more direct involvement by users in the production process of a web-originated good or service in contrast to 1.0 when all end-users did was consume. At the same time, in agreement with your amorality post, I expect to see a blossoming of community oriented barter that certain people will try to monetize, perhaps with success. But just as Howard Dean’s campaign proved that you can simultaneously achieve an initial success that obscures more shaky fundamentals, I have not seen to date a Web 2.0 business model that smashes me upside the head with a 2X4 of reality and obvious need.
Not to sound gauche but the old New Orleans riff, “If you really want to know who your true friends are, you party till the money run out” rings more appropriate the more stridently Web 2.0 is positioned as the next big thing.
Open always wins, eventually. It may take generations, but it ends up winning. The question, then, is can we keep things open for ourselves and our kids, or do we screw it up and lose it control over information distribution to the more powerful commercial interests. (Not that commercial interests don’t get to play too — they just shouldn’t be allowed to own the field.)
I’d like to think that the ‘market forces’ of users would self-police this in some kind of emergent way. But that’s probably naive — I’m a pretty knowledgeable internet denizen, and I’m still not plugged into all the stuff the EFF and others are trying to do. Believing that “the people” will somehow keep things in line may be too optimistic. Government will, at some point, need to weigh in with some authority on just how much of a free commons the ‘net really is. (Worrisome right now … but elections are coming up :-) )
It’s a matter of educating those people on whose backs the ‘net is being built — coming up with simple ways for them to grasp the issue.
I’m reminded of the famous Nast cartoons that turned the tide against Boss Tweed in the 1870s. If we could simplify the issues and communicate that to the ‘masses’ (who don’t have time or inclination to be ‘literate’ about the complex issues of EULA’s and such) maybe such a meme could innoculate against encroaching commercial control?
To Nicholas Carr: about Web 2.0, Wikipedia, the CIA, amateurs, and Spain’s population
Hi Nicholas, I love your writing style; it’s very funny and irreverent, and makes us all think about things from a fresh angle. Your post about the amorality of Web 2.0 is a classic read: This isn’t the language of
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He quotes Yannick Laclau, who points out how companies built on open communities, like eBay or Craigslist, will sell out those communities if it’s in their business interest to do so.
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Free software solved this in the 80s with the GPL. That’s explicitly designed to prevent commercial companies taking advantage of the commons-based production and enclosing it for their own profit.
I’ll think we’ll see successive waves, with each new commons discovered / created. Companies will come in, looking for ways to skim something off.
Sometimes they’ll provide a service of real value to the community, and to that extent they may be welcomed.
Sometimes they’ll try to take too much, or sell out their communities, but I think the community is getting more savvy, quicker to move on at earlier signs of trouble. People will be increasingly reluctant to join communities where they’re locked in and can’t take their identity, data and personal reputation elsewhere when they want. Or they’ll invent other strategies like the GPL to prevent the exploitation.
Users can be fickle too. Look what happened to Friendster. The shifting opinions towards Microsoft or Google might be a similar signs.
Sites that accept user contributions generally post descriptions of how the contributions will be used. People worried about “unfair” economic exploitation can look for a Creative Commons or GFDL type license.
Most contributors don’t seem to care. I suspect it’s because they realize that the value of the five-word Amazon product review they just contributed comes not from the sweat it took to write the paragraph, but from the elaborate infrastucture Amazon has put together to make use of otherwise unexploitable five-word product reviews.