If you happen to build a web application that attracts many users — Chatroulette, Twitter or the like — the usual expectation is that you will turn to advertising to generate income to support the application’s continued availability and development.
Marina Gorbis has a different idea. In a short article for the Institute for the Future (of which she is executive director) she proposes a different type of business model for social-media ventures:
“Our technology tools and platforms are highly participatory and social. They take advantage of intrinsic human motivations to contribute in order to be noticed, to share opinions, to be a part of something greater than ourselves… Our business models, by contrast, are based primarily on monetary rewards. They are mostly hierarchical and non-participatory decisionmaking processes…
“If we are to truly fulfill the promise of technology tools we have created, we urgently need to design new governance models and new ways of creating value. In the least, organizations whose value derives from communities they create should incorporate the governance principles of successful commons organizations and use the same technology platforms that are at the core of their operations for governance purposes.”
Sounds familiar? David Weinberger wrote in 1999 about the World Wide Web’s effect on organisations. He predicted that companies would survive by becoming ‘hyperlinked’ organisations where hierarchies are replaced by networks of equals:
“…the Web crept into our offices under false pretenses. We thought first it was a library of information. Then we thought it was a publishing medium. Then we thought it was a toy or a dangerous distraction. But in fact it is a conversation of a new type… Conversation that understands that it isn’t a distraction from work, it’s the real work of business.
“The Web is hitting business with the force of a whirlwind because it is a whirlwind. The closely held, tightly packed, beautifully tooled pieces are being pulled apart. They are rebinding themselves in patterns determined by the conversations that are occurring in every conceivable tone of voice.
“The character of business is becoming the same as the character of the Web — an explosion reconfigured by the intersection of hearts.” (The Cluetrain Manifesto, chapter 5)
