One thing that really bugs me about all of these Web 2.0 social sites is that they are still controlled by elitist financing. All of them rely on a core group of heavy users but none of them enable these people ownership in the companies that they are building nor any reasonable income. They are all going after the VC dollar and the entrepreneurial life changing event. Hoarding like this is so bubble.
Further, it's a completely hypocritical and cynical spin on the entire notion of open source and community. It even makes news organizations look positively progressive. They at least pay their contributors.
Prediction: this boomlet will end with a thud (again). Further, "innovations" like this will continue to land with thuds until a participatory financing model is built that sustains community development.
There's an interesting little site in Britain called Scoopt that started out last year as a photo agency to enable the public to sell their pictures to the media.
It has just branched out into licensing blog posts to editors. Could be worth keeping an eye on if the model takes off.
They're advising bloggers to post to an 'open source newspaper' called Nightcap Syndication so I suppose there's a Web 2.0 aspect to it.
Posted by: Tom Griffin | June 24, 2006 at 09:25 PM
It's like reading a Friedman column without the "fascinating" insights.
Posted by: jon | June 26, 2006 at 10:59 AM
Not sure what you mean jon.
Posted by: John Robb | June 26, 2006 at 03:12 PM
Oh snap.
FWIW I agree completely, have been obsessing about how to create self-financed onlince social ventures for the past couple years. Getting close to a fundraising drive.
Posted by: Josh Koenig | June 26, 2006 at 04:35 PM
In a lot of his editorials, he seems to be engaged in one long product placement campaign likethtey do on TV of casually dropping a name brand product into the middle of a program no for no artistic reason at all. They do it with Law and Order reruns on TNT. Randomly on an officers desk you will see a can of Coke, that has been digitally added, since the original network airing, to the shot. Most of the TV specials and many of his editorials seem to be the same sort of thing. He'll introduce the company that he is talking about at the beginning of the bit, and procede to use that name ten more times in the segment, when there is no need for anything other than a pronoun. Like the person who says, "I was talking to John Robb the other day and then John Robb said this, and the Robb said that. And then on my way back to my Days Inn hotel, in my Toyota Hybrid Vehicle, I realized what John Robb was saying." It almost seems like he gets paid for every name he mentions.
Posted by: jon | June 27, 2006 at 09:05 AM