Web 2.0: A few words on Tom Sawyer and painted fences
“I’m guessing ole Tom’s trickery is not a sustainable model for encouraging mass collaboration in a 21st century business venture.” - Blogging Wikinomics—with follow-up in today’s New York Times.
So, gang, what do you think? Paint the TeleBlog’s fence—while keeping in mind that this one is noncommercial.
As I see it, there’s room for both fence models and the traditional variety. What I hate, though, is the idea of corporations building business plans around the idea of not paying regular contributors for tasks such as routine newsgathering. The fence-painters need to be driven by passion. “Hey, Tom, I don’t enjoy pure white, but how about letting me mix it up with some creative graffiti?”
Related: Wikipedia item—ideally passion-drive!—on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
April 29th, 2007 at 11:30 am
I was planning to write a lengthy disquisition on the motivations of writers who compose encyclopedia entries for Wikipedia, book reviews for Amazon, and comments for TeleBlog without compensation; but then I came across a remark by Samuel Johnson, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” So, instead I will coerce Johnson to write about the deceptive benevolence of authors who write for free:
April 29th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Thank goodness for the talented blockheads among the TeleContributors. Please, Garson—don’t smarten up in a Johnsonian way.
Of course the guy running the TeleBlog doesn’t get paid for his contributions there, either, and that’s a major difference from Google and all the rest.
David
April 29th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Hey David,
> there’s room for both fence models and the traditional variety.
I agree. And for me, I’ll continue to freely contribute — where it’s both meaningful and fun — when the purpose is non-commercial or, if commercial, my inputs helps create a market.
Thanks for amplifying “Wagging the Long Tail.”
April 29th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
The fence-whitewashing model has worked well for fiction publishers for years. Want to be a publisher? Just open an office and writers will fall over themselves to send you unsolicited manuscripts that they have sweated over. Publish one in a thousand and pay them - on average - less than half of what they would have made flipping burgers. Or better still, set up as a vanity publisher and let them pay you. Sounds like a great business model to me. What a shame if the Internet spoils it all…