Ricardo Perez Garrido

Chris Anderson -yes, the one that coined the term Long Tail for the economics of distribution of digital goods- has a short piece on the latest Wired Magazine on User Generated Content, called People Power. One of the issues that he covers is how business models, successfull ones, are using this content created and evaluated by users, to offer a better service to their customers.

Amazon and its user reviews. Netflix, with the same strategy and moving DVDs around. Some of them have been integrated in big internet players (Flickr - Yahoo) or are being pursued by offers of all the big players (YouTube fighting, and wining, Google and Yahoo video services). They have in common a simple technology to allow its users to share. It's like the traditional problem of the public commons, sort of a prisonner´s dilemma in which the number/effect of free riders is reduced by the altruistic activities of many.

The impact of these activies is something to be observed closely, not as something odd, or that will be forgotten fast, but as a global trend to share ideas, create realities on line that might not be possible in your daily life, and being altruistic in a portion of your life, that can have effects that are unexpected. Just look at what the Linux community has created.

Posted on 30 June 2006 in Contenidos / Content, English

Comments

Post a comment