Web 2.0 is not just a version of the web anymore. It has become a platform for quick-money-on-the-go. Have an idea, will earn millions.
The amount of money in a web-2.0 venture can be made out by these quick facts – Facebook is worth $15 billion, Feedburner a $100 million, Youtube a cool $1.65 billion, and so on with a lot of other web-2.0 startups(all information from the Richer Scales “Another bubble” video).
Let’s just try to get behind the scenes and see where the money is. I haven’t been lucky enough like some of these people, so I’m just curious to know as to where is the money. Or is there any money in reality.
In essence, in the consumer internet space, there are notably 3 parties to anything. First, the publisher of the content, second, the advertiser for that content, and third, the community driving that content. On more occasions than not, one always finds himself in the third category – the community driving the content. The chain of flow of money is as easy to figure out as this:
The publisher, publishes content. The advertiser buys ad space surrounding (not in literal terms) that content. Publisher gets the money. Advertiser gets the leads/ clicks / new users/ etc. (in other words, he gets what he wanted). The end. But, the people who actually generated that content, do not even exist in the whole process. They sit comfortably sleeping around somewhere.
The fact that YouTube now shares the profits that it generates from the content, with the contents’ originators, is not simply Google’s morals or values. Probably, there was a lot of happening over this issue when people (the content creators) came to know the amount of profits YouTube was making from their content, and finally after a long battle Google decide to share the profits with their users (I’m not exactly sure of the details, so if anybody could update me with the actual proceedings, would be great). Something similar to what we(content creators) get at TechDispenser. Fine. Perfect you say. End of story.
But, however, there are a number of cases, when such sharing of revenue becomes a lot of problem. For example, techcrunch. Now, in my view, TechCrunch is a little better than ReadWriteWeb, just because it has a very active community with a lot of comments and interaction amongst the community as well as Michael Arrington. So, does it not make sense to actually, have the community (which may or may not be the actual content producers, but definitely they enhance the content) be given some share of the earnings ??
For a simple scenario, we have systems where comments are rated by the community / readers / other commentators, on the comments’ usefulness/ importance/ relevance et all. So, maybe on similar lines, we can create a system (which can be easily integrated into any blogging engine) which makes use of some sort of rating algorithm (I bet this has to be complex) such that at the end of the month, the system tells us as to who all people have been the most active on the community. And no, this should not be as simple a rating system as 9rules uses, but much more complex with a lot more ifs and buts, since we have to deal with money. So, at the end of the month, the deserving people, who have actually done the most useful work, get their rewards.
Or alternatively, maybe along every comment that a reader writes, we can have a small button that says “Payme a penny”. Yes, and then if I really like the comment what the person made, I simply click onto it and give him a penny from my account (some online system like PayPal). Obviously, this requires setting up of an online system, much larger than PayPal, with a lot more smoother / easier transfer of money from one place to another, and a host of other features. but, as I said, this is just an idea. And maybe if this does not seem feasible right now, in the future it might be prevalent everywhere. Who knows !!
And lastly, I have limited my talk on blogging, and commenting only throughout this post (as I feel bloggers are the one who desperately need money, with so many of “money by blogging” sites coming up a dime-a-dozen), but this is actually a topic that has to be addressed at every level in the web-2.0, till the people get the answer to the question “Where is the money in web-2.0 ??”
