rambling about Flickr and economics of sharing
Snipped from an email discussion at work.
We were discussing payments and this naturally evolved into a discussion of why people even pay for Flickr. I'm sure this was all clear in Stewart's mind once, but the rest of us must struggle to keep up...
Anyway, a colleague mused that maybe Flickr is like a premium community, such as personals. This is my response:
That's interesting. But when you say 'premium community' I think of the WELL or something. In those 'elite' communities and even in something like personals, users are paying for more access to users, particularly search and matching.
On Flickr, users aren't paying for anything community-oriented, (except for the rights to post to more groups). The community part is for all practical purposes free.
Maybe this is crazy, but could one think of photos as being like the virtual gifts people give in other online economies? On those sites, users pay for a virtual milkshake, which represents a small, arbitrary amount of wealth and effort, and then the user gives that to someone as a social gesture.
On Flickr, you pay for the rights to accumulate large amounts of "wealth" of your own creation -- and the value of this "wealth" is enhanced by having a ready-made audience. Then you can continuously "give" it away both with explicit sharing actions and passively through search and feeds.
Is it too insane to say that on Flickr, people are paying for the ability to give things away?
We were discussing payments and this naturally evolved into a discussion of why people even pay for Flickr. I'm sure this was all clear in Stewart's mind once, but the rest of us must struggle to keep up...
Anyway, a colleague mused that maybe Flickr is like a premium community, such as personals. This is my response:
That's interesting. But when you say 'premium community' I think of the WELL or something. In those 'elite' communities and even in something like personals, users are paying for more access to users, particularly search and matching.
On Flickr, users aren't paying for anything community-oriented, (except for the rights to post to more groups). The community part is for all practical purposes free.
Maybe this is crazy, but could one think of photos as being like the virtual gifts people give in other online economies? On those sites, users pay for a virtual milkshake, which represents a small, arbitrary amount of wealth and effort, and then the user gives that to someone as a social gesture.
On Flickr, you pay for the rights to accumulate large amounts of "wealth" of your own creation -- and the value of this "wealth" is enhanced by having a ready-made audience. Then you can continuously "give" it away both with explicit sharing actions and passively through search and feeds.
Is it too insane to say that on Flickr, people are paying for the ability to give things away?