AIBU?

WIIFM? "What's In It For Me?"

A few years ago, I had a conversation with a friend, who I believe prefers not to be named online, about using a particular question to help frame thinking about people’s motivations for their behavior and actions. The question, probably familiar to many people, is WiiFM (“What’s In It For Me?”).

For example, you could look at a situation where there is a company that is polluting a river, and a group of people are protesting the pollution in front of the company headquarters. What is the perceived benefit for the people who are doing the polluting? And what is the perceived benefit for the people who are protesting the polluting? You may not ever know exactly what people are thinking, but asking these questions gives you a way to start thinking about world views of other people. What’s more, the external view of what is “in it” for someone often looks different than our internal view of what is “in it” for us.

AIBU? ("Am I Being Used?")

Another question that my friend who shall not be named suggested that people should start asking themselves is “Am I Being Used?” (AiBu). This question is not meant to be a vast philosophical exploration. It is meant to be a simple question: In your own view, are you being taken advantage of? Are You being Used in a particular situation or arrangement? Also, I would not pretend to define to you what “being used” means for you. You have to live with the consequences of how you anwser AiBu, so it’s up to you to define what “being used” means to you. Just like WiiFM, external and internal views of the same question can look drastically different.

Another friend, named HowardRheingold, recently blogged about an article by TreborScholz? that looks at how a PassionateUser of SocialNetwork sites like MySpace, YouTube, FaceBook?, etc voluntarily donate their creations, attention, and labor to be commodified by the companies that maintain these sites. Trebor also writes:

The picture of net publics--being used--is, however, complicated by the fact that participants undeniably get a lot out of their participation. There is the pleasure of creation and mere social enjoyment. Participants gain friendships and a sense of group belonging. They share their life experiences and archive their memories. They are getting jobs, find dates and arguably contribute to the greater good.

When people look at their activities online, and ask “Am I Bing Used?”, they are asking whether the trade off they are making for giving up the rights and value of their attention, in exchange for connecting with people, and being given space to create socialize is worth the value they are giving up heir control over.

The question that OpenBusinessModelsWikiHive asks is:

Can people partake in the value of social connection and creativity WITHOUT trading off the rights to their attention or creativity?

I believe that they can. The question is, how?

Some possibilities include:

• FreeCulture: The idea that service providers recognize that people by default own the rigths to all of their content, and that they decide what to do with those rights. Not the other way around. You don’t ask people to give up rights to content they create as a precondition to accessing your online spaces.
• RevenueSharingModel: If you want to monetize people’s time, attention, and creativity, the very, very least you can do is share some of the profit and spoils with them.
• FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software). One of the amazing things about FLOSS is that it increasingly makes the SocialCurrency? and Value exchanges possible without being stuck with using the services of corporations that want you to trade off the rights to your creations, your time, and yor attention. It is now possible to create your own social networks, you ar own photo and movie sharing, your own KnowledgeCommons and SocialBookmarking, your own ProjectManagement, and more. The cost of server space is relatively inexpensive. The same functions and features and performance can be had, and you can make your own rules.

Comments

[Jim Benson]

Excellent and thought provoking post, Sam.

I've continued the thought here http://ourfounder.typepad.com/leblog/2007/04/bundle_me_sell_.html

Hope all is well - Jim

[Sam Rose]

Jim, thanks! I'll reply more on your blog...