DISQUS

David G · 3 years ago

It's probable that their content / model / pitch etc. sucks, I honestly haven't watched it ... but, I wouldn't write this production model off just yet;

... think "peer production on demand"; it's possible that there's stuff that should / could be peer produced that doesn't yet exist ... check out how istockphoto now provide a platform for designers to request a) images and b) searches "on demand" for imagery that they can't find - "google answers vs. wikipedia" etc. etc. etc.

... it's still peer production, but the "abundant resources" being tapped are member's future time, not their past products or assets.

What do you think, Pete?

Pete Cashmore · 3 years ago

David,

I think you're on to something there. "Peer production on demand" is definitely an interesting angle, and it's something that hasn't been fully explored.

Services like Yahoo Answers / Google Answers point towards how peer production on demand might work. But I think Mechanical Turk is the most efficient on-demand system to date - there are literally thousands of people on MTurk who will devote their time to a task in exchange for payment. Users also build up qualifications that prove how good they are at various tasks. Compared to the relative inefficiency of calling up a specialist, this is astoundingly good.

Of course, MTurk won't work for everything. We need verticals for all kinds of tasks - be it information gathering, task fulfillment or content creation. We've had services like rentacoder.com (for programming) for a while, suggesting that peer production on demand is by no means a recent phenomenon. Ultimately, these services become marketplaces for task-completion - and in most cases I expect there will be a monetary transaction involved.

PS. Does anyone else think the comments form should be bigger in this new template? Seems kinda hard to write long comments.

Joe · 1 year ago

Your post was pretty interesting. You should track ChannelMedia. They're building a national affiliate system that's turning the traditional television network model on its head. Let me know if you're interested to hear more. -joe

David G · 3 years ago

It makes me think that we need to sit down and articulate the Demand Fulfillment Patterns for peer production - just like JIT / ext. fulfillment / BPO etc. were discovered for contract-based productivity .... the point is that just as in any other business strategy, there's probably more than 1 good way of producing "on the edge" - and soon, just being on the edge won't be good enough - and you'll need to find the BEST edge pattern to solve each W2.0 problem.

Beavis · 2 years ago

I’m not impressed by Current.tv too.