Yesterday Dave gave me a question along with a compliment:

Great stuff on Doc's weblog. He says he'd probably put some money in Lynne's tipjar. But what if there are 8,000 sites that have tipjars. How much would you put in which ones?

Hypothetically, if I point to a piece on Lynne's site, and as a result she gets a tip, should I get a piece of that?

One answer comes from Dave's mailbag, where Ken Anderson points to Ted Nelson's original micropayment schemes:

Ted's home page

Ted's current incarnation of the Xanadu micropayment scheme

Ted's original vision

My corollary to the tip jar system is simpler. It's the same one used by churches for a millenium or two, and best implemented, I suppose, by the Mormons:

Tithing.

I'd budget X % of my income, or $X overall, to be devoted, over the course of a year, to the sites whose services I choose to buy (not to which I want to "donate," "give money," or "support" — all words that have been tainted by those endless "we're pathetic and doomed if you don't help us" public broadcasting fund appeals).

Somebody could come up with a client-side thingie that watches the places I visit and helps inform my purchases that way. Or maybe a cookie-based scheme (a browser plug-in?) by which each site lets me know, cumulatively, how much I've been hanging around and how much they'd like to be paid on a per-visit basis.

Whatever, it needs to inform a conversation about real value — the kind of conversation that can only occur between power peers on the buy and sell sides of a healthy marketplace. This is another subject I covered in that speech I gave in Switzerland.

Turns out we're all in userland

I was looking around the Scriping News Mailbag when the subject of John Graham-Cumming's email caught my eye: "UseTheSource: The Reciprocal of Hype." My first response was mathematical: "Hmm.. if hype has a value of zero, then the reciprocal ... " But most hype has negative value for most users of reality, so UseTheSource promised at least to be on the right (or up?) side of things.

The top item points out that John was also a skeptic in the heyseason of Push, which was Spring of '97 (also when I wrote the two items mentioned below). Every other story on the page has a 100/0 useful/useless ratio, true to the promise on its About page: "You won't find stories here about the latest virus, or gloating dot.com-failure write ups. You will find links to concrete information."

So it's more and more apparent that in the new world we're building — let's call it peer-with-peer, or PWP, to drop the preposition 2/two/to — our primary sources are each other.

That doesn't mean we don't respect the authorities in our midst. Dave points out that Dan Gillmor's 'log is #2 among the most read sites at Greater (Manila-hosted) Userland (just edging out the minimalist Member Login). Dan is a pro, a pioneer, and possibly the most clued-in newspaper Journalist out there. I remember when Dave was over at the house, trying to show me Manila for the first time, telling me how Dan took one look and got it completely. Which I didn't for, like, another year or two.

Speaking of which, I see that one of John's favorite sources at UseTheSource is The Economist, which he calls "the best weekly in the world."

I agree. Even though I only read it on airplanes. (Okay, I'll subscribe.)

Anyway, UseTheSource is now one of my sources.

It sucks for less

Joyce just discovered that TravelSucks.com is cheaper than Travelocity, which until today had been our default Web travel agency. My favorite part of the TravelSucks.com site (it's rigut up there in the menu bar) is Travel Nightmares. After reading that one, I think I'll add TravelSucks.com to my Cluefull Company list and take Southwest off.

Or maybe not. I still kinda like Southwest. Probably because I'm one of those jerks who likes to show up early so I can sit where I want on the plane. Is there an Untied.com for Southwest?

Interesting that TravelSucks has some kind of deal going with Southwest. Coast-to-coast for $99 each way — and that the link page starts with a promo for US Airways (formerly USAIR, Piedmont, PSA, Allegheny, etc. and probably soon part of United). I'm pretty sure these are the trips that involve stops at other cities along the way.

My favorite airline joke: Q: What does USAIR stand for? A: Unfortunately Still Allegheny In Reality.

Start your shovels

In the latest DaveNet, Dave draws parallels between P2P (peer-to-peer) and the "Push" craze of 1997. I don't know P2P well enough, technically, to judge (yet), but if the only parallel is a contagion of venture funding (the dudes do move in herds), it would help to remember what went down with Push three years ago.

As it happens I wrote a couple pieces in the midst of the craze. I've been told that the second one helped hasten the end of the trend, though I have no idea. I do think they both hold up pretty well, though. Here they are:

• When Push comes to Shove: How the mainstream media miss the boat on 'push' technologies
• Shoveling Push: Wired wants to fertilize your inner potato

Reading Dave's account, and these pieces, what stands out for me is what happens when an industry talks to itself. The industry in both cases is the venture capital business. If markets are conversations (our first thesis in The Cluetrain Manifesto), then both Push and P2P suffer a bit by isolation to conversation within the market for venture money: the conversation between VCs and the companies they fund. Not between either of those parties and the funded companies' customers for goods and services. I exlpained the difference a bit in a speech I recently gave in Switzerland.

Wish I had more time to write about this, but I gotta go.

Media vs. Markets

I just got this email, which explains itself quite well:

Dear Doc,

I read your letter to Meg Whitman. Great. Now what do I do? Quit my job?

I do "marketing" for a European Web-company that gathers consumer reviews — just like epinions.com in the US.

I always laugh about (and relish!) the fact that I work as a marketer who will end marketing because a service like ours will allow people to tell each other the truth about products and services and expose the lies that companies try to sell them.

Apparently, the management thinks otherwise.

Last week I learned, much to my chagrin, that "space" on our newsletter was being sold. I had long asked to make this a cozy, private PLACE where we could present only good offers (special offers!) to our members; now I find out that it's been debased to just another billboard ...

Then I hear a lot of talk about the need to gather information about our members so that advertisers can "target" them better ...

Finally your letter to Meg Whitman. I agree: ads don't belong on eBay. Maybe they don't belong our site, either.

Yes, we do indeed look like a "media company", intent as we are on counting eyeballs and gathering info and "profiles" for the clueless advertisers who hope to sell the "oh-so-cool" products of the clueless companies they work for by interrupting people who are having a conversation on a site that is all about anti-advertising ...

Is this really the only way for us to become profitable? I doubt it. Quite on the contrary, I believe that this approach will bring in some money in the short run, but destroy the only real asset we have, trust.

To me, it's all about trust, respect and clutter.

• If we're just another ad carrier, why should anybody trust us?
• If companies don't respect the conversation that is going on and just wish to interrupt, why should anybody want to pay any attention?
• If nobody listens, companies will just scream louder — which will only make things worse for everybody

Is this the only way? I don't think so. Why not for example present fewer and less intrusive messages that come not from the advertisers but from us here at The Company, from people who will only present good offers from other good companies because we work FOR our members — not against them?

This is just an idea. But there is no doubt in my mind that for us to go the Yahoo! way is nonsense. We are not in media, no matter how much some of us (not me!) may wish we were ...

Please let me know what you think.

wegotthepower@yahoo.com

I think you should present your idea to your company directors and insist that they publish their plans at thier site and invite member comments.

I would be very interested to see if the members care. From the response I've seen so far to eBay's plans, I'm not sure many eBay's members do. It's pretty clear that Epinion's members don't care that Epinion makes money selling them as "sales leads."

I'm still trying to figure that one out. My wife, who is smarter than I am, suggests that eBay's members like eBay enough to welcome anything eBay thinks is good for itself. In other words, they trust eBay not to allow AOL to sell advertising that assaults or competes with them. This is pretty much the response Lynn Siprelle got to her Tip Jar piece. Her members are using AND logic here. Not OR. Maybe that's the case with Epinions as well.

Curious to know what the rest of ya'll think.

discuss