"Community as Product"

In the article "What the MySpace generation should know about working for free," Trebor Scholz discusses social networking, or community, as a product.

Scholz seeks to answer a simple question. Why are big corporations willing to pay big bucks in order to buy out small, online start-ups? After all, after the inflated dot.com bubble of the 1990s, why would corporations be willing to put their money into another online venture unless they knew they were going to get returns on their investments? The corporations are buying the community itself. As Nicholas Carr points out, the top ten most visited sites accounted for 40 percent of total internet page views, which was made possible by user-generated content. In short, the labor that is being put into these community-bases websites, makes the community a viable product for purchase by a big corporation looking to expand its' opportunities online.

The concern raised by Scholz, is that users of these social networks, need to be made aware of their servitude. The fact is the labor of the many creates wealth for the very few, which resembles a capitalistic model. There's no protection model for the users, and it's hard not to get taken advantage of online within this model. Through monitoring our activity they are able to capitalize on advertisements based upon the information we provide and the habits that we follow.


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