Profit can be money, but the problem with that is that it’s a community corrupter. Money can buy you many things, things that have nothing to do with the community good. So it attracts people to the community that have less interest in the community good than in external goods, compromising the quality of the common good.

This is why Facebook, Wikipedia and Twitter are so powerful. It gathers people with common interests working towards the community objectives, and it leaves people not interested in it outside the circle.

The difference between Wikipedia and Facebook then, is that Facebook is far more economically efficient. Every user of Facebook brings something to the table, something that drives the community forward. The core transaction of Facebook is a powerful win-win situation at the individual level. With Wikipedia this is not so, there is not much individual reward to contributing an article. Only at the macro level does wikipedia result in an impressive product. That it has gotten where it is, despite a severe flaw in efficiency, speaks for the power of uncorrupted community.

My project is about finding ways to combine the power of community with economic efficiency, forming an ‘econunity’. The social network of which there are now plenty was the first of its kind.

I don’t want to share with anyone our core business yet, as the basic idea behind is pretty simple, ready to be copied by anyone, just like the concept of a social network is. Sorry

It is definitely not a niche product. However it remains to be seen how strong the demand for our product really will be at the individual level (for me personally it is substantial). If it takes off, a new super application will be born. We hope to go live by the end of the year and will let you know here

Web 2.0 is internet business lingo. Translated in terms of economic theory, it means harnessing the power of human capital (im an economy student).
In our society many people have highly specialized skills, and our economy doesn’t seem to be able to tap into its power yet. But since it concerns valuable skills, there must be demand for it -somewhere-. The problem is that demand and supply of those skills are having trouble finding each other.

With the advent of internet technologies, this is slowly changing however. Internet lifts restrictions in space and location. People with similar interests meet on the internet in specific places. Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter,… through crowdsourcing, what at an individual level seems only a minor transaction (friend request, wiki article, tweed), becomes something amazing. Facebook has basically created a map of human social relations, Wikipedia is one giant free encyclopedia, and Twitter has the potential to become a service for real-time news.

By tapping into human capital that is currently abundantly available in our knowledge society, ’super applications’ are being developed. In terms of Information Technology are we starting to use human brain power as computing power. The websites can then be seen as complex logical gates (AND, NOT, OR, …). We are essentially creating ‘human machines’ with super applications as output.

The coming years will be very interesting. I hope my very own project will take off as well.

As someone who spent a lot of time both learning and teaching, I can say that the biggest hurdle by far is motivation. I see a lot of money get spent on impressive buildings, big lecture theaters, tasteful interior decoration, the latest electronic equipment and overpriced artwork for the foyer. I also see a lot of deadly bored students, and I have spent the time pushing myself through material that is absolutely dull beyond belief.

One thing you can say about modern electronic media is that people get into it. You look at video games, and interactive fiction and online chat and the motivation is there, so we are moving into a medium where what was always difficult is now easy (but only if you do it right). Moving lecture notes onto a website is easy enough, it makes for a convenient way to pickup the notes, it’s a positive step, but boring notes are still boring. Go and read some of the discussion groups about game design and you find a bunch of people who have trained themselves in ways to get people interested and keep them interested. That’s where it’s at.