Flickr, and social networking’s dark side
If you’ve used Flickr for a while, you’ve known about their acquisition by Yahoo and the subsequent inexorable march towards using Yahoo login names instead of the old Flickr login names. Well, the date has finally been set (March 15) and predictably there is a huge uproar in the Flickr message boards.
To their credit, Flickr seems to be managing this furor the best way they can, by being available for comment and kvetching in the message boards. And, really, there’s not much more they can do.
However, I can’t help but feel a twinge of discomfort at what’s happening, mainly because it shows the dark underbelly of social networking sites.
To wit: A group of people have an idea and put together some software that lets a bunch of other people engage in so-called social networking. Those early adopters are just as crucial to the success of the social network as the people who man the infrastructure and prune the message boards, etc. The difference is that the early adopters are unpaid for their time and efforts, while the infrastructure d00ds eventually/hopefully make oodles of money.
We’ve seen this happen before, just recently, with YouTube. The people who created this system weren’t the ones who put the effort into the videos which actually drew the visitors which…well, eventually attracted Google. Yet of the obscene amount of money that the company received, how much went back to the people who, when you really think about it, made it happen? It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation, innit?
There is a co-dependency between the companies that develop social networks and the people who populate them, yet the systems currently in place serve to unfairly distribute the rewards of the service: 100% vs. 0%. Is this just how it is, or can something be done to make it more equitable? Because as it stands right now, YouTube and Flickr and all these other sites are effectively telling me that my time is worthless to them. And forgive me if I don’t agree with that perspective.
Getting back to Flickr, my fear is that as these kinds of mergers continue across the Web 2.0 universe, and as early adopters begin to feel more and more disenfranchised (or burned or perhaps even pwned), their enthusiasm for this exploitative environment will wane. What will replace it remains to be seen, but I can’t help to think it will involve shares of some kind, or some semblance of ownership or investment.
Now, this is not to say that early adopters know what’s right for a company, or that they should be involved in the day-to-day management of the company’s affairs. But I do believe it’s important to show respect, because they are as much a reason for where some of the companies are today as the people who put together the business. Whether that respect is acknowledged through discounts on premium services offered by the company, or manifested in some other way, such as recognition, I think there are means to reward the risk, time, and effort assumed by early adopters.
I would venture that so-called “old skool” members of Flickr prize their old-skool status, which is in its way a reward for their time and effort spent during the early days of Flickr. In that context, an outcry about changing login procedures is as much one of principle as it is identity and social standing, even if it’s a matter of personal pride (“I was one of the first!”). It remains to be seen whether Flickr will differentiate between former “old skool” Flickr members and newer members under the Yahoo system.
All I can think about right now is the next time one of these disenchanted, former-old-skool-Flickr users stumbles upon a new social networking site, and I wonder whether they will harbor any reservations about pouring their energy into yet another enterprise which, in the end, will not be theirs.
The bigger question, of course, is: will this sort of event, relived time and again over the course of many social networking mergers, lead to a chilling effect?
Mellis wrote:
Let’s think about this for a second. Flickr offers you a service: online hosting of your photos, with unlimited bandwidth and atorage. Not mention lots of handy tools for making it easier for people to find photos of yours that they’re interested in. All for $25 a year. Not a bad deal if you ask me, which is why I pay for it. Now, presumably the fact that Flickr offers such a nice service and that many people are willing to pay for it makes the company worth a good deal of money, and clearly Yahoo thinks it was worth what they paid for it. But why, just because someone feels a strong identification with Flickr do they deserve a share in its worth? You’re a customer, not an investor. If someone bought your webhost would you expect a share of the sale?
YouTube offers a similar service, they just try to make money through ads rather than user fees. And, in fact, they recently offered a plan to share advertising revenue with the creator of a video (conveniently spinning their plans to begin showing ads within videos, but revenue-sharing nonetheless).
In both cases, if you don’t like how these sites treat you, don’t use them. I don’t see how this is any different from the whining that always accompanies changes to any long-established and well-loved enterprise, whether coffee-shop or used book store. Running any business is about making compromises, and often the vocal “old skool” die-hards obscure and obstruct the desires of the vast majority of customers. Which is not to say that businesses never make the wrong decisions or always treat their customers respectfully, but it is to point out that this likely represents not some ominous “dark-side” of social networking sites but rather yet another minor incident in the long history of companies trying to find a balance between making money and making their customers happy.
Posted on 01-Feb-07 at 5:55 pm | Permalink
Dave wrote:
First of all, all those nice tools and sharing devices are useless without people populating the system with content. The most amazing database in the world is worthless if it does not contain data. I don’t particularly care about the economic motivations for purchasing Flickr. Rather, I was commenting on the sequence of events that led them to being bought out by Yahoo.
Second, any new company requires participation on the part of its customers as much as a strong business plan and execution. It’s a question of “If you build it, will they come?” Without the participation of people, these so-called social-networking companies would have nothing to network with. Ipso facto there would be no business.
Third, if companies do not recognize the role that those early adopters played in the early days to make the company what it is today (without placing judgement on which form is “better”), then I question whether this will eventually give those early adopters pause the next time they are confronted with Yet Another Social Network. In effect, these early adopters are giving away their free labor to make millions/billions for the people who provide the infrastructure. My assertion is that these early adopters are just as critical to the success of the business as the original founders.
I suppose this is the case in any capitalistic economic system (bridge tolls, for example, in which a few people exert some effort and reap the rewards) but the difference in Web 2.0 land is that user-participation is optional yet simultaneously critical for the success of the business. There’s nothing to prevent or encourage my participation (unlike, say, a river blocking my travels), so I’m not compelled to do anything. There is a value proposition that attracts early adopters to a service, but people are fickle, and without their continued support and proselytization and compliments and complaining, as much as your dangling carrots in the form of service features and pretty GUI design, your business will tank. Thus my point about co-dependency when it comes to user-participation: without your customers, you are nothing.
The nagging feeling I have is that teh intarwebs have merely amplified the stakes in economic systems rather than made them more equitable. Sure, anyone can start a social-networking business now, but in all likelihood your success will rely on exploiting free labor from those who participate in your social network. The more free labor, the more real money you stand to make. In effect, considering the relatively low barriers to entry that the internet presents compared to, say, a steel mill, you are in a race to exploit everyone else before you yourself are exploited.
It just strikes me as a pyramid scheme. It’s one thing if you’re an Apple or Microsoft which still required the paid labor of others to achieve your current station in life, but I find myself looking askance at the likes of YouTube which rode to riches on the backs of millions of hours of what amounts to donated content.
Just because you’re all rich and famous now doesn’t mean you should forget where you came from.
PS: Obviously I understand the value in aggregation, just as I realize there is value in doing things. People wonder why it’s so “cheap” to start Web 2.0-ish companies. It’s likely because they’re getting a boost from free labor. But that labor isn’t cheap, and it certainly isn’t free. So the question again, are these the salad days of social networking?
Posted on 01-Feb-07 at 10:29 pm | Permalink
designswarm thoughts » Blog Archive » Betrayal 2.0 wrote:
[...] Other people ranting about this issue: My good friend Dave Chiu. [...]
Posted on 04-Feb-07 at 5:21 pm | Permalink