share 2.0: culture of sharing
Last year in May, we were having an informal talk with Jonathan D. Schwartz, Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Cablevision Systems and previous General Counsel of Napster (remember Napster vs. Metallica), as a group of international media scholars in New York City.
We talked about his current occupation and his past career activities, but at certain times the it came to the point where we asked questions about Napster and the famous law case. The conversation altogether was off-the-record, therefore I cannot share it with you. Yet, this conversation evoked another thought in my mind, which I was meaning to write for so long, regarding the current circumstance of the web and the culture of sharing. That, I will share.
I believe that the Napster concept and the law case triggered a culture of sharing. To understand this claim better, let’s remember those pre-historic times, shall we?
Those were the times when “internet surfers” used MSN and IRC and ICQ and checked their emails–not from Google mail. Those were the times when a CD was one of the most high-tech way to listen to music and MP3 was a name that mainstream “surfers” were trying to get accustomed to. Winamp was magic and Microsoft did not fail as much. Oh, and IBM was great and Apple was a rainbow flag. And the renaissance was about to begin not only for Apple but also for the whole internet.
Then came Napster and the age of file sharing emerged from the depths of the internet. All of traditional media owners, music distributers, producers, etc. got more and more irritated day by day. (This crescendo ended up perturbing the press, book publishers, magazines, TV networks at the end. And neither Kindle nor iPad will save them, but something else. Jesus? Not him.) But this did not happen all of a sudden.
I will not go much into detail and cover the topic superficially. If you are interested in it, you may make a chronological-sociological-technological research of it and the most probably prove or disprove this claim.
First came Napster. Filesharing made things easier and music sharing started user-to-user interaction. Then the law case showed that you cannot prevent people from sharing files-music-movies-books-etc. And that you cannot block everybody from doing it. (The Pirate Bay–wiki–is a good example with their political party and independent island.) Steve Jobs and iTunes saved the day for all and there emerged downloadable music for cheap–which was one of the ideas to save the press last year to make pay-per-view-online-newspapers, but it would fail as the online content have already being distributed for free.
Then, came the Web 2.0: the ultimate contribution and “sharing anything” in the social media. Each person became the entry and exit point of information, not only of music but everything that you can imagine. Now, people claim that bloggers are the new marketers, that sharing became the new media-distribution, that it is not important to produce a great product; it is important to produce “a” great product that can be shared with the optimum number of consumers/sharers.
Facebook is one of them: facebook is both the product and the platform to share its own product and any others. ZipCar (wikipedia) is another example (we had a seminar with co-founder Robin Chase in Bruce Nussbaum‘s Design Thinking Class at The New School, who is the Professor of Innovation there, last year): as it became a burden to own a car, ZipCar offers its customers the comfort of driving a car, also saving them from the burdens of parking, taxes, changing tires, maintenance and others. With ZipCar, you hire a car for your needs at that moment and for the time frame you need it. You can hire a Lotus for a hot date for two hours. The next day you can hire a limo for a business lunch with a CEO and at the weekend you can hire a station wagon for a family picnic, and so on…
Therefore, now in the age of Web 2.0, which I would like to emphasize as share 2.0, it is time to find a concept or a product that can be shared with many. Like CouchSurfing (wikipedia), where you can share a members apartment for a certain time for free wherever you go in the world. You are traveling to Brazil. Find a couch to sleep on. If you have a couch share it people who are coming into your direction.
You have read all the books in your library but you want to read more. Share your books with BookCrossing (wikipedia). Send them to people over in Madagascar and/or get books from a peer in Canada.
Think of something that you can share with the optimum number of people and launch your site. The rest will spread viral–with the correct momentum.
I did not have time and budget to launch an idea that I have had for a period of time. Now that I have found that somebody else have done it, I can share that with you: CrowdSpirit.
It is a platform where members collaboratively launch a project, review it, evaluate it, improve it, use prototypes, feedback and at the end buy the product, which was planned by the collaborative effort of the members and produced with the sponsorship of member companies. I congratulate the entrepreneurs who launched it. And I can give solace to myself with at least having an idea that actually worked. That would give me strength for the next time.
Now, it is time to think and launch your own collaborative effort and make the most of it. Before share 2.0 changes its dynamics.
