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Will the Financial Crisis Kill 'Freeconomics'?
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by Jarrett Martineau | October 23, 2008 at 05:04 pm
191 views | 2 Recommendations | 3 comments
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Author Andrew Keen does not believe in the so-called 'wisdom of crowds' and, in our current volatile economic climate, he believes -- even less -- in "web businesses that rely on free labor and crowdsourcing to survive".
This is in staunch opposition to Wired editor Chris Anderson's recent assertion that the future of business free -- an approach known not as 'freakonomics' but as 'freeconomics'.
Web businesses that rely on free labor and crowdsourcing to survive are in for a rude awakening, says Andrew Keen, journalist, author and self-proclaimed hater of all things free.“Is $0.00 really the future of labor in an age of mass unemployment?” Keen writes in a recent blog post. “Of course not.”
“The basic point is that free labor is fine when everyone’s got a lot of money and they’re employed, but when they start getting laid off, I think people’s attitude towards money changes,” Keen said in an interview with Wired.com. His book, Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture speaks volumes in the title alone.
By Keen's estimation, this could even amount the demise of citizen journalism.
Keen opined Tuesday in an Internet Evolution blog post that the current economic downturn will pop the open source, Web 2.0 bubble and sites that depend on the kindness of strangers for content like Wikipedia and The Huffington Post will start to see a decline in user participation.“It will mean the success of Knol over Wikipedia, Mahalo over Google, theatlantic.com over the HuffingtonPost.com, iTunes over MySpace, Hulu over YouTube Inc., Playboy.com over Voyeurweb.com, TechCrunch over the blogosphere, CNN’s professional journalism over CNN’s iReporter citizen-journalism,” he writes.
Is a "free economic model" only able to survive during robust and healthy economic times?
Are these necessary freedoms or simply luxuries that we can no longer afford?
What is NowPublic?
NowPublic lets people work together to cover news events around the world.
Crowd Power
ricknight
Newmarket, Ontario, Canada
JD Lasica
Pleasanton, California, United Statesmarkgirc
Tempe, Arizona, United StatesStephanie Booth
Lausanne, Switzerland (Confoederatio Helvetica)illustir
Netherlandsnewmediadays
Denmark
nico_macdonald
London, Greater London, United Kingdomphilifil
CanadaJeffrey J Schwartz
Palo Alto, California, United States
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (3)
at 19:46 on October 23rd, 2008
I think it will survive, although I don't doubt the quality will take a dive. You'll see an increase in mediocrity, but will the readers react and turn away from it? I'd like to think so, although embracing mediocrity seems to be the norm.
at 03:05 on October 24th, 2008
Jarrett Martineau, I like this story. "free economic model", how can it "download" in the local economy ? I agree with mn; mediocracy is the problem. Second concerning NP the canadian worldview does hardly reflect the european or US or India ETC. Europe is focused on reporting of Events. The US concentrates on breaking disaster news. Asia on bombs and cricket. Is this worth reading ? We had good times with good writers, many viewers until 6 weeks ago . To my concern, don't take it personal, it is wrong to make advertising at the front page for the editors, who is interested in this?, using the zero-dollar free writers as input for cowriting. The original solution to show the logos of the writers was better. Themes with content to build up regions like Europe or US can help. The dramatic loss of US readers, where did they go and why ?
at 08:36 on December 21st, 2008
I believe strongly that the financial crisis will only increase the development of freeconomics. Free stuff is the solution when there is no money left...