Re: [projectvrm] "I am not a brand."

[Alan Patrick < >]

On 23/06/2010 19:01, Alec Muffett wrote:

> So what you're saying is:
>
> 1) people who can be focused, make profit in spite of pissing off 
> disorganised hordes of folk
> 2) the "network effect" has a downside as well as an upside, and
> 3) what the net needs is an effective way to pillory the bad guys [ED: But 
> that has a whole host of other issues]

Glad to see you are using my word for the "thing that is bigger than 
just the Web" - aka net - after all, Alec ;-)

Anyway, my point 3 was not about pillorying bad guys, the point was 
actually that any group action (pillorying among others) won't work 
unless it ensures that the transaction costs of hosebagging are raised 
higher than the benefits it confers, for eg via:

- negative social capital that has consequences - eg limiting access
- filters (eg spam filtering)
- blockers (eg with some websites)
- user bypasses (which is where VRM et al come in)

Joe also made a useful point, ie services that don't do this scummy 
stuff may prove to be more effective and thus hosebaggng dies a 
darwinian death

> My feelings are: 1) yes 2) yes 3) dream on.

All progress is from unreasonable people, to paraphrase G B Shaw ;-)

> I believe Adriana's already made the point that it's not the _Internet_ but the _Web_ which would 
> benefit from some means of tarring and feathering those who annoy us; and I believe the above 
> explains the fruitlessness (and, probably, negative value) of trying to partition "Twitter 
> Space" from "The Web" - because if we determine that @freecloud in Twitter space 
> is worth of being pilloried, then that probably goes for the primary author of 
> http://www.broadstuff.com/ too.

And I am in furious agreement re teh Web, but I would argue that it is a 
wider issue than just the Web.

It is true of any Internet (or in fact other comms medium) driven 
service that yields low transaction costs for hosebaggers and drives 
winner takes all markets. Network effect entities sadly do both.

Rgds

Alan