Andrew Hyde
TechStars / Startup Weekend
Sent from my mobile, sorry for the typos

Two comments: one on the economy, and one on signal vs. noise.

ECONOMY:
In short, there is absolutely an economy of posting, especially as a metaphor for participating / contributing to a community. Although the narrow point of view “I'm not getting paid, where's the economy” view still prevails, a more nuanced view includes the recognition that participation fuels a reputation-based economy. In this model, it's not that you get to spend points, but that certain levels of participants get access to opportunities that would not otherwise exist. In a real-world model, everyone who volunteers >20 hours on a project gets to attend a concert free of charge (yes, there are real cases of this). In another metaphor, consider your credit score — you can't spend 10 points of your credit score on lunch, but a good credit score helps you borrow money less expensively.

This brings me to the other point…

SIGNAL vs. NOISE
The problem with the current state of participation in Twitter and Facebook is the quality to quantity ratio is still too low for any one of us, even if those of us who are tuned into this discussion are good at extracting signal. Therefore, if you are measuring participation, be sure to include qualitative measures alongside quantitative.

Hope this helps — important discussion.

Not everyone reads the newspaper, plays sports, goes to concerts or indulges in a lot of activities that millions of others do. The difference with the people who choose to be 'posters' is that they are active and reaching large active audiences instantly. This is what's causing the shift Andrew wrote about.

It only take s a few guys who choose to join a pick up basketball game to start a game, but that doesn't affect all the other people who aren't on the court or at the park. It only takes a few active posters and readers using online communication tools to start movements, spread ideas and change the game for everyone.

“Sure, you can’t search for their content, but their friends could, and why would they want random strangers looking at their pictures and notes?”

I think that's the key. I'm not entirely sure about the economy part, but I think what you're seeing is a behavioral shift. Sites like The Daily Mile might've died a couple years ago people people were just barely getting used to the idea of “posting stuff.” Now it's normal. They can readily jump onto a niche site they're interested in and generate data because the underlying behavior, posting stuff, is known to them.

My question is this: as internet folks leading the charge, is “posting stuff” the behavior we want everyone to learn, or are we limiting the possibilities of the internet?

Sooo….anyway, where was I? Where were you? Where is any of this going? I see a lot of milling around. I see a lot of blogs making generalizations and prognostications and while it all sounds plausible enough, where is the hard evidence? It's great that all this info is out there, but how will money be made, jobs be created, etc? And aren't users getting a little burned out on having to learn a new thing every 2 minutes? I think people who sit at their desks all day do use these tools and are willing to explore more, but doctors, teachers, moms, therapists, beauticians, social workers, people who move around a lot during their days and barely have time to check their email…they may check Facebook once or twice a week, but that's all they can handle. They're still a lot of the economy and always will be. I see a LOT of posts on FB about how much people hate Twitter or how they've tried it and are getting off it because they don't see the point. I think businesses get it, but casual people don't.

More examples of how money will be made by info sharing are welcome. Mostly just being a devil's advocate.