The gift economy is good

March 10th, 2008 | by geo |

One of the greatest things about the more recently successful Internet 2.0 software companies is that they are based on consumer generated value. When you look at major successes like YouTube, Digg, Craigslist, Wikipedia, FaceBook, and Twitter, all of these sites rely on users to create value. Even better, the more content that is posted, tagged, and rated the more valuable the site becomes to the users.

It’s the gift economy, where the more we collectively give (free) the more value we extract (free).

I’m a big fan of this model. It’s great for the businesses because they can scale to infinity without having to hire more employees to support operations, and it’s great for the consumers because the content is not controlled (more or less) by the publisher.

If you’re staring a new web business, try to capitalize on the gift economy! If you need more motivation look at plentyoffish. One employee and extremely profitable, thanks to the gift economy.

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