I've been mostly offline (more on that later) but there's been some really interesting commentary on my last post, most notably Caterina's lengthy response. I should also note that I was factually incorrect in saying that non-paying users would see ads around my pictures; I'm a Pro (paid) user, so they would not.
I should also be clearer about my position: I don't necessarily think Flickr should be paying anybody a revenue share on photos. Besides being so little money as to be worthless for most people, it's not the goal that most people have in participating in a community. And I certainly don't think people are getting "ripped off" (or whatever other words people have ascribed to me) by Flickr. What I'm more interested in is the interchange between different types of value. Social capital vs. economic capital, I guess.
I've been a big believer in advocating that people pay to support the software and services that power communities on the web, because invested users are more thoughtful, criticial, and valuable contributors much of the time. But I'm pretty flexible in how they pay, so perhaps the question isn't whether anybody should get paid for having interesting photos, but whether a Pro account could be earned through consistent interestingness.
What are you suggesting (without beating about the bush)? Are you saying that flickr should recognize those non-pro accounts that display cativating/interesting (or whatever adjective you want to use) content and consider upgrading them because they've earned it? I'm a little confused --- please correct me if I'm wrong --- when I view an image posted by a non-pro user, I see ads; whereas, when I view postings from a Pro user, I don't see ads --- is that right? So there is some debate over the definition of a pro/non-pro user. According to flickr, you pay, you're pro and the ads go away; you don't, you're non-pro, the ads remain, and you don't make money off them, flickr does. But isn't that how most web businesses work, the exception to the rule being a service that does not display any ads. I think that it is good that web services display content-related ads and not random ones that I may not find any use for. If I'm reading dashes.com and I see an ad for a cheap computer or a web2.0 book, I'd look into it. If, instead, I see an ad for allergic dermatitis, I'm not going to look at it. Simple. I doubt that anyone who opts for Google's Ad-sense program makes any real money out of it --- it's sort of like the "5% cash back" offer from credit card companies. Anyhow, I apologize for digressing a bit. Back to the definition of pro and non-pro --- from what I've gathered from your articles on "interestingness", it seems to me that you would rather use the quality of photos/content on flickr to determine if an account should be pro or non-pro. That way, the content that has no ads would truly be indicative of high quality, assuming that there are a few non-pro users with quality content that unfortunately see ads because they didn't pay to use Flickr. This argument would be applicable to most social networking services and not just flickr then, no? I would expect typepad to do the same thing --- evaluate the content that goes on a user's blog during the trial period and then provide content-based discounts on your subscription prices. I'm sure that we all agree on one thing now --- that's easier said than done. So now I ask you, "What are you suggesting?".
It is definitely not out of the question that Flickr users could "monetize" their use of Flickr, but:
(1) a rev share on ads would not be the way we'd do it;
(2) any activity like that would be out of the main experience of Flickr, since it could really wreck things fast.
I think this would be a sure-fire way to turn Flickr into a pornography portal.
Cross posted from Signal to Noise.
Great question [...] as evidenced by the commentary. Steve Baker hit with a glancing blow the real value that Flickr/Yahoo provides. Their platform and service is a minor consideration. The value that they provide is an audience. Photo sharing sites have popped up all over the globe. There are hundreds of them at this point, but what will continue to make Flickr a desirable choice is the audience that has resulted from the people who’ve chosen it for storage of their content.
Advertisers make buy decisions based upon the availability of an audience for the messages they need to send. Blogs with the largest audience make more money with ad sells, because that is the value advertisers seek. Content producers, also, seek an audience. This is the core to the business model of any social or networking site. An additional requirement for advertisers is the “right†audience. So, content which attracts a given audience for advertisers will be of higher value by raising the signal to noise ratio.
Another industry where this problem and a similar solution is being considered is in the recruiting industry. Large job boards like Monster, HotJobs and Dice have developed large audiences of job seekers. But with that larger audience, fidelity or quality of match is decreased which results in a burden for recruiters and hiring companies to manually separate the signal from the noise.
Just as Flickr adds the value of a large audience, blogs focused on photography or any number of subjects could cooperate to build a compelling and high quality presence of photos and by linking to one another create visibility. I believe this to be a sound model for any number of endeavors. The platform is your blog and links. It’s just a decentralized version of what Flickr has put into place.
There are some companies who have begun including the prosumer into the value chain and revenue share. It’s likely to be a disruptive business model and was the focus of a recent talk by Howard Rheingold.
I’m pursuing my own experiment along these lines on my blog. The description of the project is posted at:
http://www.mobilejones.com/archives/920/
Will this be successful? I don’t know, but as Oliver pointed out, the cost to produce is irresistable compared to the possible return.
Adding the prosumer to revenue streams is inevitable and in fact already being tried by a few companies. I’d welcome any feedback or participation in my own experiment. Entrepreneurs try a thousand things to find the few that work. If you devised a similar experiment, please contact me. I’d be happy to help you promote it.