Don't Get Used!

I've been mulling over the recent comments by Newscorp's COO, Peter Chernin. Chernin said that because most of YouTube’s traffic starts at MySpace, it may be time for the No. 1 social networking site to cut out the middle man. "If you look at virtually any Web 2.0 application, whether its YouTube, whether it’s Flicker, whether it’s Photobucket or any of the next-generation Web applications, almost all of them are really driven off the back of MySpace,” he said. “There’s no reason why we can’t build a parallel business.”

There has been, of course, some reaction to these words:

Om Malik- " MySpace is an “attention page” not a portal page. For millions of users, MySpace is their most important page, the one that has all their attention. News Corp should be doing its best to grab more of this attention, and figuring out how to make money in the process and they need to figure out a “developer” plan to make money, not come in the way of those who create widgets to put on MySpace pages, or the actual MySpace community."

Mark Ingram - "Hey, MySpace is great and everything — and we all know that it is the largest Internet site by far and that it plans to revolutionize the music business and likely many other things as well. But to say that the company can do just about anything that any Web 2.0 company does, because they all piggyback on MySpace? That’s a bit rich."

Nicholas Carr -"At the heart of the commercial internet is a conflict between technological structure and economic interest. The net's technological structure, developed without regard to the possible profit-making interest of any future commercial site owner, is one of openness, providing the individual user with unfettered freedom to go where he wants, see what he wants and do what he wants. The economic interest of the commercial site owner is usually in conflict with the openness of the technology. The dependence of much of the commercial internet on advertising means that the commercial site owner is rewarded for maintaining control over the user, keeping him within the bounds of the site in order to expose him to more ads."

And lastly a thoughtful article by Dr. Tony Hung at the BlogHerald -"we can already see nascent attempts at marketing using tools within the Web2.0; marketers are already trying to harness social networks WITHIN the network — either by creating sock puppet personalities or even using scripts to automate the adding of “friends”. Coupled with broadcasting tools, these guerrilla tactics may be all that’s left if Social Networks auction off access to their populations of citizens to moneyed corporations.

Or, as Mr. Chernin has put it — they may not.

They may opt to create entire industries of their own, and cut off access completely; or perhaps, “offer” a blended package of advertising to their citizens, combining their own offerings (to their own social software applications) with those of other businesses who are happy with the scraps that are left to them."

Right here in a nutshell you have the nastiness and greed of the corporate world revealing itself on the internet, treating users as possessions to be rounded up and controlled behind fiercely protected walls - tossed whatever scraps the owners determine they want to throw our way. We're being herded into social networks and used to attract huge advertising revenues, none of which we will ever have a share in, of course. The owners of MySpace haven't had to do a damned thing but set up a rather unimaginative and shabby interface for its users whom they plan to turn into a captive audience for advertisers.

My take on this little drama is this: The internet is based on openness and sharing. Keep the internet open. Keep the internet free and guard your own freedom. Be a user but don't get used.