Why do people tend to transfer their angers on objects that they break down violently?

Yesterday, I had a lunch with somebody and couldn’t be at the right place at the right time.

Someone gave me a call, I was so angry that I broke the phone. Fortunately, Darty has a very good service and replaced the phone immediately. Great for me… anyway why did I do that?  Even if I tend to have a lot angers I should not act this way.  But I think I did it because it was the only way not to kill myself.

Moral of the story:

Vive Darty. 

In France we usually talk about the “web 2.0″ to describe the participation of the users (no longer called audience) to the content of a website. In fact the word crowdsourcing would be much more accurate and suitable!

I will, paradoxically, use an example of crowdsourcing to explain the word:

Wikipedia give a satisfying definition:
Crowdsourcing is a neologism for the act of taking a job traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people, in the form of an open call. For example, the public may be invited to develop a new technology, carry out a design task, refine an algorithm or help analyze large amounts of data.

Wikipedia is edited by volunteers… then it’s crowdsourcing!

The word was first coined by Jeff Howe in a June, 2006 Wired Magazine article[1]. Though the term is new there are examples of significant crowdsourcing projects as early as the eighteenth century. In 1714, the British Government offered a public prize for a solution to the longitude problem. In the 1800s, the Oxford English Dictionary was written from volunteer contributions of millions of slips of paper. Recently, the Internet has been used to publicize and manage crowdsourcing projects.

Other examples of crowdsourcing:
Procter & Gamble posts problems on a website called InnoCentive, offering large cash rewards to more than 90,000 “solvers” who make up this network of backyard scientists.
Public Insight Journalism, A project at American Public Media to cover the news by tapping the collective and specific intelligence of the public. Gets the newsroom beyond the usual sources, uncovers unexpected expertise, stories and new angles.
ESP Game, allows people to collaborate in labeling images.

Bless all english folks

What’s worst than a blog which is never updated? When you decide to create a blog, even if you don’t know who your readers are and even if there are any, you have to provide content.

You can decide to tell your personnal life, but do not forget to share personnal things even details, in order to be unique and original. If you’re not a famous person, you should be very creative, funny, easy talking and open minded.

Provide videos, spend time, and try to create a little community who comes there for a typical subject.

A nice blog can highlight new trends or give a tribune for different kind of opinions, you cannot find in the classical newspaper.

Moreover you should link your website to many others, in order to be found easily on most search engines. (if you consider that a “good” blog must be read…)

Have a look at this interesting article:

http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/notablog/story/good_blog/

What does generosity really mean? Sharing whithout expecting anything but the action of giving? Is generosity always uninterested?

Yet, when we are talking about generosity on the internet, where everything is viewable, and when we are all linked by the “web”, it is another question. Especially when we have a look at the typical websites such as myspace.com, youtube.com… who all claim to be generous platforms created FOR and BY the users. Do they have a coherent business model? Can we compare those websites with the very common wikipedia.com which offers a huge amount of knowledge for free; or even with peer to peer process?

Generosity can be also found on forums where people ask questions or introduce topics and the other members help, give advices, even solutions…

Web 2.O concept is based on the idea of participation, sharing. Even if this concept is mostly a commercial one, to increase the traffic and give the users the illusion they decide, generosity is not very far away.

On youtube.com: we talk about “community”. A community is based on generosity, right?

You tube is a very good example: they use the creativity of the public, to create the content and to generate traffic on their plateform.
Furthermore, even if the fact that they have a business model is contested (because they are facing several problems : copyright; how is it possible to integrate advertising, what kind of…), we cannot deny that youtube has been sold to Google group for 1.65 billion $ !

Have a look at this article which discuss youtube’s business model:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15079910/site/newsweek/