Four Simple Business Models

In chapter two of his book, Philip and Alex’s Guide to Web Publishing, Philip Greenspun outlined some basic Internet business models for four types of sites.

1. Sites that provide traditional information
2. Sites that provide collaboratively created information
3. Sites that provide a service via a server-side program
4. Sites that define a standard enabling a consumer to seamlessly query multiple databases

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The complete chapter can be found online at this link – So You Want to Join the World’s Grubbiest Club: Internet Entrepreneurs.

Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody”

I’m currently reading Here Comes Everybody: the Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky. It’s a book about how Internet-based social networking tools give individuals the power to share and collaborate without the organizational overhead associated with large corporations.

US Cover

I think one or both of you should take a look at this book since we’re planning on drawing in an audience and keeping them “glued” to MAF based on its “social” appeal. I’m only one-third of the way through the book but I’ve already learned a lot about how existing social networks work and how they’ve been changing society.

“Flickr escaped those problems [organizational overhead], not by increasing its managerial oversight over photographers but by abandoning any hope of such oversight in the first place, instead putting in place tools for the self-synchronization of otherwise latent groups.” – pg 39

“You can think of group undertaking as a kind of ladder of activities, activities that are enabled or improved by social tools. The rungs on the ladder, in order of difficulty, are sharing, cooperation, and collective action.” – pg 49

“This form of communication is what sociologist Etienne Wenger calls a community of practice, a group of people who converse about some shared task in order to get better at it. . . By lowering transaction costs, social tools provide a platform for communities of practice.” – pg 100

UK Cover

‘Nuff said. I’ll post more interesting quotes as I work my way through the rest of the book.