Hat Tip for Free Contenthttp://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=gratitudesystemforfreecontent-091211235300-phpapp01&stripped_title=hat-tip-for-free-content
Last weekend I was in Singapore for the Neotony-Mozilla event. Mozilla has this Drumbeat series of event where they are looking for ideas on making the web better. I presented an idea to reward free content producers. We want to build a system where we have a sort of currency that we can award to people who create freely accessible content.
I consume a lot of creative commons licensed material (photos on Flickr, music on Jamendo). I learn things from the videos that people upload on YouTube. I wish I was able to buy them beer or coffee or tea or ice cream, but I can’t as I am not in their city. We did build a similar system last year where we enabled one to buy drinks for friends and kind people who helped us out. The system died as we could not expand it beyond a city and various other reasons.
It is something akin to Hatena’s star system in Japan. You buy these starts and you can plug it on the content (one people’s blog) you like. The stars are decorative only and provides no physical value for the recipient, which may not be a bad thing. Someone spent some money to give you a colored star.
Our system is in the similar spirit. What we are trying to do is find a currency that does not translate to real cash but something yet may provide say some percentage of a Flickr pro account or some Skype credits. These things are universal and can be utilized by any internet user. Lets call them Free Content Dollars or FCDs. These FCDs can be bought by internet users from a FCD exchange. A part of these FCDs can be sponsored by internet companies say Yahoo! as Flickr pro credits.
So how does it work. You find someone has written a good post on say shopping in Bangkok. I can give the FCDs to this person. We are still discussing the mechanism of how this can be done. Once the blogger has accumulated enough FCDs she can re-deem it for say a Flickr Pro account or some Skype credits.I will post more as the idea develops.
Hi Preetam, interesting idea! Just wondering: the FCD must ultimately start from actual money, mustn’t it? Unless a service like Flickr or Skype starts a barter system of sorts — e.g. I have some CC image or music that they could use. Instead of them paying me money or even giving me a pro acount worth $X dollars, I could opt to convert that to FCD. And subsequently be transferred. But my point is FCD still needs to start with real money. Or maybe I’m not seeing something beyond the obvious.
Yes, you should buy the FCDs first with real money.Though we may ask companies to give out FCDs. The FCDs cannot be converted back into physical currency. One of the model we are exploring is that the FCD’s value depreciates out the longer you keep. That would encourage people to pass it around.