Nice column. Having been involved in a recent attempt at yet another redundant communal project, I would have to say I have reached almost exactly the same conclusions as yourself.

It is not that sharing doesn’t work; it is that human nature, by default, is built to take first, give later. As another poster says above, when I go to a communal portal such as NewsVine.com, I rarely ever “digg” or “vote” to raise topics to the main page. I am there for the simple need to keep myself abreast of current events.

Even sites such as myspace or facebook are built on the same premis. The only reason they are successful, is not because everyone loves to keep a strong social network, it is because it is built to give self-gratification first and foremost. i.e. “Building a social network based on self-promotion”.

In order to a online community so succeed, self-gratification needs take precedence.

This article is also based on the presumption that a low participation rate in a larger group means that there is no participation, “here is no wisdom of crowds or power of the masses or anything else,” and that it’s no different from journalism.

This presumption is also false. First, 1,000 people voting in favour (and many more deciding not to vote) still constitutes a crowd, and their actions still constitute participation.

The difference between Digg and journalism is that anyone who wants to *can* participate. This is very different from a system in which decisions are made for you no matter what you say about it.

Of course, the purpose of the article is to carp about freeloaders and to remind readers that there is no such thing as altruism. The author may well be convinced of this, though it takes a very selective filtering of the data to support this position empirically.

What, for example, is the reward for typing this comment? I am more likely to be punished, via spam and hate mail. It doesn’t matter to me whether the author believes there is such a things as altruism. And if he wants to offer business advice based on this incorrect precept, that’s his problem.

The problem is, the author is confusing between ‘altruism’ and ‘expressing oneself’. Take a site like Flickr or Deviant Art, for example. These are sites based on rampant sharing, on the wholesale giving away of artistic content for nothing. Altruism run amok! But they are also, more importantly, sites where people can express themselves, where they can be creative.

It is true that only a certain percentage of the population wants to be creative at any given time, and in any given fashion. This is perhaps just as well; we are being drowned in free content as it is. There is too much altruism in the world for us to keep up!

That’s why the whole freeloaders argument is uch a crock. There is no such thing as a freeloader, really. The members of an audience are not freeloading off the artists. They are giving the artist a reason to perform. Just so, the non-voting members of Digg are not sponging off the voting members. They are, rather, giving the voting members a reason to vote.

When you view that people do, in Web 2.0 or elsewhere, as ‘product’, then you get skewed economics and skewed business models, as typified in this column. But if you see it more accurately as ‘interaction’ or ‘communication’, then you are closer to the heart of it.

I mean, after all, if you cannot imagine writing a letter to your grandmother for any reason other than profit, then not only do you have a cold cold heart, you have also missed the whole point of what *really* drives an economy.

Like it or not, we are living during the Information Revolution – if you want to see action in embedded programming, all you need to do is go where information is being embedded (mobile & wireless) – I don’t think that the iPod’s developers would agree with that embedded programming is getting no love. If the Automation Revolution comes next (and I hope it does), then the embedded stuff will become sexiest – markets simply follow demand & the current “theme” is information.

I disagree that web2 has anything to do with altruism – Web2 is simply the “bi-directional” phase (or feedback loop) of the information revolution. The browser is actually an embedded technology – embedded in the PC.

Sharing and altruism need to be considered separately. Web2 has nothing to do with altruism but has everything to do with sharing. It is dependant on sharing; but it doesn’t matter if your motives for sharing are selfish.

The glass-half-full angle on “freeloaders” is not that succesful communities punish anyone; but rather that in a succesful community, rewards are commensurate with contributions – valuable contributions earn valuable rewards. It’s just natural that non-valuable freeloaders don’t get rewarded but the members aren’t there to see anyone get punished – they are there to enjoy rewards in line with their contributions.

People react fiercely to injustice and unfairness. If the punishment is deemed unfair I’d bet the result would be different. Fairness, respect, self determination, predictability, and just desserts encourages cooperative behavior in other studies.

I think Web 2.0 is a way of saying that we are over the dot-com hype. We have learned some lessons from the bust and we are ready to create meaningful tools and content that will make our lives better.

Look carefully. If the “teammates” are allowed to reward (or not) according to contribution then cooperation increases. And if teammates are allowed to self-select their associates again they cooperate more freely.

That’s an improtatnt distinction. “Punishing” bosses ruin collaboration and cooperation in other studies. So punishing isn’t the cause of increased cooperation. Peer pressure is. IMHO of course.