

Getting Rich From Others Was Never Easier - secretasiandan
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-03/getting-rich-from-others-was-never-easier-commentary-by-william-d-cohan.html

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garethsprice
Complaining that Twitter/Facebook are profiting from providing a platform for
people's conversations is like complaining that a bar owner provides nothing
but an empty room and some booze while the patrons provide all the real value
- is the publican getting rich off the "free work" of his customers?

For user-generated broadcast content (HuffPo), he's got a point though.

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secretasiandan
Both provide platforms for others to post content. Both generate revenue due
to the content.

You haven't specified how they differ. What property of one is unlike the
other?

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patrickk
Content (articles/blog posts) copied on a content aggregator is quite possibly
of interest to a great many people. The original author deserves full credit
and ownership of that content (unless they work for some company, then their
employer owns the content).

Content on Facebook is more likely to be conversations between friends or
information about a person (their employer, music tastes etc). This
information is likely to only be of immediate interest to the individual who
posted it, and to their friends.

So copying information from an article/blog post and passing it off as your
own is like a newspaper ripping off another newspaper and doing no reporting
of their own (or buying content for Reuters ;-) ). Repeating content from
Facebook is like repeating something you overheard in a casual conversation
between friends (unlikely to be of interest unless you know the people in
question).

Not sure what analogy would apply to Twitter.

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TomOfTTB
The problem with this article is the author draws a dubious line between three
different things.

Facebook and Twitter provide a service for no money but you end up paying them
in content which they trade to advertisers (who then give them money). Making
social networking nothing more than a traditional transaction with a
middleman.

The Huffington Post doesn't pay its authors or provide a service but they do
offer a chance at fame through a famous distribution model. Making it a lot
like gambling where most people pay more than the experience is worth (by
generating content and never getting famous) while a lucky few extract a huge
portion of the value (by becoming famous). But The HP is just like the Casino
extracting a piece of the action through advertising.

What Business Insider does is just kind of slimy. But it mostly quotes famous
people who don't seem to care if Blodget takes money from them.

So we're talking about three very different phenomenons

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toadkick
It'd be nice if the author of the story would point out how Instapaper is
different than Business Insider, in that the content it "harvests" is content
that the user must first see by going to the actual website where the content
exists, and save the page for later viewing, meaning that the original site
still gets credit for at least 1 page view. Instapaper also does not pretend
or try to trick the reader into thinking that the content belongs to or is
generated by Instapaper staff. Henry Blodget knows that his actions are
dubious, and is grasping at straws with his comparison.

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Hyena
My gut feeling is that, privacy issues aside, the people who are really
getting fleeced are advertisers.

~~~
arihelgason
Because their advertising overpriced? Surely it's easy enough for advertisers
to monitor results. Curious why there's this perception.

~~~
Hyena
Cognitive bias? Advertising is impersonal but advertising firms are very
personal? Why do people ever make bad decisions in the face of data?

I think there's a core of people convinced that advertising really works well
or convinced that "it would if only". I'm skeptical.

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secretasiandan
I think most people don't view social networks as extracting value from their
user's the way they view financial traders doing so.

Some people will say that quant trading adds some value, but that the amounts
the traders reap is too much.

I believe the value quant trading provides to its customers in proportion to
the value it extracts is on par with social networking. A lot of the people
who make arguments that quant trading provides no value have no idea how to
value the liquidity that quant traders provide in the same way they can value
what social networking provides. To appreciate what (most) quant trading firms
provide, you have to have transacted frequently and significantly in the
market.

