open source, game theory, and social media
DESCRIPTION
Notes from my lecture about online communities, communications, connectivity, and organizational value. Delivered at USC Annenberg, January 2009.TRANSCRIPT
Online Communities:The Future of Business Organization ValueUSC Annenberg Program in Online Communities January 2009
ETHAN BAULEYETHANBAULEY.COM@[email protected]
Who can explain what the Internet is?
© Ethan Bauley
Who owns the Internet?
• Nobody!
• The Internet itself is "open source"/"peer produced" (TCP/IP)
• These characteristics inform the shape of productive strategies
© Ethan Bauleyworldofends.com
Commons-based peer production
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• Who owns it?
• "No single person has exclusive control over the use and disposition of any particular resource in the commons." (TWoN, 61)
• General Public License: derivative works must be available under same license
Open-source software
• What is it? (anyone can contribute)
• Economic characteristics of information (code, video, text, audio, etc)
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Open-source software
• Why do people contribute?
• Why do people like it?
• What are some examples?
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Google vs. Yahoo
• Yahoo! Directory v. Link structure of the Web
• What are the differences between the two?
• How does this relate to F/OSS & peer production?
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Markets, Networks, Communities
• More efficient than individual firms
• These forms of organization have cheap coordination costs, are geo-agnostic
• Examples
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Wikipedia v. Britannica
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• Nature comparison
• Wikipedia: community design (pillars, editors, etc)
Craigslist v. Classifieds
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Apache v. Microsoft
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SETI@home v. Big Blue
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P2P v. Akamai
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Peer-to-Peer Communication
• How it used to be
• How it is in the networked world
• Velocity
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Designing communities
• Wikipedia policy
• Slashdot
• Hacker News
• Usenet
• Avoiding situations wherein individual rationality hurts the common good
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Game Theory
• Mathematics of social science
• Beautiful Mind
• Cold War
• Rigorous analysis of conflict...aka "interaction"
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Game Theory
• Volunteer's dilemma: free riders
• Prisoner's dilemma: individual rationality hurts the common good
• Backward induction paradox
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Game Theory & Community
• Historically, a principal source of advantage is information asymmetry
• What happens when all players have full information?
• Connectivity (broadband, social media, social needs of people) drives awareness, which drives strategy
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Game Theory & Connectivity
• A perpetual state of peer review (student blog example)
- Does it change behavior?
• Backward induction, connected consumers & lemons
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Game theory of connectivity
You may work together in the future; everyone else sees how you played your last move (and all moves beforehand).
This is a powerful incentive towards "good" behavior (and is why "Be Good" is razor sharp strategy).
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Game theory + open source = Cooperative advantage
• Cooperative advantage: Life is not a zero-sum game. We can grow the pie by working together.
• Goal is to be the "most desirable collaboration partner"
• You can't do everything
• Business networks (not "chains")
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Source of advantage
• Talent (a.k.a. human capital + social capital)
• In a world of increasingly rapid change, disruption is the new equilibrium
• Only sustainable source of advantage is: ability to learn faster than competition
© Ethan Bauley