[p2p-research] Fwd: The social commerce wars and beyond: choosing between Metcalfe, Reed, and th...

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kevin Carson <free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 1:04 PM
Subject: The social commerce wars and beyond: choosing between Metcalfe,
Reed, and th...
To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>, "free. market. anticapitalist"
<free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com>




 Sent to you by Kevin Carson via Google Reader:


 The social commerce wars and beyond: choosing between Metcalfe, Reed, and
the new Phyles<http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-social-commerce-wars-and-beyond-choosing-between-metcalfe-reed-and-the-new-phyles/2010/10/05>
via P2P Foundation <http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/> by Michel Bauwens on
10/5/10

What we know of social commerce, i.e. the forms of business taking advantage
of social networks, such as Facebook or the ad network of Google, are still
based on a vision of individualism, albeit a network version. Taking
advantage of their understanding of Metcalfe’s
Law<http://p2pfoundation.net/Metcalfe%27s_Law>,
which states that each additional network node exponentially grows the
amount of linkages between individuals, marketers are busily positioning
themselves in their interstices of these relations. They do this because
modernity has made them comfortable with individuals, even though they were
previously both atomized but also massified through the media. They are
learning about the new relationality rather quickly however. This model is
especially prevalent amongst social media and social network sites, and in
what I call the sharing model, whereby individuals are less cooperating
around a common goal, but sharing their own expressivity, hence constituting
only ‘weak ties’ amongst each other.

But social media and networks have another aspect, highlighted by
Reed’s Law<http://p2pfoundation.net/Reed%27s_Law>,
which states that each additional node to a network, exponentially raises the
number of groups which can be
formed<http://p2pfoundation.net/Group_Forming_Networks>.
These groups usually form around a common interest or value affinity and in
the best of cases such as commons-based peer production, to a common object
they are constructing together.

When such communities become strong and successful, such as say the Linux or
the various free software communities, more radical change is needed: it is
no longer sufficient to orient oneself towards interconnected individual
consumers, but towards communities with their own cultures and norms. Hence
the birth of the community-oriented business models.

Because of the relative strength of the new communities compared to loose
networks, such companies will generally have to adapt substantially more
than those who are merely trying to use Metcalfe’s Law.

Recently reading and being blown away, by David De Ugarte’s
book<http://p2pfoundation.net/Economic_Democracy_in_the_Network_Century>about
Phyles <http://p2pfoundation.net/Phyles>, i.e. global value networks, I
think however, that we are also witnessing the emergence not just of
community-oriented businesses, but of value networks that are creating their
own enterprises in order to make their project and their community
sustainable. This process is driven by the new sociality born of networks,
let’s call it the strong version of Reed’s Law.

Here, with Phyles, we are dealing with a whole new form of business entity,
no longer driven by pure profit-maximisation, or the externally driven
pressure to adapt to new social values, but are born to serve values which
transcend profit maximization altogether.

When peer production communities will increasingly understand that it is
possible to align oneself to business entities that are more in tune with
the P2P value system, and that they are even able to create their own, then
a real social and cultural revolution will have taken place.

The P2P Foundation is dedicated to make this evolution happen.



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