It's been a strangely slow start to the business media week - probably because so much ink is being taken up by the Japanese earthquake tragedy and in its unrelenting horror, it's all running together for me.
Around the edges of that, Wired News put out two interesting stories yesterday that are worth taking a look at.
In the first, Mathew Schwartz covered un-businesses like WikiLeaks, Craig's List and WikiPedia, noting since how all of them generally don't seem to care if they ever become billionaires, it's impossible to make them grow up and behave, as an IPO track would.
So the overlords of open source are left to their regal eccentricities. Craigslist (see Gary Wolf’s story on the company in issue 17.09) has resisted giving its users traceable identities — a move any serious for-profit concern would have made long ago — because Craig Newmark sees anonymity as a test of the inherent goodness of people. Jimmy Wales’ Wikipedia user page, in introducing his statement of principles for the site, reads like a motto graven on an imperial arch: “I should point out that these aremy principles, such that I am the final judge of them.” Assange, similarly, has said that he alone makes the final call about what WikiLeaks will post. To this list of digital sovereigns we might someday add two young barons: CouchSurfing’s Casey Fenton and 4chan’s Christopher Poole.
I've commented on both WikiPedia and especially Craig's List in the past and how these companies benefit from authentic communication, even when they are accused of exploiting their contributors and promoting child prostitution. Schwartz is the first reporter I can remember who has captured that viewpoint across multiple businesses at once and it's a fascinating article about brand, image and what happens when you just don't care.
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