Niamh Redmond

A late night escapade to Q-zar and bowling in the Blanchardstown Leisureplex (how much fun! - I haven’t done that since my teenage years) saw me leaving the moped in work overnight the other night and subsequently having to resort to public transport the following morning i.e. get the train into work. Anyway, page 13 of my free copy of METRO contained an article about how open-source technology is transforming the economy, politics and science… so nothing new there exactly but it did get me thinking about mass collaboration, social networking, blogging and self-publishing on the Internet in general ( a lot to think about on a relatively short train journey!). And, I also learned a new term in the process, ‘wikinomics’.

So, what is ‘Wikinomics’?

Well, according to Wikipaedia (my first port of call for information on a such a similar name-sake!), wikinomics is the term that was coined to describe how “some companies in the early 21st century used mass collaboration and open-source technology such as wikis to be successful.” So “some” companies would include the likes of YouTube, eBay, MySpace, Bebo, Facebook and of course, Wikipaedia itself then? Wrong. Yes, it is true that these companies have indeed used open-source technology to gain popularity, encourage open communications and indeed be successful but that’s not necessarily wikinomics. Well, it’ s not wikinomics according to Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. Tapscott and Williams wrote a book about this very topic in December 2006, titled ‘Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything‘ (http://www.wikinomics.com). According to Tapscott, wikinomics is based on four ideas: Openness, Peering, Sharing, and Acting Globally.

What ‘Wikinomics’ is not, according to Tapscott and Williams:

(taken from the ‘Beginners Guide to Wikinomics’ http://www.eu.socialtext.net/wikinomics/index.cgi?beginners_guide)

• Wiki is not like email. - You may write things, but in a wiki your words don’t belong to you, or even stay where you put them.
• Wiki is not like a discussion board. - It is not about everyone speaking in turn. Be like a DJ and remix words that others have created. Yes you can. Yes you can. . . . . Yes. You. Can!
• Wiki is not like a blog - Your point of view matters, but mostly as grist for the mill. Spend the majority of time reshaping the ideas of others - then you are on the way to being a wiki gardener.
• You can’t mess it up - no matter how badly you mess up a page, somebody else can revert it in 15 seconds. So relax.

Where did all this start?

In 1937, economist Ronald Coase determined that companies existed because of transaction costs. Doing business by assembling the right people and the right resources within an establishment would be more efficient than trying to outsource. For this, Coarse won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science. In recent years, however, businesses are increasingly outsourcing for specialist staff and/ or resouces. Wikinomics, can now be seen as an extension of the trend in business to outsource. The difference, however, is that mass collaboration relies on individuals to come together and freely cooperate to improve a given operation, share their knowledge or solve a problem.

Some are concerned about the increased power that such technology brings to the individual, fearing that it could be adopted for crimes such as terrorism and other heinous acts. When Finnish student, Linus Torvalds developed Linux in 1991, most companies were horrifically opposed to the idea of “open-source” technology. The attitude towards open-source today is very different. IBM now spends over 75 million euros a year in this area. Wikinomics, which uses this open-source technology is certainly subject to criticism and anxious speculation. However, it will almost certainly see the same adoption by the masses that open-source did, and an even greater increase in interest over the next few years.

What does the future hold?

MySpace, for example, is continuing to grow at approximately 2 million members a week, there’s a new blog published every second and Time Magazine chose ‘You - the Internet content generator’ as it’s person of the year, 2006.

Furthermore, programmers are changing the economy by combining services and creating innovative environments based on the open-source concept. For example, Housingmaps, (www.housingmaps.com) is a service, which shows houses for rent by combining two other services; information from Craigslist and technology from Google Maps. Combining services in this way is known as a mash-up. Housingmaps was described by Tim O’Reilly as “the first true Web 2.0 application.” Housingmaps creator, Paul Rademacher, could have been sued by Google, instead he now works for them! Another example of how wikinomics is changing the economy is that Architects are now using Second Life to experiment with their ideas.

However, could wikinomics change more than the way we do business? Could it save the world?! Tapscott argues, it is indeed a power for good: “For the first time, we have a worldwide movement to fight global warming. The stake, survival of the planet, is worth the risk.”

Related Links:

• Wikipaedia - Wikinomics
• The official ‘Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything‘ Book’s Website: http://www.wikinomics.com
• Download the first chapter of the book above for free: http://www.newparadigm.com/media/IntroAndOne.pdf
• Mass collaboration could change way companies operate, article in USA Today.
• Website for the public to create the “unwritten chapter”
• Make Room, Wikipedia: Internet-based Collaboration Could Change the Way We Do Business February 21, 2007, Knowledge@Wharton article (with a brief discussion of the controversy of including the term “Wikinomics” in Wikipedia.) Requires membership.
• Up is down and black is white as Wikinomics changes the business world, article on [PCWorld.ca]
• The Cult of the Amateur, New York Times’ Book Review on Andrew Keen’s criticism of Web 2.0 philosophy’
• A Book Review of Wikinomics

Videos:

• 2007-02-26 Don Tapscott 82 minute presentation on Wikinomics, hosted on Google Video and Internet Archive (mpeg4 and Windows Media Player)
• 2006-11-08 Don Tapscott 3 minute preview of Wikinomics to ZDNet.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 7:11 pm and is filed under internet, marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.