User Owned Platforms

Ownership is a powerful motivator for users to contribute to products in deeper ways, be it with ideas, computing resources, code, or community building. This more cooperative economic model helps ensure better alignment with users over time, resulting in platforms that can be larger, more resilient, and more innovative. This is the Ownership Econo... See more

A subtext to last week’s article, Tech’s Two Philosophies, was the idea that there is a difference between Aggregators and Platforms; this was the key section:It is no accident that Apple and Microsoft, the two “bicycle of the mind” companies, were founded only a year apart, and for decades had broadly similar business models: sure, Microsoft licen... See more

Platform wealth and economic sharing: Today, creators & consumers contribute to a platform to gain social or economic status. But this status is rented (status on platform only, revenue shared directly with platform). In Web3 this status is owned. Not only is social reputation portable, but the relationship with IP created on platform can be owned ... See more

The ownership economy doesn’t always mean a literal distribution of tokens, stock options, or equity. Rather, it means that ownership — which may manifest in the form of novel economic rewards, platform governance, or new forms of social capital — can be a new keystone of user experiences, with plenty of design space to explore. - Jesse Walden