Think of the vocal minority of Instagram users would like to view their feed chronologically, for example. Or the Facebook users who want to pay to turn off ads. Or look at all the impossible questions related to speech that are decided at a platform level, when they would better resolved at a personal one.
What makes the online community a more efficient workforce than one managed by a firm? The short answer is that communities are better at both identifying talented people and evaluating their output.
Today’s social startups don’t start off as networks. They start off as standalone apps. These products enable users to create a corpus of content first. They then connect the users with each other as a consequence of sharing that content.
While stock options certainly can have their drawbacks, it is really remarkable to see the employees of incredible companies benefit from partial ownership. There have been companies like this for a while—community banks and employee-owned retailers have been around for a long time. However, they are not usually super profitable enterprises so they... See more