Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Web 2.0 could also mean dot.com + dot.org

Espen Andersen's second law of the internet (the first being related to FOSS) states that "every dot.com should have a dot.org to watch over it. "

He explains: "A lot of companies are dot.coms, in the sense that they have an Internet presence with an address like companyname.com. I think their customers and other stakeholders in the company should organize and take command over the companyname.org, whatever it may be. So, let's pick a company, let's pick enron.com. If there had been an enron.org that watched over enron.com, perhaps Enron wouldn't have been in the papers quite so much. " (via Rajesh Jain).

Easier said than done. For huge enterprises, that is going to be a tad difficult to implement. Perhaps not as a matter of technology but because of rigid governance structures. Read this Harvard Uni op-ed for example. The story is altogether different for start ups like notcot.com. See how they are able to blend socially networked notcot.org (Read: community supported) with their business of churning out ideas+aesthetics+amusement. So how do we build a new new economy? Start looking away from moguls.

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