stephanie8bb: Making Money on Internet

Very few people can deny the appeal of practical and sophisticated electronic mobile devices. Problem is, not everyone can afford them. The iPad, for example, costs $499. How can any consumer try out an expensive electronic device, really test run it at home, at the office, on the road, etc. to make sure that the functionality is worth the money and matches the needs of one's lifestyle?

Enter SnapGoods. This internet start-up in Brooklyn runs on a very basic premise: people want to borrow stuff. Since there are plenty of people who have stuff they want to lend, this site brings the two together. It's sort of a borrower-lender match-making service.

Anything goes, it's not just fancy hand-held electronic devices but camping gear, food processors, vacuum cleaners, and lots more.

The site completes a standard background check on users who want to set up an account/membership, and handles payment via PayPal.

SnapGoods is not the only site to provide a place for people to engage in sharing stuff. Sites like SwapBabyGoods specifically caters to the needs of new parents.

Some other sites such as Neighborhood Fruit is specific in the sense that it allows people to share what bumper crop grows in their yards or fruits "harvested" from fruit trees on public land, which would otherwise have gone to waste.

All these sites have at least two advantages. This process bypasses the conventional route of spending money in order to own stuff that comes not only with the cost of purchase, but with the costs of maintenance and storage as well.

The other advantage is that such sites allow consumers to reduce, reuse, and recycle what they already have even while it builds community ties by fostering communication that would otherwise not have taken place.

After all, anyone who needs or wants anything must first find and then contact someone who has the desired object. Search, contact, negotiation, finalizing the deal, etc. all give getting more stuff a new meaning. Such a process actually makes us slow down and assess our needs and wants in greater detail. Do I really need a shop vac? Maybe yes, but I might need it only twice a year to clean out my basement. So does it really make any sense to buy a brand new one, use it twice a year, and store it for the rest of the time? Isn't it better to find someone who has it, borrow or rent it for the 4 hours a year when I actually use it?

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Aaron Brazell notes, as many have, that it’s amusing to watch the apoplexy aimed at Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for posting stolen classified documents while his co-conspirators in the mainstream press publish them with next to no criticism. But Aaron moves from this to make a more novel argument, namely that Assange is threatening to topple what’s left of the traditional media business model.

he media is on the sideline, their power usurped from this rogue operative with a rogue website. Instead of the New York Times or Washington Post benefitting from the receipt of leaked information as has been the case in their traditional past (see Watergate), an upstart “news organization” is stealing their thunder. Sure the Times and a variety of other media outlets were given the data eventually, but the arbiter of information was no longer them.

While the media wrings their hands over a contrived battle between the morality of publishing leaked, national security documents and preservation of national secrets, the bigger capitalistic battle is happening and that overshadows journalistic sense of responsibility.

The ability to be first is being tainted here. While Wikileaks promises to distribute new information, acting as a benevolent dictator, to news organizations, these news organizations are capitulating their responsibilities simply to make sure they have some crumbs off of Assange’s table.

No one, certainly, is suggesting that news outlets should become a lap-dog, as I have heard toss around, of the government, bowing to their every will and whim. Certainly not, lest we live in a Communist system. However, the media is expected to operate in a suitably responsible way.

In this case, the media knows that they are on the outs. In a last gasp of industry-pride, they have sacrificed themselves in a last-ditch effort to remain relevant. Put in another way, they have come to serve themselves instead of the people they exist to serve.

I’m not sure I agree with either part of this.

WikiLeaks and Newspaper Profits

First, it’s true that the Internet has been killing the old business model based on advertisements in printed copies. And WikiLeaks is to some extent furthering this. But, as it is, WikiLeaks is only important because hundreds of reporters from well established newspapers are sifting through the piles of mostly worthless documents to ferret out what’s interesting and distill it for their readership.

The upshot is that Assange is handing these papers mini-scoops and exciting stories to cover, thus boosting their bottom line. By contrast, I haven’t the foggiest notion of how Assange is making any money off of this.

Now, it’s conceivable that Assange could bypass the Guardian, Times, and others and simply dump them out there for crowdsourcing. Maybe Josh Marshall and the TPM gang or Arianna Huffington’s minions over at HuffPo would do the sorting, instead. But right now, the threat to the mainstream media is minuscule at best.

WikiLeaks and Journalistic Ethics

Is the press here ignoring the real risks of going public with classified documents that could ostensibly cause real harm to their publics? Maybe. Then again, this is hardly the first time. Leaks are the bread and butter of scoop journalism and they have been for some time.

Further, it appears — granted, we have nothing to go on but the publishers’ own accounts of the process — that the newspapers in question actually took the risks seriously, carefully vetting the information before going to press. The NYT, especially, seemed to bend over backwards to get commentary from the US Government and to pass along any objections and their own redactions to other papers who’d received the dumps.

Beyond that, once Assange made the documents publicly available on the Internet, the only thing the editors would have achieved by refusing to report on what was in them was to lose money. Someone was going to report anything of interest.

Turning full circle, I’d also note that there’s an important distinction between the conduct of the newspapers in question and of the WikiLeaks gang: The former didn’t encourage the commission of crimes by those entrusted to protect America’s secrets and set up an elaborate conspiracy to make doing so easier. Yes, they routinely cultivate sources with access to such information and happily abet legitimate whistleblowers. But they’re not out to create anarchy just for the hell of it.

bench craft company scam

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Making Money on Internet

WikiLeaks and Newspaper Profits

WikiLeaks and Journalistic Ethics

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