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<FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>I’ve not been following this thread really so not sure if it has been mentioned, but the Apple App Store is possibly an example of a context where at least a small percentage of active “workers” are able to get a financial return on the value of their labour. Two things though. Firstly, most iPhone Apps make little or no money. Secondly, the model employed here is, at least in the case of sole author’s of applications (or small collective teams), that of the worker as producer and owner of the product. They are both the labour and the capital. The author, worker and IP owner are all the same person. That is why I placed the term worker in quotes. Apple then takes a cut as a dealer. They do not own the IP.<BR>
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I am not seeking to promote this model. There is still plenty about it that is questionable. But to some degree it does borrow some interesting elements from collectivism and sole/small-trader and author model. Ultimately though the creators of App Store product are free to organise themselves as they wish – they can choose this apporach, or that which is more common in the corporate world. I doubt that presents Apple as a value free portal though...<BR>
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Regards<BR>
<BR>
Simon<BR>
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Simon Biggs<BR>
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<FONT COLOR="#FE7700">edinburgh college of art<BR>
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<HR ALIGN=CENTER SIZE="3" WIDTH="95%"><B>From: </B>Jean Burgess <jean@creativitymachine.net><BR>
<B>Date: </B>Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:33:25 +1000<BR>
<B>To: </B>Sean Cubitt <scubitt@unimelb.edu.au><BR>
<B>Cc: </B>"idc@mailman.thing.net" <idc@mailman.thing.net><BR>
<B>Subject: </B>Re: [iDC] MySpace staff cuts<BR>
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Sean, thanks for this concrete example. It points us to something I find very interesting. <BR>
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On the one hand, you have the massive unpaid workforce of people who through their various activities co-create the value (however defined) of platforms for user-created content. On the other, you have the profound inability of most of these platform providers to make any real money out of that activity - once you factor in bandwidth costs, and at least thus far. <BR>
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YouTube is a particularly sharp example of this -where UGC is both the driver of YouTube's growth and a ruinous waste of bandwidth because nobody wants to run their ads alongside it: it's unpredictable in content and not clearly enough located in any particular national (that is, US) market. <BR>
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For platform providers like YouTube Inc, the "users" who provide content (and who have to a very significant extent built the thing we call YouTube) are, I suspect, seen as mere placeholders (one day, the "real", monetisable content will replace all those pointless skateboarding cat videos). The trouble is, YouTube now has a culture of its own: and its "attention economy" is in practical terms incompatible with commercial media logics.<BR>
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I really do think this is a weird situation. <BR>
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Cheers<BR>
Jean <BR>
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On 24/06/2009, at 2:17 PM, Sean Cubitt <scubitt@unimelb.edu.au> wrote:<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>What’s so fascinating is just how small the workforce behind a global player can be; pointing toards the economic scale of content production by users<BR>
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Extracted from a longer piece at<BR>
<a href="http://www.theage.com.au/technology/biz-tech/myspace-cuts-twothirds-of-global-workforce-20090624-cvw1.html">http://www.theage.com.au/technology/biz-tech/myspace-cuts-twothirds-of-global-workforce-20090624-cvw1.html</a> <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/technology/biz-tech/myspace-cuts-twothirds-of-global-workforce-20090624-cvw1.html"><http://www.theage.com.au/technology/biz-tech/myspace-cuts-twothirds-of-global-workforce-20090624-cvw1.html></a> <BR>
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</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT COLOR="#666666"><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>June 24, 2009 - 10:15AM<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>Social networking site MySpace plans to cut 300 jobs, or two-thirds of its overseas work force, in an effort to rein in costs and focus on countries where it has many users and better business opportunities.<BR>
<BR>
The move comes a week after the News Corp. unit said it would cut 420 jobs in the U.S., or nearly 30 per cent of its domestic work force. Combined, the cuts will reduce MySpace's employee base by nearly 40 per cent to about 1,150.<BR>
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"Our goal to tap into as many international markets as possible drove us to create too many offices around the globe, and with them came inefficiencies," chief executive Owen Van Natta, a former executive at rival Facebook, said in a memo sent to employees.<BR>
<BR>
Regards<BR>
<BR>
sean</SPAN></FONT><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'> <BR>
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