<html><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div>Sean, thanks for this concrete example. It points us to something I find very interesting. </div><div><br></div><div>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. </div><div><br></div><div>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. </div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.285156); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.21875); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.21875);"><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.289062); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.222656); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.222656); ">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.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.273438); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.207031); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.207031); "></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.269531); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.203125); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.203125);"><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.289062); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.222656); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.222656); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.273438); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.207031); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.207031); ">I really do think this is a weird situation. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.285156); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.21875); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.21875);"><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.289062); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.222656); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.222656); ">Cheers</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.289062); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.222656); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.222656); ">Jean </span></div><div><br>On 24/06/2009, at 2:17 PM, Sean Cubitt <<a href="mailto:scubitt@unimelb.edu.au">scubitt@unimelb.edu.au</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div>
<font face="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><span style="font-size:11pt">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>
<br>
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"><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><br>
<br>
</span></font><font color="#666666"><font size="1"><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:9pt">June 24, 2009 - 10:15AM<br>
</span></font></font></font><font face="Arial"><span style="font-size:11.5pt">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>
<br>
"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>
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