yes!:) - K.D.

A crowdsourced company. Don't we call that the government? ;) - Sean Powell

Dave... we have been considering this idea for a number of years, but I think that pulling it together requires more than a geek-army or an open-source collaborative ethos. 'Open' is a mind-set, not a movement... and great egalitarian strategies are possibly best not to be collectively authored, or you can find yourself in the middle of a mega-committee. Its a conundrum... But we are happy to share insights. - Simon Edhouse

Dave/Simon: someone will do it. Why not get started now? - Jason Cronkhite

Totally agree... the core idea that Dave is putting forward has been my 24/7 passion since 2006... and maybe Twitter & Friendfeed (RIP) are going to prove to be catalytic forces for this idea. Certainly Dave is a lot more accessible nowdays... ;) - Simon Edhouse

Simon, maybe with Dave's help we can form a community trust and put the thing together. :-) - Jason Cronkhite

Simon it would not be like that. I'll write a follow-up post. - Dave Winer

I would like to understand the financial vehicles to do this. Simon, I also agree that there has to be a structure that allows for users interests to be aligned with business growth for their benefit and the founders. Too often what happens when investors step in for pure financial return is the goal becomes focused on how to turn the company, "the exit", and not on building a sustainable company to enrich lives of the user base. - Jason Cronkhite

well... to quote Robert Burns, "The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray"... Firstly I totally agree with Dave's other post (i.e. "Rex, you're making it too complicated..") where he outlines the structure of the Public Company... no problem there. I have reasoned out the same model some time ago. - I see it like a series of check-boxes that have to be ticked... and probably (almost certainly) no one person has all the answers for those check-boxes... One of the big ones is: 'What does the Company do?"... What does it make/produce/provide? - AND, as it happens, I have done a lot of work to define that. The idea needs to be a BIG IDEA. otherwise what's the point... (because if its not absolutely like WOW!!!, then the IPO will fall in a heap) - It has to be based around a great big simple beautiful idea... Convening a discussion about sharing knowledge and/or planning that big idea is the trick now... The web makes long distance conversations easy-peasy... but real human legally solid project collaboration does not flow in 11111's and 00000's. - Simon Edhouse

Understand & agree for the most part. RE: BIG IDEA, don't know if it really has to be earth moving all the time but rather something that enough users can stand to benefit from both of using the product and financially. Simon, how about publishing your checklist and trying to get a following around the movement? - Jason Cronkhite

The BIG IDEA is crucial... once you see it, you can't stop thinking about it, and that's what is needed to get massive buy-in. - "get a following around a movement" No... I can't drum that up. I am too small a fish, and not living in a VC hotspot. Dave's the man, if he can control his notorious crankiness (we love you Dave)... However, yes, I can add-value, but who am I? Dave has started to pull together this particular cosmic dust cloud. Let's see if he can truly lead it. - Simon Edhouse

The crowdcorp concept is the way to go, now how do we make it happen? It is tough to manage efficiently the requirements of a community - Alberto Saavedra from Nambu

RE: BIG IDEA, maybe so - maybe not...remains to be seen. RE: you're not the one, it takes powers of 2, lots of passion, determination and as Seth Godin would say a Tribe. Sure, Dave may be one to press the issue forward but this notion requires an ARMY. Dave, maybe you can enlist Scoble and the Building43 community to push this effort. - Jason Cronkhite

[edit] ...There are those on the web that are captivated by their own notoriety, as if being involved in social-networks is a popularity contest. - It isn't. If this project idea falls into the hands of the 'lime-light-seekers', who seem to have short attention cycles, it will rapidly go off-course. (that's my own personal view) - Simon Edhouse

Ah, Simon. I understand you but, this is where the Power of 2 comes in so handy (you need both - the Edhouse's & Scoble's). Keeping people on course and captivated require different talents. Maybe Scoble & Winer are perfect balances. Maybe it's others but more importantly, you need all shapes, colors and credes to do something like this and the power of collective intelligence and influence. - Jason Cronkhite

LOL... maybe we need a Jason Cronkhite too - Simon Edhouse

Its a jigsaw puzzle... but, like those super tricky huge jigsaw puzzle's, to complete it, someone needs to have the picture that encapsulates the final vision. - Simon Edhouse

Agreed Simon! I'm willing to help. - Jason Cronkhite

OK... next we need a money person... who gets it. Someone who can resource this... Its not going to go anywhere much till that person steps up. - Simon Edhouse

They are around. I forwarded a pointer to my piece today with a guy I'm working with on another project. - Dave Winer

Cool Dave. Let's keep the conversation going. I would love to see this happen. - Jason Cronkhite

I have detailed Info-memorandum type docs, and have sent overviews to John Nesheim (http://www.nesheimgroup.com/) who has given the core-ideas his thumbs-up, and offered to introduce me to VCs etc... John is a great guy, very smart and accessible. We had a long Skype chat a while ago... he gets it. - Simon Edhouse

Fantastic Simon! Are VC's really what's needed 1st? - Jason Cronkhite

VCs are probably exactly not what's needed as they (generally) are always thinking of their exit, and being risk-averse by nature they tend to look for 'me-too' plays... (projects that have successful precedents in the marketplace) ... No, an Angel Investor is what's needed. But there still has to be a killer Business Model as money people are always in the business of making more money. However, a 'killer-business-model' and aligning "the interests of Users and Investors" are not mutually exclusive concepts. It can be both... you don't have to have one to sacrifice the other. - So, there's a pitch to put... and it does hang together from the mandatory business model aspect. - Simon Edhouse

Not to get ahead of ourselves but, even before an Angel don't we just need a passionate following of people (users of products/services they may want to own)? - Jason Cronkhite

It seems to me what is needed is a platform to evangelize the concept, get people behind the cause. Of course, a financial plan as to how users might contribute to show tangible interest would help in gaining validation and traction for larger investor types. - Jason Cronkhite

well... I instinctively take a different view on that. Not to say you are wrong, I am just really aware of the 'politics' of collaboration, the realities of project 'execution', and the realities and importance of I.P. protection for investors, even if it may become a public company (which by the way is a VERY expensive process to go through and carries with it a raft of responsibilites and the glare of regulatory oversight). - I take the view that resourcing a core group of people who share a compatible vision and can pull together others who can 'execute', must come before getting out the flute and becoming the pied-piper. - Simon Edhouse

point well taken simon, agreed. so, let's see if dave wants to help assemble the core group, open discussion, have a meeting of the minds in-person and push things forward. - Jason Cronkhite

Just opened a private group, "User Ventures" and sent you an invite, Simon/Dave. - Jason Cronkhite

"Jason assembled a great group of heroes, known as the Argonauts after their ship, the Argo. The group of heroes included the Boreads (sons of Boreas, the North Wind) who could fly, Heracles, Philoctetes, Peleus, Telamon, Orpheus, Castor and Pollux, Atalanta, and Euphemus." http://bit.ly/9LTx9 - Simon Edhouse

Very Cool! :-) - Jason Cronkhite

Then we all can start IPO's afterwards :) and sell our life-streams to google. - Chirag Chamoli

Simon, Argo User Ventures is assembled as a group awaiting the rest of the Argonauts :-) - Jason Cronkhite

LOL at the irony of opening a private group for this. - Nick Lothian

Nick, do you plan to contribute? - Jason Cronkhite

Nick, I have no qualms of opening up the group after those who plan to contribute help to establish a framework for the group. Foundations must be part of anything new even user centric organizations. So, if being an active contributor to help users suits you the group needs you and any other user advocate for that matter. - Jason Cronkhite

This company crowdsourced their funding: http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009... - Ray Cromwell

Another axis to think about is whether a particular idea even needs to be owned by a single entity, public, or otherwise. Chances are, if you're inventing another communication protocol/network to piggy back on the internet/web and ship data around, it isn't always necessary to have a single point of failure. Rather, you're taking a fault-tolerant network protocol (TCP/IP) and layering something on top of it with no fault tolerance. A lot of the companies in the social/blogosphere are creating value by aggregating data, but also unnecessarily promoting failure points by not designing for end users replicating their data in and out of the system easily. - Ray Cromwell

Ray, just reached out to Charles Armstrong of Trampoline. - Jason Cronkhite

Interesting points Ray, and yes, the technology idea you outline is in accord with some of the ideas we have been building on... but inventing another open protocol does not necessarily a profitable people's Company make. - and Nick, as regards the irony of a private discussion... Sometimes you have to be smart... and being 'smart' is also about being prudent and careful., - Simon Edhouse

I agree, but some things are commodities/public goods and not really something that should be walled off just to try and extract profits. (Which I'm not against, I just think there are plenty of other things to make profits on than setting up more toll bridges) Would RSS have taken off if a single company owned it and all feeds had to be hosted through their domain? Maybe, but I think we'd all be worse off than the current situation. - Ray Cromwell

Yes... I agree, and this is a very interesting area. - Probably the only way I can get us out of this log-jam is to go deeper and state that I am interested in two key symbiotic projects. One being an open platform, and the other being a separate (and at arms length) vehicle to redefine the way commercial contacts between buyer and seller, or advertiser/vendor and viewer/client are conducted. - Simon Edhouse

Simon: you are a jerk if you think I do this to "seek the limelight." I shared OTHER PEOPLE'S posts here more than 21,000 times. That is called sharing. I travel the world and point my camera at OTHER PEOPLE. Building communities is hard work and the fact that you have started this project by being an asshole does not bode well for its future. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

I went and looked and Simon never even participated here. Two likes. What a jerk. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

Mark: I agree, but I won't help a guy who questions my integrity and is a jerk. Maybe if he apologizes. Plus he's already proven he doesn't participate so WTF does he know about building a community? Geesh. - Robert Scoble

If I may... this is a fantastic political opportunity for all of us (bystanders like myself, geeks and users). I can hardly follow half the things you write (although I google most of it), but I watch the process as an experiment on "Open" Democracy through Open Source. My best wishes on its success no matter who partakes. If there is anything a civilian can contribute, please don't hesitate to ... well poke. :-)) - constantinos alexacos

No, the IPO comes first, before anything else. - Dave Winer

Read up on public shell companies. http://www.google.com/search... - Dave Winer

Just to add my two cents: I am a relative small fry here in this big community and have been fortunate enough to have participated in interesting discussions with both Scoble and Dave. Both have found the time (at least to some degree) to engage with me and I have since wondered how they do it (or at least how much time it takes). - Sean Powell

(Part 2) It seems based on these comments that something like this will need EVERYONE to actually be successful. With the advent of these technologies - friendfeed and (dare I say it) twitter - we now how the ability to truly get everyone involved and weigh in on decisions. That is the key here. Then we can help settle questions like: "Who decides where we go? What we do? Who's involved?" That last question should not even be considered. imho - Sean Powell

Gee, calling people "jerks" and "assholes" is just too easy in this kind of forum isn't it? But you know Robert, I did not say that you had no integrity. What I was saying was that, if something like this were to develop in an integral fashion, as in [def:] "...necessary to make a whole complete; essential or fundamental", then its not about obtaining mass publicity first off... which is what you are very adept at doing. It was not intended as a personal attack on you, but rather a comment on the idea of enlisting (you) "Scoble" as an evangelist for something that is more a wish than a formed concept. As if "Scoble" is a digital-era broadsheet... My meaning was: "No... way too early, this needs a more stealth approach"... my comments about 'lime-light-seekers' and 'short-attention-cycles', was flippant yes, but not specifically aimed at you... I think many web-celebrities are posting and contributing to their networks at such a high frequency that the diversity and urgency for new content in their streams becomes the order of the day. - I think the requirement for that kind of high-octane PR, for this nascent idea, has not yet arrived. - Simon Edhouse

Simon, you wrote, and I quote "Pleeeeeese.... not Scoble. - Its gonna take buckets of wisdom, and patience and dare I say it, integrity." - Robert Scoble

Dave, the idea of: "...the IPO comes first" baffles me. - IPOs are very expensive, and would only seem to raise the level of risk. - What is the reason that you take that position? - I think great companies are built on great ideas, and without the solid foundation of a 'great idea', I (and other's) would sense that its an ideologically driven foray... Foundations are important. - Simon Edhouse

That, to, me, says you were saying that I didn't have any integrity. - Robert Scoble

Simon: but your last statement is better. I still think your first statement was pretty damn rude, though, and when someone calls you on your rudeness, your first answer should be "I'm sorry." - Robert Scoble

That's what my community website network is all about. See http://Frederick.com for an example. The site is owned by the community. - Craig Shipp

IPO? The IPO market doors have been shut for sometime. Thanks for the chuckle. - cheapsuits

yep... I'm sorry if that offended you, really. Loose words... I don't know you, and you don't know me. Over a coffee, we would probably have a chuckle and find quite a bit of common ground. Please accept my apology. It was an off the cuff remark, poorly executed. - Simon Edhouse

Robert... gee I should have looked at your pic before insulting you! - Lucky I'm on the other side of the planet. ;) (I'm an Aussie, from English stock... fairly reserved, and nowhere near the buzzy west coast of the US. - so on quite a different frequency) - Simon Edhouse

Apology accepted, now we can move on. Thanks! - Robert Scoble

Ok... The trigger for this discussion was Dave's clarion call: ""we, the users, need to own a technology company -- and have it work to serve our interests..." ~ Its a meme that obviously resonates with many. There's been a shift to user-control, and libertarianism rolling forward for years on the web... and the implied friction-point (which is very real) is the tension between the Web 2.0 "Architecture of Participation" and the rise of UGC business-models, and the question of who really owns that user-generated-content and the 'architecture' that monetizes it. User unrest at the inequity of this paradigm is creating a massive potential market of what Clay Christensen would call 'non-consumers'. ~ Dave obviously feels that they will line-up for an IPO... I don't think its that simple. So, I see the need for a 'disruptive strategy', and that implies stealth, not broadcast. - That's the way I see it. - Simon Edhouse

agreed. - Thomas Hawk

Simon / Robert: Glad you guys made up :-) ... Simon, I am interested in your points of view and think there is a lot of merit to the visioning process with great leadership. I think Robert is one of the best evangelists for technology there is and letting the Scobleizer do what he does best has a time and place and I think Robert knows this and I'm sure he can move forward once there is a common understanding that the users interests are first and foremost. To move this forward, I think a team of people should be put together with diverse talents just as you seek to build a GREAT COMPANY. Should we start a list? I would recommend a few people: Bijoy Goswami author & founder of the Bootstrap Network, Joe Edelman Founder of Groundcrew.us, Charles Armstrong CEO of Trampoline, Dave Winer, Robert Scoble, Mark Magnacca, Author of the So What Book, we'll need other financial and business folks. ... I think Seth Godin would get behind this. Dave & Robert, I'm sure you guys have access to other Dream teamers? - Jason Cronkhite

Forgive me if I don't understand, but isn't the purpose of a company to make profits? Why not create a foundation akin to Mozilla or Apache instead? The closest service-oriented foundations I can think of are Wikipedia and Archive.org. It becomes interesting to me if we're talking about a services-oriented organization that provides end-user services built on top of existing and future cloud infrastructure - always serving user interests by (a) guaranteeing the persistence and availability of objects and their references as well as functional services and (b) scaling services performance based on demand. - Ankush Narula from iPhone

Ankush, I think the differentiation is that users contribution to these companies are not being rewarded. Why can the users as well as founders not be rewarded when they are essentially building the value of the company together. Companies cannot become valuable without customers so, they need each other and if users/customer bring up the valuation of the company why not have the opportunity to share in the rewards? I think such a company/organization could stand to benefit by providing support to the entreprenuers that set out to build amazing companies as well. - Jason Cronkhite

But what's the end goal? Rewards or integrity? You have to find a balance in any for-profit venture. However, non-profits are driven largely by vision and integrity (ideally speaking). So let me ask some more questions. If you're laying down your money as a user+investor, won't your interests change from time to time? If you actually take a company like this public who controls the company? Who sits on the board? What happens in a proxy fight when Carl Icahn leads the more profit-oriented investors against the integrity-oriented investors? With that, I agree that it would be a fascinating business model - certainly for no other reason but to iteratively refine it's various incarnations until it becomes something viable. - Ankush Narula

Brian... Wikipedia is a pretty good example of a company that operates for its users and is almost totally dependent on its users. However, it has no real business model, but retains a hugely valid place in most of our lives. - There is however an answer to the current dilemma/stalemate that folks here have been yearning for, and it is perfect and simple. In a nut-shell I would call it: "The People's Google"... I have worked for the last few years on crafting the whole scenario and ideas in detail. - Its a binary proposition, a two sided market... much like Google enjoys today, where publishers effectively sell their reader’s attention to Ad-Networks & Exchanges and Paid-Inclusion systems like Google’s Ad-Words sell the user’s attention-data to Google’s own Ad-Sense system for publishers in Google’s own two-sided-market. In Google’s successful business model, the value created by consumers on the client-layer, is harvested and this value then moves up to the server-layer where it is monetized making $Billions. However, Google’s business is still straddling the 1998 Web-Paradigm upon which its heirarchical page-rank foundation began. - The clue to solving the problems now lie in usurping the overall architecture of the web. It is largely still 'client-server' based, and you know what... the 'servers' don't serve their clients... we serve them. - So, two things need to be flipped 180 degrees. The client-server paradigm, and the current web-advertising paradigm. - as an ex-OgilvyInterative Managing Director (Shanghai) I know everything thats wrong with web advertising, and as a software developer, working with distributed systems, I can say... (to quote the great man) "...I have been to the Mountain-top, and I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land." - Simon Edhouse

...and now its 4.00am down under, and I have to hit the sack... G'night fellow travellers. - Simon Edhouse

Simon... if we're talking alternatives to client-server the only one that I can think of is true distributed peer-to-peer. So perhaps a collective of such companies working together under an umbrella would be very effective since we would see many various incarnations of user+investor style companies. Interesting... - Ankush Narula

My only concern there, and its a well researched concern, is about secuity of the core protocol. there's a huge amount that can be 'open' on top, but the base transport protocol, sitting on TCP/IP needs to be super-tight, and solid. best kept as a trade secret, inside an ultimately publicy owned Company, that has rules to prevent corporations ever owning more than 10% of the stock. If its as secure as I am hoping it will be, then we are talking about 'monetized-super-distribution' as well... and that is waaaaay cool. - Simon Edhouse

Update, I contacted Charles Armstrong, CEO of Trampoline last night and he's interested to join and learn more about this. He may be popping in soon. - Jason Cronkhite

Simon... Check out this presentation on wuala's architecture if/when you have time: http://www.wuala.com/en... - Ankush Narula

Dave ---- If I may comment about your original post sorry!), I found the post pretty inspiring. I advise on social media for an agency (no flames, please) and one of the things I talk about is "sensible" and "realistic" ROI. What I mean is very clear: we're not going to use bullshit metrics like "awareness" or "impressions" to measure whether or not our work had an effect on the brand. We're going to use real metrics like foot traffic, sales increase, etc. In other words, we're going to use metrics *everyone understands*. - Michael E. Rubin

Ankush... had a quick look, but immediately I see a big discord with what I've been thinking/planning. i.e. "You can upload any file of any size"... that is a continuation of the situation that has got P2P systems into so much trouble, and stigmatized the technolgy. Its great in one sense, but it invites Piracy, copyright theft etc etc. P2P is THE logical system for the internet, (its where it all began) However, there's a lot of things that you can do with P2P besides the obvious stuff that its really good at (i.e. file sharing). But P2P systems can do so man other things. Look at Skype for instance, totally legal, but, somewhat constrained by its need to support synchronous voice calls... and its dependence on super-nodes for call routing. - There's some other really cool things that distributed computing can do that is 100% legal, infinitely scalable, super-low cost, unable to be subverted and commercially bullet proof. But, I am not going to put all my cards on the table here in this open forum. - Simon Edhouse

Public shell looks like a good alternative, is it too early to bring VRM ideas to the promised land scenario? - Alberto Saavedra

gee, don't get me started on VRM... nice philosophy, but very naive. (uh oh, 4.24am... damn) Bye... - Simon Edhouse

The users owning it - it's the Open Source model! - Marcos Marado from fftogo

We touched on 'GOOG' & 'Business Models' yesterday... my observation about the prevailing status quo paradigm for web-advertising is summarised here: http://friendfeed.com/simoned... - Simon Edhouse

hmmm... ok, if the concept of "Web Advertising" elicits such a nonplussed reaction, reflect on this: Contacts between vendor and buyer, and the drawing of these two parties together via promotion or request, is the basic process that 'Advertising' tries to achieve. However, as Danah Boyd highlighted in her December 2007 blog piece, (Who clicks on ads? And what might this mean?), http://bit.ly/137lUj - she quotes research that concluded that: "Ninety-nine percent of Web users do not click on ads on a monthly basis" ~ Also, even Google consultant Professor Hal Varian has stated: "...Less than 2% of (Google CPC) ads might get clicks and less than 2% of clicks might convert to sales, meaning that 0.04% of clicks might result in sales... The whole ad-ecosystem is badly broken. But, the power to fix this, lies (ultimately) with "we the people", not with Business... but the "people" might need a little help... from people like us. ;) - Simon Edhouse

exactly - The Real sofarsoShawn