Hybrids

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Hybrids

A "hybrid" is a commercial entity that tries to leverage a community, or a bit of the sharing economy, to add value to the corporation. Eric von Hippel is perhaps the best known academic describing this practice generally. As applied to the network, Yochai Benkler's work is best.

Hybrid Examples:

• YouTube
  • plainly commercial, but a significant portion of its value comes from community contributed work, from the selection of "other peoples' content" to post, to the creation of videos to post
• Wikia
  • Though Wikia, Inc. is a commercial venture, the people creating the content and building the communities are not doing it for commercial reasons. Like Wikipedia, the editors are all volunteers.
• Klir
  • Klir operates a commercial site, but the RO/RW taxonomy mentioned in this Lessig Blog entry doesn't quite fit. With Klir's solution, you monitor devices in your own datacenter, which is read-only, but you can create reports and dashboards to share with the community, which is RW.
• OKCupid
  • OKCupid is a dating site supported by advertisements and some donations. The site's matching algorithm is based on members' answers to questions, almost all user-submitted. Another draw for the site (even for those not seeking romance) are "personality" tests, which any user can create. As a result, the site feels more like a bazaar than a meat market.

• • MTV Real World, Survivor and so-called "reality TV" shows in general.
  • Talk Shows.
  • The Olympics, college football and other so-called amateur sports events whose organizers charge admission and/or broadcast fees and/or dues to players/contestants to participate or for uniforms and/or equipment.
  • Musical and other productions performed by students or workshop participants, which earn the organizers ticket revenue while advertising their teaching and administrative services
  • Jeopardy and other TV game shows
  • Representing others in Congress, as mayor or as Alabama's contestant for Miss USA.
  • Community newspapers or newsletters that don't pay for writing but charge for advertising or to read. (Note "community" seems to be a kind of a code word suggesting hybrid economics, as in "community theater")
  • The Marines (not "an adventure" precisely, but "not just a job" either)
  • The Peace Corps
  • Public-school teaching (If not, why not? Maybe every such occupation, in which people engage to a degree "out of love" or "for the thrill" and which the job market pays less on average as a result, ought to be categorized as "hybrid" at least in part or to that degree. If there's extra pride to wearing a white collar instead of a blue one, maybe this is true for occupations generally, whether or not we tend to associate romantic motives to the people who take them.)