Fred Wilson @HackingSociety
Summary: do networks, Tumblr, Twitter, Craigslist have to maintain minimum economics to create long term sustainability:
Fred Wilson: Brett, I want to talking about the economics of networks and one of the things I have observed over the years and I don’t know if it’s correct or not but I want to throw out just to discuss a little bit regarding economics is that the sustainable networks on the Internet are networks that don’t try to maximize their economics. And that they actually try to minimize their economics. And that sustainable potentially are at odds with the entire notion of capitalism which is about maximizing economics.
I’m curious if people have observed that and whether that’s a crock of whatever or actually something to think about. of Craig’s [xx]. Excuse me? Craig is the…yes. Craig is an example of a network that didn’t try to maximize itself. Right. But has some economics in it, right? that’s the interesting thing about it.
Because we were talking about Wikipedia before and I think Clay said that Wikipedia has struggled to sustain itself. and that it’s economics are so thin that may not be sustainable whereas that in Craigslist, I mean I am not familiar with the economics, but it appears to be sustainable economically but not maximized economically.
