Now, here’s a great twist on the web sharecropping model: Get people to contribute valuable information to your business, and then pay them with fake money. That’s what Amazon’s been doing with its Q&A site, Askville. When you successfully answer people’s questions on the site, Amazon rewards you with “Quest Gold,” a virtual currency that, as GigaOm reports, you’ll be able to use later this year in Amazon’s new online role-playing game, Questville:
With Askville, users who provide helpful answers are given virtual gold as they rise in status (called “levels”) — two metrics familiar to anyone who’s ever played massively multiplayer online role-playing games like World of Warcraft. Questville will take this to its logical conclusion, offering adventures and Quest Coins to helpful Askville users. With a game like WoW, you become more powerful by killing monsters and completing fantastic tasks; with Questville, you’ll get virtual rewards for providing helpful real-world information … Indeed, if Questville is successful, it could prompt other Internet companies to add MMO-style features to their own systems.
It’s like buying Manhattan with beads. Call it the Trinket Economy.
But this leaves me in a bit of a quandary. In July of 2006, I entered into a quasi-wager with Yochai “Wealth of Networks” Benkler about the ultimate economic structure of the most popular social media sites. I predicted that the dominant sites would pay for their content – that they would, in Benkler’s terms, be “price-incentivized systems.” Benkler predicted that the sites would be pure “peer-production processes” existing outside “the price system.”
So what happens if people get paid with virtual gold: Is that price-incentivized or not? I would argue that it is. If you’re working for gold, whether real or fake, you’re putting a price on your labor. I mean, if you take beads in trade for something of value, then the beads are money, right? But of course I’m biased, being a participant in the wager. Maybe Benkler would argue that fake gold is more like a token of esteem or a gift of the heart than like a wage.
One thing’s for sure, anyway: If you can pay your workers with virtual money, you’ve got a helluva labor strategy.
That’s another impressive move from Amazon. Their webservice initiative is spot-on and this one reassures that it’s a company to watch closely.
I would argue for your side…The US dollar is itself a trust note.
how is amazon’s currency any different?
well, in one important way: the amount of trust we we might place in the currency.
Trust is not something you get for free. It needs to be earned and maintained. There are costs associated with earning and maintaining trust. are these costs being incorporated into their model?
although it may seem that amazon is getting a good deal here, give it some time. they are dealing with lots of uncertainty. the true cost of their trust economy may end up being more expensive than a traditional economic note like the US dollar.
I think it comes down to whether or not a real-world market develops for Amazon gold. Those playing World of Warcraft and auctioning off their characters for dollars or yen are helping your side of the wager; those playing for reputation or fun or boredom are helping Benkler.
You answer sixteen questions, what do you get?
Nick Carr needs to know to settle a bet
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I need to buy some leet lewt in Amazon’s MMO
If it was a tradeable resource that could be used in a number of MMOs then it’s currency (and, dare I say, that’s not a bad idea). But if it’s just Amazon’s MMO then it’s a company store voucher, and we all know how ethical and open to manipulation those are, even if there is a secondary market in real money.
if only I could pay consultants in virtual dollars…
You win the bet, but you collect your winnings in virtual money.
Yep. I’ll be living large in Questville.
I played Askville avidly for a few weeks because it was fun. I stored up some points and it will be cool if they eventually buy me something, if nothing else, a discount on an Amazon book or whatever.
Here’s what’s wrong with Askville, which is what is wrong with many social media/virtual world things: the hangovers of MMORPG culture.
First, there is the small group of coders of the platform itself, and their fiercely loyal fans, who may or may not be coders, who brook absolutely no dissent about the platform itself — but hey, it’s in beta, folks, why can’t we *criticize its non-user friendly aspects?*.
In fact, the game-gods there seem more willing to take suggestions and change features than the fanbase, who often become very attached to their particular iteration — as always happens with games.
You can ask questions about why Askville is the way it is, or criticize aspects of the Askville interface that you find clunky and counterintuitive, but then you’ll be descended upon by a phalanx of fierce fans who will peck you to death. The game company itself seems above that, and don’t try to ban you, but they have enough language about banning, and enough indication that if “the community” (the lifers with the time to file reports) keeps finding someone “negative,” they will ban you.
So you can have a perfectly valid point, that many people in fact secretly fan you for (there is a way to fan somebody anonymously and that shows up as a point in the game too), but those few Answer Mavens can sort of put the curse on you.
Each category has such Mavens, not surprisingly, who are like the Grand Wizards of the game as in any MMORPG. These people sometimes actually know something; more often than not, it’s just sheer persistence in levelling up — time=points, attention=points, time/attention = walla, instant expert.
So God forbid, if you have a *different* point of view about how to, say, breastfeed a colicky baby, in the women’s health section, eek, you could find yourself gamed down — people will not give you points and put bad mojo feedback on you merely because you challenged the popular Maven.
As I played it for some weeks, I saw all the chimes rung on every single MMORPG-like forums/fanboyz/game-god situation I’ve ever been in, with all the predictable consequences.
So Askville can only be free if amazon develops a spine against that sort of takeover by little cadres, and also itself keeps an open mind about criticism of its platform. Quality is supposed to float to the top in these big social media platforms, but…attention/time floats to the top, not quality.
I look forward to going back to play it when I have the time, but unlike Second Life, where you can make real money, or Twitter, where you can engage very freely in exchanges of ideas without game-gods interfering, and unlike some blogs (this one!) with good discussions, Askville hadn’t risen to that level when I last saw it.
I think it’s odd that you can’t see other people’s answers if you want to answer. So answering is like a test? They don’t want us to cheat?
http://helpGlobe.com