Those of you who have read Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom will know what the headline is talking about but for the uninitiated here’s a quick recap:
The world has finally arrived in a postscarcity economy where everyone’s basic needs are met. However, in a world without money, there’s still currency that’s as old as the hills: respect. In this world, everyone knows how much respect someone has by looking through their visual implant and having shown how many muchwhuffieswhuffie (a nonsensical word chosen by Doctorow) a person has. Whuffie is given to a person by their friends in the Bitchun Society for deeds that are both true, just and in the Bitchun way. With enough Internet publicity, you could get whuffies from all over the world. Ok, so I’m not saying you’re going to get a visual implant, but you are going to get whuffies whuffie(much more after the jump)
I’ve loved this concept because it would form the foundation for finally realizing what it is that makes all the donors to all our respective nonprofits tick. People donate because they care, they don’t necessarily want recognition but we all know that there’s a real need to at least be acknowledged somehow. Hence, all our fellow fundraisers in the nonprofit world obsess about Hall of Fame plaques, “donor circles”, etc. Words like “patron”, “benefactor” or “friend” can mean all the difference as to who gets the most respect and who doesn’t. It certainly means who gets to use the VIP lounge at a special event and who doesn’t.
Joe Petviashvili has done a tremendous job of implementing the whuffie idea (combining the use of a Google-like PageRank algorithm and riding on top of the Skype client’s p2p network) so that people can actually give whuffie and even better, ask questions of each other so they earn whuffie simply by answering questions. It’s an intriguing concept. So intriguing that I’ll most certainly field any questions you might have about how this concept can be used for nonprofits. I’ve got a few days head start on this and my brain is reeling from the implications!
Go to www.bitchun.org and check it out! You need to have a Skype client and running Win XP (the Bitchun Society is so far PC-only).
Update: I’ve decided to participate in this project by helping to write the documentation. I think this project beats a lot of social networking apps hands down.
Another update: there’s no plural to whuffies.
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I read this book before I started blogging, and once I became immersed in the blogosphere’s culture, the concept of giving and getting whuffie started making more sense to me. As bloggers, most of us are not monetarily compensated for what we write, but our satisfaction comes when someone recognizes our efforts by linking to our posts. The more links we collect, the more currency we have and the more influence we can project (which, I think, for many of us is the ultimate reason for blogging). The respect of our fellow bloggers and our readers establishes us as industry thought leaders and hopefully leads to paying speaking or consulting gigs.
The Bitchen Society is an interesting application of the whuffie concept, but I wonder whether participants will find the same satisfaction in collecting whuffie when there is no real payoff (i.e., in the book, people could use their whuffie for things like riding the bus or eating at a restaurant). Is whuffie for its own sake enough of an incentive to keep people’s interest over time?
I really think whuffie IS enough of an incentive to keep people’s interest. At least the people who are numerate will like it. I’m actually thinking of doing more things on the Web to make whuffie even more relevant to people’s lives. That’s what it all comes down to…
And to whomever is using a polling application to keep track of the comments thread on this posting, please turn it off. This article has been hit something like 48000 times in the last month by your polling app…
[...] “I’ve loved this concept because it would form the foundation for finally realizing what it is that makes all the donors to all our respective nonprofits tick. People donate because they care, they don’t necessarily want recognition but we all know that there’s a real need to at least be acknowledged somehow. Hence, all our fellow fundraisers in the nonprofit world obsess about Hall of Fame plaques, “donor circles”, etc. Words like “patron”, “benefactor” or “friend” can mean all the difference as to who gets the most respect and who doesn’t. It certainly means who gets to use the VIP lounge at a special event and who doesn’t.”//nptb [...]