users - The New Economy?

I have been so snowed under for the past month I have not had time to think, let alone blog, so here is a quick one that has been bugging me for a few years now.

The digital economy.

Tom Foremski analysed Chris Anderson’s (Editor at Wired) ban on the words "Journalism" And "Media" and his claims of a new economy in a recent interview with Spiegel. Chris Anderson claims many things. Basically Chris Anderson has said that journalism and media are 20th century terms and has banned their use at Wired. Tom reckons that they are just changing, discentralising (more on Tom’s thoughts in my long await interview series, coming to this blog some time soonish…?)

Now I agree with both of them.

Chris Anderson says the price default is zero a free marketplace, a free economy. Tom says that there is no new economy of "free.".

And once again I agree with both of them.

I have been hearing people talking about revenue streams and business models for years now and it seems like no one gets it.

It is about the users. The user is the currency of the digital economy and always has been. We are in the age of information, users have and give information. That is where the value lies. Why are we having such a hard time making that paradigm shift in our perception of value of information in an information age?

The information around the users is the currency and the more you have and the more stickiness you have the better your value proposition.

There is talk abound at the moment about twitter not making any money yet and now being sued for patent infringement. On Slashdot Digital Dan wonders why sue twitter when you should wait till they make money...???

Has everybody lost their marbles? Twitter is the hottest Internet real estate that we have seen for ages!
Gary’s take: That may decrease though as their users stop finding the time to tweet and their true spam account figures and gaming bots become more apparent. Their value will decrease because their number of IRL (in real life) users will decrease and along with them the amount of perceived “real” data (even though the other data is of value as well, just in a different way).

Anyone want to hazard a guess or knows what the current ballpark market value of twitter would be?

It is the users, their data, their eyeballs and the community, that holds billion dollar value. They do not have to make money, in an information revolution, information makes money.

Real products and "real" economy is not going to go away, but if you move you business into this space, well your primary business objective had better be to gain users and keep them. When they start to drain away, so does your value.