Web Philanthropy

The web is an amazing place. There is so much information, functionality and entertainment that is free. Now some of this is free because it is just another channel for large companies to get the message out to users, others is another source of advertising revenue whilst still more is there just to commercially compete with the Jones’ who are doing the same (whether it be competing for brand awareness or just exposure - think viral videos from Coke, or Dancing Elves from Officemax).

However in the big scheme that is the internet the above Corporate controlled content is a tiny fraction of what is available online from individuals that are doing it for no commercial gain at all.

I like to think of this portion of value added internet content as “Web Philanthropy“.

Whether it be someone who spends their evenings editing and updating wikipedia entries on Bavarian Sausage making, students who spend their time participating in coding Open Source operating systems, or people who spend their weekends building small and only slightly useful web apps - they are all giving to the world with their time, energy, creativity and knowledge. Most of them don’t see what they do as needing a business model. Their return on investment is the knowledge that somewhere someone will benefit from what they have done and their lives will be better.

I’ve been motivated to write this post, by comments and feedback that I’ve received over the last few weeks for usernamecheck.com. I built it for no other reason that I thought it would be slightly useful and maybe people would like it. I have no business model, no RIO, no exit strategy. For a while I had Google ads on it (until they for no reason dumped me), but that was to offset the hosting costs since my web philanthropy had gone from just my time, to a financial burden. It’s been bemusing to me to see the volume of people who assumed I was doing this to make my next million, I guess these days it’s a very blurry line between an application that has been made for fun to just help people and one that gets 10’s of millions of dollars in investment - both of them might have no business model or idea on how to monetize their efforts.