Recently I’ve been exchanging emails with someone who wants to participate in this project. It followed a similar path as most conversations regarding the domain “whatsgood.com.”
The usual conversation goes something like this:
person: I want your domain. How much?
me: I’m sorry, it’s not really for sale.
person: No, really, how much do you want for it?
me: No, really, it’s not.
person: Everything’s for sale.
me: No, not everything, but if you insist, then let’s make it the price of four years at a world class university.
person: WHAT?!?!?! You’re crazy! It’s not worth that!
me: I know that, and that’ why I told you it’s not for sale.
The conversation with this young man went a little differently. He wanted to join the team and had ideas he wanted us to implement. They were some good ideas, but nothing groundbreaking. Unfortunately, the ideas focused on increasing traffic through appealing to consumers, not community. Then using the increased traffic to bring in national advertisers.
Consumer vs community is a wall we keep hitting. People want the domain or want the website to focus on consumers. That’s not what we’re about. This is a project, not a business. This is about community, not consumers. We aren’t about the commoditization of information or individuals. Eventually, if things go well, we’ll need “advertising”, but we’ll call it sponsorship, and we’ll try to get local businesses on board. We are focusing on local events, why not bring in local businesses to support it?
No matter what someone tells you, the world is not for sale. There is much more to life than making a buck and boosting the bottom line.
This post brought to you by me reading “Economics Is Not Natural Science” by Douglas Rushkoff.
