Produsage and Beyond: Exploring the Pro-Am Interface

Produsage and Beyond: Exploring the Pro-Am Interface Dr Axel Bruns Associate Professor ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation Queensland University of Technology [email_address] http://snurb.info/ – @snurb_dot_info

User-Generated Content
Widespread trend in media practice:
social media, social networking
Web 2.0 technologies
new, collaborative forms of content creation
across many interests and practices
Has Toffler’s ‘prosumer’ arrived?
“ The word is a combination of producer and consumer that perfectly describes the millions of participants in the Web 2.0 revolution.” ( Techcrunch , 2007)
(Image: http://flickr.com/photos/stabilo-boss/93136022/)

The Professional Consumer?
What do we mean by ‘prosumer’?
On-demand production initiated by consumers?
On-demand production of customer-submitted / modified designs?
Involvement of customers in design processes?
Or simply conventional high-end consumers? E.g.
Hi-fi fanatics
Car enthusiasts
Computer nerds
Individual ‘lead users’ (as described by von Hippel)
Prosumers remain dependent on industry production
Is that all there is?

(Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/schwenke/3022767703/)

(Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/topherous/93506030/)

Toffler’s Prosumer
Dreams of a “ customer-activated manufacturing system”:
In the end, the consumer, not merely providing the specs but punching the button that sets this entire process in action, will become as much a part of the production process as the denim-clad assembly-line worker was in the world now dying. ( The Third Wave , 1980: 274)
Producer and consumer, divorced by the industrial revolution, are reunited in the cycle of wealth creation, with the customer contributing not just the money but market and design information vital for the production process. Buyer and supplier share data, information, and knowledge. Someday, customers may also push buttons that activate remote production processes. Consumer and producer fuse into a “ prosumer.” ( Powershift , 1990: 239)

(http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/projects/history_flow/capitalism1.htm)

Decline of the traditional value chain:
producer  distributor  consumer
(producer advised by consumer  distributor  consumer)
(customer-made ideas  producer  distributor  consumer)
‘ Prosumption’ not enough: more than just ‘professional consumers’
Beyond Production prosumption

(http://labs.digg.com/stack)

Toward Produsage
(as producer)
produser
(as user)
 produsage (gradual, continuous, incremental, iterative, never complete, …)
content content

Key Principles
Shared across collaborative social media environments:
Open Participation, Communal Evaluation: the community as a whole, if sufficiently large and varied, can contribute more than a closed team of producers, however qualified
Fluid Heterarchy, Ad Hoc Meritocracy: produsers participate as is appropriate to their personal skills, interests, and knowledges; this changes as the produsage project proceeds
Unfinished Artefacts, Continuing Process: content artefacts in produsage projects are continually under development, and therefore always unfinished; their development follows evolutionary, iterative, palimpsestic paths
Common Property, Individual Merit: contributors permit (non-commercial) community use of their intellectual property, and are rewarded by the status capital

Pro-Am Frameworks for Produsage?
Commercial opportunities:
User-led innovation
Crowdsourcing
Viral marketing
Boost to brand recognition
Improved brand perception
New markets
New business models
Commercial threats:
Loss of control
Community backlash
Transparency tyranny

Success in the Share Economy
Engaging with produsage communities:
Be open.
For users (access) and with users (transparency).
Seed community processes by providing content and tools.
Model desired behaviour, assist productive participation.
Support community dynamics and devolve responsibilities.
Engage promising community leaders as they emerge.
Don’t exploit the community and its work.
Making money is fine, but you don’t own your users.
Adapted from Axel Bruns and Mark Bahnisch. " Social Drivers behind Growing Consumer Participation in User-Led Content Generation: Volume 1 - State of the Art. " Sydney: Smart Services CRC, 2009.

1. Be Open
Access:
Allow broad participation
Don’t build artificial barriers
Enable community to highlight quality / sanction disruptions
Transparency:
Be honest about your aims
Involve the community in your planning
Discuss proposed changes
(Be Wikipedia , not Facebook .)
(http://www.canada.com/technology/Facebook+vows+improvements+after+user+backlash/1426664/story.html)

2. Seed Community Processes
Content:
Produsage builds on initial inputs
E.g. Linus Torvald’s first Linux kernel, Wikipedia ’s first articles, …
These set the further trajectory
Ensure that you have great staff creating this content (and acting as role models)
Tools:
Available tools determine the solution horizon
User toolkits must be simple and powerful (cf. Eric von Hippel, Democratizing Innovation )
Track and incorporate user needs and wants
Prepare for unexpected demands

3. Support Community Dynamics
Community dynamics:
Gradual definition of rules and values
Ongoing process of mutual evaluation
Emergence of community structures
Support, don’t stifle – aim for self-regulation
Plan to devolve management responsibility
Community leaders:
‘ Benevolent dictators’? ‘Micro-celebrities’?
Dependent on continued community support
Partners in innovation processes
Involve, engage (employ?)
But don’t turn into ‘community managers’

4. Don’t Exploit the Community
Content ownership:
Intellectual property is dead
Sharing can be profitable
Enable content spreadability
Anticipate user-led content distribution
User lock-in:
‘ Hijacking the hive’ is lucrative at first, …
… but will seriously damage your brand.
Support content and service mash-ups
Prepare to lose some control over your brand
Anticipate the new opportunities this creates

Pro-Am Produsage Research Opportunities
Questions:
When are participating institutions perceived as ethical and trustworthy?
cf. problems with comment functions in mainstream news media
cf. Government 2.0 developments – g4c2c model?
cf. David Bello on problems with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk
How do the internal dynamics of social media communities work?
cf. Leesa Costello and Lelia Green on the HeartNET community
cf. ACID and CCi research on ABC’s Pool.org.au
Large-scale social media dynamics tracking
What technological / social / economic configurations facilitate pro-am models?
cf. John Banks on Trainz , Spore , and other gamer communities
OhmyNews , myHeimat , and other pro-am citizen journalism projects
non-profit and for-profit models for pro-am produsage projects

Pro-Am Produsage Models seed content and toolkits provided by commercial operators crowdsourcing of inputs to R&D and innovation processes commercial services to support produsage commercial activities by users themselves, harnessing the hive (and promoting the brand) professional staff, kick-starting community processes user-led content development by produsage communities (supported by commercial operators) valuable, often commercial-grade content is created Produsage Environment (open to all comers)

Viral Marketing
Axel Bruns
Associate Professor
ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
Creative Industries Faculty
Queensland University of Technology
Project Leader for Social Media (Horizon 1 – 2008)
Smart Services Cooperative Research Centre
Email: [email_address]
Blog: http :// snurb.info/
Twitter: @snurb_dot_info
Produsage: http :// produsage.org/
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/snurb
Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond:From Production to Produsage (Peter Lang, 2008)

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Produsage and Beyond: Exploring the Pro-Am Interface

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