[iDC] MySpace staff cuts

Wed Jun 24 16:08:31 UTC 2009

I¹ve not been following this thread really so not sure if it has been
mentioned, but the Apple App Store is possibly an example of a context where
at least a small percentage of active ³workers² are able to get a financial
return on the value of their labour. Two things though. Firstly, most iPhone
Apps make little or no money. Secondly, the model employed here is, at least
in the case of sole author¹s of applications (or small collective teams),
that of the worker as producer and owner of the product. They are both the
labour and the capital. The author, worker and IP owner are all the same
person. That is why I placed the term worker in quotes. Apple then takes a
cut as a dealer. They do not own the IP.

I am not seeking to promote this model. There is still plenty about it that
is questionable. But to some degree it does borrow some interesting elements
from collectivism and sole/small-trader and author model. Ultimately though
the creators of App Store product are free to organise themselves as they
wish  they can choose this apporach, or that which is more common in the
corporate world. I doubt that presents Apple as a value free portal
though...

Regards

Simon

Simon Biggs
Research Professor
edinburgh college of art
s.biggs at eca.ac.uk
www.eca.ac.uk
www.eca.ac.uk/circle/

simon at littlepig.org.uk
www.littlepig.org.uk
AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk

From: Jean Burgess <jean at creativitymachine.net>
Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:33:25 +1000
To: Sean Cubitt <scubitt at unimelb.edu.au>
Cc: "idc at mailman.thing.net" <idc at mailman.thing.net>
Subject: Re: [iDC] MySpace staff cuts

Sean, thanks for this concrete example. It points us to something I find
very interesting.  

On the one hand, you have the massive unpaid workforce of people who through
their various activities co-create the value (however defined) of platforms
for user-created content. On the other, you have the profound inability of
most of these platform providers to make any real money out of that activity
- once you factor in bandwidth costs, and at least thus far.

YouTube is a particularly sharp example of this -where UGC is both the
driver of YouTube's growth and a ruinous waste of bandwidth because nobody
wants to run their ads alongside it: it's unpredictable in content and not
clearly enough located in any particular national (that is, US) market.

For platform providers like YouTube Inc, the "users" who provide content
(and who have to a very significant extent built the thing we call YouTube)
are, I suspect, seen as mere placeholders (one day, the "real", monetisable
content will replace all those pointless skateboarding cat videos). The
trouble is, YouTube now has a culture of its own: and its "attention
economy" is in practical terms incompatible with commercial media logics.

I really do think this is a weird situation.

Cheers
Jean    

On 24/06/2009, at 2:17 PM, Sean Cubitt <scubitt at unimelb.edu.au> wrote:

> What¹s so fascinating is just how small the workforce behind a global player
> can be; pointing toards the economic scale of content production by users
> 
> Extracted from a longer piece at
> http://www.theage.com.au/technology/biz-tech/myspace-cuts-twothirds-of-global-
> workforce-20090624-cvw1.html
> <http://www.theage.com.au/technology/biz-tech/myspace-cuts-twothirds-of-global
> -workforce-20090624-cvw1.html>
> 
> June 24, 2009 - 10:15AM
> Social networking site MySpace plans to cut 300 jobs, or two-thirds of its
> overseas work force, in an effort to rein in costs and focus on countries
> where it has many users and better business opportunities.
> 
> The move comes a week after the News Corp. unit said it would cut 420 jobs in
> the U.S., or nearly 30 per cent of its domestic work force. Combined, the cuts
> will reduce MySpace's employee base by nearly 40 per cent to about 1,150.
> 
> "Our goal to tap into as many international markets as possible drove us to
> create too many offices around the globe, and with them came inefficiencies,"
> chief executive Owen Van Natta, a former executive at rival Facebook, said in
> a memo sent to employees.
> 
> Regards
> 
> sean 
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