Are Social Networking Sites a new form of Sharecropping?

[mandy]

Social networking Web sites such as MySpace and Facebook provide a means for people to share their lives with others, but are these sites turning their subscribers' free content into economic gain -- a new form of sharecropping?...

"MySpace, Facebook, and many other businesses have realized that they can give away the tools of production but maintain ownership over the resulting products. One of the fundamental economic characteristics of Web 2.0 is the distribution of production into the hands of the many and the concentration of the economic rewards into the hands of the few.

"It's a sharecropping system, but the sharecroppers are generally happy because their interest lies in self-expression or socializing, not in making money, and, besides, the economic value of each of their individual contributions is trivial. It's only by aggregating those contributions on a massive scale -- on a Web scale -- that the business becomes lucrative...

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/PVNBDABL...ping.xhtml