A reoccurring discussion amongst friends is about curation. Specifically, can you charge for it, which I think we are all in agreeance that Yes, you can, but also what is the value? What price can you put on curation?
With all the sources of free content online and AI generated slop, we’ve moved from a pay for content model to a pay for curation model. The iTunes store has driven prices down to a $1 and free apps abound subsidized by advertising and promotions. Wikipedia and other sources of “free” information are getting better and better, and faster than their paid-for counter parts. Software is trending that direction too.
Now eBooks reached that point. There is so much content is out there, the price isn’t the issue. It’s findability, and it’s interesting to see if, and how much, people are willing to pay for curation. We hear people bemoan the death of publishing, but good, smart publishers know it isn’t about the shear number of titles they can produce, but rather their curation of content. Amazon can make book recommendations based on sales, but other niche publishers curate their selection. This sounds like a great new idea, but really that is what a librarian has done for thousands of years. We all looked to the magical search engine and AI blackboxes to solve all our (search/finability/summarization/curation) problems, but they can’t.
Serendipity engines were designed to solve the issue of finding similar topics or that really cool random thing everyone will be talking about next week. Some call them mavens—they go by many names. The point is curation! These people aren’t dumping you with everything they know, but rather things you will probably find interesting. Hyper-specialization, personalized for one.
How much are we willing to pay for curation?
The word “pay” is the wrong word, “value” or “worth” might be better. No matter how good your curation will be, the worth is always relative. One great nugget of information might be worth several hours of time saved to me, but it is only an interesting fun fact to someone else. A eureka moment is worth a Nobel Prize to some, but to others wouldn’t know how to use the information and it’s of no value to them.
This is why companies offer Tiered Pricing, Demand-Based Pricing, even Price Discrimination. Different people are willing to pay different amounts depending on the value they receive from the service, immediacy, portability or other attributes. Airlines do this well, if you wait to the last minute to book your flights, you are probably the important businesses type of person who has the extra money to be flexible. Therefore, you pay a premium for booking late. You might also pay a premium to have more leg room or food or extra baggage (or to use the toilet).
We’ve all had great discussions with friends at work, while relaxing, and at parties where they recommended a film or a book. Later you watched or read it and it was a perfect fit. Think back, how much was that worth to you? Is it worth 99 cents to see a great film? Or just being able to continue a conversation and look smart at work with your peers after reading that book or article, what is that worth? And what if that little mention caught the attention of your boss and got you a pay-raise or promotion? Now that tiny tip is worth several thousand dollars — even more over a life-time.
Generally, humans are really bad at assessing value, risk and reward. It gets pretty fuzzy and complicated. We are not designed to think long term. Instead, we go for short term wins thanks in part to our hunter gatherer evolution. What is needed is a way to track and analyze various different interactions and how they are valued between different people.
Now, I’m not advocating quantifying all these conversations as loses or how many times other people have made well from your suggestions, but what if there was a way we in turn could monazite other people’s gains by paying for curation? We help curate their life, sometimes the give and take is very un-even. This is why we are experimenting with a new idea called “discussion receipts”.
Discussion Receipts
An invoice is something you send to get paid for your work. We wanted something similar when curating, but at the same time we didn’t want to feel like pressuring friends into some sort of reciprocal money-bound relationship. Helping a friend should be out of the goodness of your heart, not for financial gain, but we wanted to track it monetarily.
It all reminds us of a joke:
A doctor and a lawyer are out golfing. The doctors says to the lawyer, “You know every time some one finds out I’m a doctor, they have health questions. They are always asking my advice!” The lawyer says, “Yeah, that used to happen to me all the time too.” The doctor looks up and says “Used to. What did you do to stop it?”. The lawyer simply replies, “I’d invoice them every time they asked.” The doctor says, “That’s brilliant, I’m going to start doing that too.” A few days later, the doctor is opening his mail and finds and bill from the lawyer.
Rather than be that guy, always invoicing friends, we wanted a way to track and glean some sort of worth from our discussion without ruining friendships. The ultimate goal is to average out what a discussion is worth, given we know my hourly rate, what a drink costs and what people pay for a psychiatrist, a lawyer, a plumber and a consultant. What is the probability that some chatter could be the next brilliant idea? How much are we willing to pay for that chance?
The odds of winning the Powerball lottery are 1 in 175,223,510. The minimum Powerball bet is $2 and it is drawn twice a week. Now, if you had two brilliant conversation once a week for 100 years, you’d have 10,400 great ideas. Assuming you spent $2 on each lottery ticket or $2 on each discussion receipt, you’d spend around $20,000 in a life-time on a chance at winning big. We know the odds of winning the lottery, now we need to make some internal calculation about any of these great ideas paying off. Just 1 of the 10,400 great ideas needs to make you more than $20,000 for it to be worth while. $20,000 over 40 years of working is about $42 extra a month in your pay-check. $10.50 a week. If this idea gets you noticed, promoted or you can work an extra hour at minimum wage, the discussion receipt was worth the cost.
The current incarnation of the discussion receipt are those notepads you used see waiters and waitresses using. These are ideal because they have a unique number printed on each page, but also have a carbon copy feature so you keep your copy of the notes and your friends can keep their copy too. Now we’d both have a copy of the notes from the discussion.
The way it works is just like any other notepad: scribble down movie recommendations, websites, ideas, sketches or anything else, then before we part, tear off the page and each take our own copies. The extra bit is to ask the recipient to write the worth of this document and sign it.
As a sheet of carbon paper, it is materially worth pennies, but after hours of thought that same paper is now worth a lot more. It is a curated, distilled list of very potent ideas. It isn’t up to us to decide how much it is worth, it is up to the recipient. They can write anything, from a monetary value to ‘dinner’, it doesn’t matter. We’re not literally asking for that worth to be repaid. It’s symbolic. After that, the paper is split into its two copies and we each have our receipt and record of the discussion.
The part that we’re interested in comes much later. At the end of the year, the company has a stack of discussion receipts. It’s both a nice timeline of that year’s ideas and chats, all sequentially noted, but sums up the worth that we’ve donated to help curate, gives us an average discussion worth and other metrics.
Could these receipts actually be worth anything? Maybe. We’re not an accountant. Is it possible to get a small bit off the tax return with these receipts of donated time since they do have a monetary worth? We’ve heard of painters paying for bills (even to the tax office) with works of art. The tricky thing will be to have the discussion recipe appraised. The tax office wouldn’t agree to some crazy amount written on the receipt even if someone had a life-changing thought because of it.
For now, we’ll leave the payback as optional.