The internet is the apotheosis of non-altruism…

It’s great, isn’t it, Twitter? It’s such a useful little thing… you can while away many an hour… chatting, networking, dropping the odd link in, making friends, sharing information, being funny, socialising, mini blogging…so many things you can do with this little gem of an application… and, interestingly, there’s no agenda, seemingly. One of the first things I noticed, for example, there is no advertising. Well, no advertising to speak of, that is, apart from a little sidebar of featured ‘Twitterers’.

So, what is the point of providing this service, I mean, to the kindly, homely folks who provide it. Is it simple altruism? Did they go to all this trouble, just to give you and I an enhanced Internet experience? I’d love to believe that. The trouble is, I can’t. You see, nobody writes and maintains so much code and devotes so much server space and bandwidth to the public, not to mention support and little widgets, without an agenda of some sort. All of that requires parting with money, and as every accountant knows, when an organisation invests money, two magic words are never very far from the minds of the budget provider…two little words, as harmless and innocent as two little words can be, until they are put together, one in front of the other. Those words are, pay, and back…. Payback. 

Now, nothing wrong with that. It’s reasonable to expect a return on investment, for any businessman, er, or business woman, and I don’t demur from that. Not at all. When I made my record, ‘FairyTale’, with my band, InZaneCountry, it cost me money, and I sometimes dream, fondly, if wistfully, of being paid back, one fine day. No, I’m not hypocritical about business finance. I don’t expect, and, certainly, wouldn’t get, a return without some sort of investment. I’m a little altruistic, my project carries added value, additional benefits for my customers, beyond the price of a CD, download or ticket for a show, but I’m not entirely altruistic, and it would be unreasonable for me to expect total altruism from anyone else. 

It’s an interesting approach, though, Twitter, to non-altruism. Twitter has no obvious non-altruistic characteristics, that is to say, it looks, for all the world, as though it is completely devoid of selfish motive, the hallmark of which, in Twitters case, is that it carries no obvious advertising. It looks as altruistic as they come. Twitter does not go so far as to say it is altruistic, so, in that sense, Twitter is no more hypocritical than me, and that, for me, is very much a point in it’s favour. Twitter does, nonetheless, have a non-altruistic reason detre…it is there, more for it’s own motives, than for any of ours, however beneficial we might find it.

Now, I’m no expert on Internet business models, I don’t read or study that stuff much, I simply draw my own conclusions. I like to think about these things, though, because, well, er, they are interesting. Twitter is, as I’ve said, a very attractive little piece of net candy. It’s fun, it’s useful to folks like you and me, and when it works well, you can while away many an hour. I often do, matter of fact; I enjoy it. Twitter is so attractive, actually, because it has to be… Twitter is, quite literally, a lure. Twitter is designed to pull you in, just like an attractive fly pulls a fish from the water, into the keep net of an experienced Angler. Twitter is designed to do this, to support a series of ‘behind the scenes’ revenue streams. It’s amazing how many external applications that people seem to enjoy using are suddenly manifest on Twitter. One of the reasons I enjoy Twitter so much, is that I can watch people being drawn in, landed to the Anglers keep net, every day….

It’s ingenious, Twitter. I admire the cleverness of it, I enjoy the application. I am a fan of Twitter, but, I am aware, as I would like you to be, that it is no more an altruistic Internet offering than any other business website might be.. True altruism is as rare as hen’s teeth, as they say, on the Internet, and everyone who uses the world wide web should be aware of that.