The Blog Cooperative

Blog Cooperatives are businesses jointly owned and operated by their members. BlogCoops are for-profit ventures that embrace emergent democracy as a means for governance and decision-making.

The purpose of this site is to generate discussion. In the entries below, I have posted my ideas, opinions, and questions about what a Blog Cooperative might look like, and how it might operate. Please join in the discussion. It is very likely that the resulting discussion will change many of my opinions below, and hopefully it will help answer many of the questions as well.

Wow, now this is really interesting. How would this work differently for, say, a retail operation versus a services-oriented network (say, a distributed network of translation services, like ProZ.com)? Would the blogs remain open to comments from the market (the users of the products or services)? That is, would emergent democracy extend across the boundary of the client-supplier relationship, as in the case of that most classic of examples, the cooperative market (where clients are also volunteer workers)? How would an e-commerce "blog" differ from an e-commerce site with community features (like Barnes&Noble's bn.com, say, which organizes courses and reading groups)? What kinds of business models would a "blog" of this kind — frequently updated information — best support? What would adopting one of the hybrid forms out there — blog-wiki, blog-forum, and so on — do to this model you are contemplating?

Can't wait to see what develops from this! Best of luck.

I'm really glad to see this sort of discussion starting. I have been considering how an organization of this kind could utilize P2P networks to create new content rather than just distribute copyrighted material. The organization I have in mind is a for-profit venture that consists of groups that are based around specific projects or production techniques.

I originally hoped that a creative collaboration area would encourage musicians, writers and video directors to abandon the traditional models of the lone creative or creative duo in favor of collective creative methods. I'm no longer sure that one is viable. I'm looking forward to exploring these ideas and those presented by others here. This is a great start, don't give up if it takes some time for people to get involved.

thanks.

You have absolutely managed to intrigue me. I'll be reading the rest of the ideas and joining in the conversation.

I've skimmed through the ideas so far and it is interesting. I'll keep watching out for this.

Interesting concept, but is it really blogs that form a co-op, or do people who have a business concept form a co-op and then either use blogs or not, depending on the business? In other words, why must blogs be central to the discussion, other than as a metaphor for working together?

Happy Tutor, you are right. Blogs don't have to be central to the discussion at all.

Blog Cooperatives could be businesses comprised on any group of online individuals. Blogs might be a part of the way the business operates, but they don't have to be.

In retrospective, perhaps using the term "blog cooperative" was not be best choice. I chose it because I think that bloggers have a great understanding of the power of social software tools. As group, I think bloggers are ready to embrace an emergent business model like this.

Aha! Only 258 hits for the term "e-commerce blog" so far in Google. That heavy silence? Thousands of frantically developing bloggers holding their breaths!

The co-operative business model, which in reality has been around for about 160 years now - so is not really emergent in the sense of being new, but could be considered emergent in that not many new businesses choose it as their structure - is highly developed, and very well suited to online business, open source approaches, etc.

Check the website of the organisation I work for in the UK (http://www.cooperatives-uk.coop), in the US (http://www.ncba.coop) and also the global cooperative organisation, the ICA (http://www.ica.coop), although their site needs a major overhaul.

And yes, if you havent already noticed, the global cooperative movement, which is in fact pretty big, employing an estimated 100 million people around the world, has its own top level domain - .coop - which is the most successful of the newish sponsored top level domains.

Regards
Graham

When we created Rowan Global Cooperative we were thinking about groups of women in Peru and Africa to help them market their products. We now are finding other social groups wanting to use our site, we will be putting on food products, timber frames, shea butter etc. What is interesting is this is really going to be a Coop because the people who supply the products are also groups formed like coop's. I am not sure what formula we are following, but I do know the world is now interested in participating in such a marketing approach. Now as you indicated how can the world buyer know about the movement. Only time will tell and because of our new site, we are entered in page 20 or so on the engines which can drive the e-commerce movement. A month from now, I will be giving you a report how we are doing. If we sell 3000 pairs of socks, yes, the movement has taken hold, if we sell 10 socks, we are ahead of our time. Don Rowan