Momeant

Around the globe, we continue to define ourselves by work, when it seems clear now that technology continues to reduce the demand for labor. How will we define ourselves in the future? We think a sign of an advancing economy is the ascribing of value to cultural and knowledge products, the things that lead to innovation, creativity, and growth. We want to put those at the center of a powerful but voluntary new creative economy on the Web.

[momeant]

The secret to success for online creators

Hi there! I’m David Browning, co-founder of Momeant. This is the third of three posts from the founders describing our motivations for building Momeant and why we think this project is so important.

The Internet has opened doors to amazing communication and engagement across the globe, but not everyone has embraced it. We've all heard a lot of concerns from the creative industries about "piracy" and the growing struggle to sell digital content online without it being "stolen" or "shared". But maybe these industries are approaching their audiences in the wrong way.

Although many struggle, we have seen some clear examples of artists having amazing success online. So what are they doing differently?

Let's look at Trent Reznor, the famous leader of the band Nine Inch Nails. Trent built an in-depth website that allows him to communicate with his fans and, maybe more importantly, his fans to communicate with each other. He also created a way to get closer to his fans instead of wedging a publisher in between them. Instead of restricting his digital content with DRM, he posts all of his new music for free right on the site for all to download. He treats his audience like supporters instead of "pirates", and they love him for it. When he does sell physical versions of the same content he gives away for free, his fans are more than happy to support him and his sales numbers are incredible.

So what's his secret to success? Well, here are the pieces we think are critical to Trent's approach:

He gives free access to his digital content instead of competing with file sharing and worrying about piracy.

He engages with his supporters and reminds them that he is a human being, not just a business entity.

He provides a way for his fans to build relationships with each other based on their common interest.

As digital creators, we have to learn to embrace the Internet as an amazing platform for support. And even though Internet users have come to expect digital content to be free, if we engage with them on a personal level and build lasting relationships around our common interests, the financial support will follow. Because we all know that everyone has to make a living, and we're happy to support the people producing the work we love.

So if it's so successful, why haven’t more online creators used this method? Well, not everyone has the money or the technical expertise to create an in-depth site like Trent Reznor did. But fear not! This is why we've created Momeant. We want to provide digital creators the platform they need to engage with their audiences in a new and exciting way, leading to a better creative economy for everyone.

We hope you join us.

- Posted by David

[momeant]

How the Creative Class could power a new economy

Hey all! I'm Zack Cleary, co-founder of Momeant. This is the second of three posts from the founders describing our motivations for building Momeant and why we think this project is so important.

Just as the majority of baby boomers never worked on a farm, chances are that you never have, and never will, build a car on an assembly line in a factory. However, the all-too-familiar rhetoric that we don't make things anymore, or that we aren't as productive as we've been in past generations is simply not true. Instead, the problem is that we often fail to recognize the valuable things we do make, and fail to reward the people who work hard making them. This creates an unsustainable dynamic. And it has to change.

We are a generation of makers and doers. The majority of us are constantly making things and constantly producing and sharing value. Many of us share that work online. If we don't do it ourselves, we certainly know people that write blogs and articles, make videos, take photos, etc. We know educators, thinkers, inventors and problem solvers working to find and share new knowledge. We know artists, journalists, editors, movie makers, musicians, photographers, designers, and web developers who make all the content that entertains, informs, and inspires us on a daily basis. This is real productivity. These people are making the goods that we all want to consume. They are producing the necessary products that power our modern society. In aggregate, these people make up a new Creative Class, and if recognized and rewarded for their work, they will power a new Creative Economy. That would be good for all of us.

Momeant is an effort to build this new Creative Economy, that enables the modern makers and doers who share their work online to support themselves. We believe that in three very fundamental ways this economy must work differently than traditional economies that exchange physical goods. 

There must be a different model for the exchange of value. Specifically, we don't believe that people should pay ahead of time in order to have access to content. Let's be real, we all expect to get content for free online. Instead, we think it's necessary for all content to remain free and for consumers to voluntarily support the creators whose work they find valuable after they've had access to that creators' content. This turns a traditional consumer, into a supporter.

The reward (our version of a payment), does not signify the end of a relationship between two parties, but instead it serves as the basis upon which an ongoing relationship can be built between a creator and their supporters (their audience). What is exchanged in that relationship is for the creator and the supporters to discover together. It might be great conversations and new ideas. It might be a simple thank you. It might be special access to upcoming events. It might be physical goods, or personalized digital goods like a picture or a poem, or a note. It might just be simple updates and musings from the creator. Every relationship is different. 

Your support says something meaningful about you. It is a declaration of what matters to you, what work you support and what efforts you want to contribute to. It is a way to associate yourself with the things that you find valuable and important and to display that statement to the rest of the world. Every reward is a clear suggestion that you want to see more work along the same lines, and that you want to encourage that creator to continue making/doing more.

In the posts to come we will discuss a lot more about Momeant. We'll explain more about the product and the experience building it, but we are more interested in using some of this space to delve more deeply into discussions about the fundamental economic/technological/social problems that we are interested in exploring, and are passionately working hard to change.

Creators are an essential workforce in our modern economy. Cultural products are the products of our time. We need a new model of exchange that supports us and the productive work that we do. We don't need to keep trying to fit ourselves into an economy that no longer creates opportunities and wealth for us. Keep checking back on this blog for more, and certainly join Momeant and start participating in the new Creative Economy.

-posted by Zack

[momeant]

Building a new creative economy on the Web, with voluntary rewards.

Hi! I'm Amit Lubling, co-founder of Momeant. This is the first of three posts from our founders introducing our new company. In this post, I’d like to introduce you to our mission, and tell you why this project really matters to us.

In a recent article in the Atlantic, Derek Thompson talks about the implications of a new deal between Square and Starbucks. In the comments section, an incisive reader makes the following point:

circa 1830 Mr. John Deere- You're missing the one thing and this is the most important aspect: 70% of our workers work on farms.  Your invention of the cast steel plow will make most of those workers unnecessary.  The implications of this for our employment numbers is enormous.  Why, in 100 years, 80% of farmers could lose their jobs! What do we plan to do with all of those people!?

Thompson's response was:

"We are rapidly approaching a world in which checkout employees will no longer be necessary. Good point!”

I should note that in the example above, what happened to those farm workers is that the New Deal turned some of them into infrastructure workers, and then WWII turned most of them into soldiers and manufacturing industry workers. Now they are mostly in the Services industry, the question is, what's next? - and there is reason to believe that there is no easy answer, like "Software!"

Almost exactly one year ago, in a one hour interview on edge.org, Internet guru Jaron Lanier, followed by media theorist Douglas Rushkoff in a CNN piece titled followed "are jobs obsolete?", both made the following point. Lanier used the example of Google's driverless cars experiment. In essence, he said that while we don't know when, in 1 year, 5 years, or 20, we are confident that at some point driverless cars will become standardized. While people may still want the freedom to drive on their own, driving for commercial purposes: i.e. bus drivers, cab drivers, truck drivers, etc. will no longer be necessary. Companies that don't adopt the system will not be able to compete. In essence, as Martin Ford has pointed out, even outsourcing and offshoring are just precursors to automation and digitization. Lanier's question is, once that happens, what do we do with all of those people? Are these drivers supposed to go to school and become software engineers? Are there enough software jobs (in America) to even support all of them, along with everyone else whose job is being automated? With the economy still depressed from the financial crisis of 2008, lots of people have been thinking and writing about this issue. Clearly the agricultural sector is all but automated, the manufacturing industry is headed in the same way, and the Services sector, while robust, is both highly susceptible to automation (judging by the Square article above) and has now demonstrated that its incapable of supporting economic growth. So what's next? Lanier's suggestion is an inspiring one. As he says, we spend more of our time and energy producing, consuming, and exchanging on the Web, essentially economic activities, so why are they not monetized? Basically, why does content, the unit of currency of the Web, not merit financial compensation? Why do we spend all of our time, attention, and work, to do things that are clearly valuable, but don't generate wealth for us? And if the Web does not start generating wealth, given our unsustainable economic situation, is it not a "failed technology?" Many people have thought about the problem of how to get content paid online. But they have usually considered it from the perspective of creating revenues and profits for corporations like publishers, advertisers, newspapers and record labels. Only a few have thought about solving this problem by getting regular people who create content, paid for the work they do. Of those that have, we really appreciate their efforts, they paved the way, but their solutions were lacking. They turned paying content creators into a charitable activity, loose change for a creator's guitar case, making the act of content creation seem precisely to be something that is not valuable, which, by the amount of time and energy we spend creating and consuming content, we know to not be true. Inspired by these big issues, we wanted to go a step further, to help build a new creative digital economy on the Web, with cultural products, information products, creative products, at the center. We wanted to put content creators in the middle of a thriving economy in which anyone can make a living by providing something valuable to someone who finds it valuable. We also wanted to give anyone a reason, an incentive, and the motivation to reward those whose work they enjoy; to get recognized for doing so, to create their own value in valuing others, and to build lasting, meaningful connections with those whom they reward, connections that lead to more knowledge, creativity, opportunity, and give creators a chance to reward us in return. That's why we've created Momeant. We want to plant the seeds for the next thriving and sustainable economy, online. To create a model that allows people to generate wealth from what our modern generation spends its time doing and making. We want to allow wealth creation to happen from a valuable activity that is now primarily a vehicle of profit for corporations and advertisers, to be one for all of us. The model starts when we agree to join together, and participate in a system that lets us value the content that we love (only once we're comfortable saying we love it), and reward the people making it.

- Posted by Amit