Thanks to Cindy E. Rodriguez to sharing this article with me (re:Serfs).

In light of the Huffington Post’s recent deal, we are fooling ourselves if we believe that we are making other people rich from our direct efforts as opposed to when we are not actively engaged, such as watching television (aka, spare time).

Some background

The Huffington Post recently sold for over $300 million.  It’s a prestigious site fueled by a community of blog-Serfs. The question of late is should we cry foul?  Will people tolerate incurred fortunes from the labor off of other people’s backs?  What does Mayhill think?

“I really don’t care that Arianna made all that money,” said Ms. Fowler. “More power to her. The original premise was not that we would get paid, so I didn’t expect to. But after the election and the fact that they nominated my work for a Pulitzer, I thought that might change. I talked to Arianna about getting paid for my work, and she strung me along for two years and then it never happened.”

The above quote is why I’m so guarded about my content being concentrated on my blog.  There is no doubt that Mayhill Fowler is an exceptional writer and should have profited from her work (not necessarily the Huffington Post, but elsewhere).

What is it with giving away our efforts for free these days?  I’m sure we are not wanton about who we affiliate ourselves with, and align ourselves with creeds that are close to our hearts.  Wired magazine’s article “Cognitive Surplus” sheds light on the popularity of unpaid collaboration:

Television was a solitary activity that crowded out other forms of social connection. But the very nature of these new technologies fosters social connection—creating, contributing, and sharing. When someone buys a TV, the number of consumers goes up by one, but the number of producers stays the same. When someone buys a computer or mobile phone, the number of consumers and producers both increase by one. This lets ordinary citizens, who’ve previously been locked out, pool their free time for activities they like and care about. So instead of that free time seeping away in front of the television set, the cognitive surplus is going to be poured into everything from goofy enterprises like lolcats, where people stick captions on cat photos, to serious political activities like Ushahidi.com, where people report human rights abuses.

Back to money

Why do we feel chided when someone makes a profit off our labor vs. not profiting when we don’t participate?  Is there a difference?

Not all the time.

It’s obvious that when we are uploading our work to a social silo that we put in a lot of effort in the end product – even if it’s posting pics and comments on Facebook.  Usually we equate effort with work and place a value on it, thus we expect to be compensated either by recognition or monetarily.  So, it’s no wonder we feel “jipped” when someone else profits.

It is not so obvious that when we are watching TV and are not exuding any effort that we are STILL making other people rich.  Television is a programmed entertainment medium filled with shows bent on ratings to only then sells spots to companies to show you commercials.

In all actuality, television only exists just to sell you products or services via commercials.

You are watching TV to watch commercials.  By sitting passively in front of the TV you are making everyone else rich from the writers (okay, maybe not the writers) to the actors, the producers, the stations, the companies and advertising agencies that are selling you their products.

How’s that for compensated effort?

Unless your spare time is filled with activities that benefit you directly, you are a contributor to other people’s wallets.  If you want to make money create a business model, don’t look at the web (the web being different than the internet).

At least with posting your work on sites like Huffington Post, you are reaching a large audience and contributing value, and that’s always better than not doing anything at all.

No posts today – I’m thinking (which is the same as writing to me anyway), and organizing.

Thinking is solitary, so I’ll share later.

If you have not seen, please go to the Hispanicize site and check out the beta version along with some cool articles. The bilingual posts are great!

You can also check out my post on Social Media Today about the Lack of Latino Attendees at Conferences. Someone brought up a point about light-skin, colorful eyed Latinos who may be there and I may have passed them off as White. Excellent point!!

Until later, my friends.

At the time of this writing I have a total of 22 draft posts. This does not include what I’ve written offline.

Some of these posts are half done, while some are almost complete; some capture an idea and stand only one sentence long, others sport just a title; some are disjointed pieces waiting to be merged into a larger whole, while others have a scope beyond this blog which may never appear except maybe as a pointer to the place where they are published.

Blogs are mediums of immediate gratification, and with drafts the benefits of revisions and development increase the chances of good posts that can be relished over time.

You would do well if you thought of blogs not as websites of plenary content, but working tools where ideas are developed and shared with audiences.

*Related to this is today’s earlier post:  The real McCoy: Producing Original Content

It’s day 6 of the new year, and I’ve already accomplished one goal by landing a post on one of the major social media news sites – Social Media Today.

I was concerned of posting it at first, because the entry goes in a different direction than the usual content covered here. But, I need to stay fresh, innovative, and excited about what do – it’s part of the growth process.

SMT served as a confirmation by posting it on their site, but I still have a way to go. 2011 will be the year I explore Writing in a few directions.

There’s more to come, I hope you continue to read here.

A great article…it even seems to have some picante to it as it’s spiced up with some humor and witty lines.

If you have some image in your head of a poor campesino looking confusedly at a computer screen, delete it. Replace that with an image of Perez Hilton tweeting and blogging and instant-messaging all day. In fact, Latinos far outpace Anglos in online and mobile usage. Of all wireless users in the U.S., 39% of U.S.-Hispanics use their mobile devices to read the news, in comparison to just 17% of non-Hispanics.

Note the quick change to ‘Latino’ from ‘Hispanic’ when talking about online/mobile usage.  I almost got excited about that, but then noted that Hispanic and Latino are used interchangeably throughout the piece.  It’s still a great read.

MF: How much Latino presence do you think there is currently on the blogosphere?

(…)With all the hype about Twitter and Facebook in the news these days I see little attention given to blogs as opposed to a few short years ago when blogs were all the rage.  Don’t feel sad for blogging though, because blogs hold their own.  Blogs are ubiquitous, and can be found linked to from all social media portals.  They are the tenacious opinion-platforms of individuals who seek to elaborate and communicate their point of view freely and unrestricted.  If that’s not social media, I don’t know what is.

Thanks Maribel.