3.1 Homework assignment Peer Production Elyse van Zandvoort 355335
Producing content on the Internet or developing software for computer programs has changed. Nowadays, peer production and open source software mean that everybody in the world can contribute.
There are different types of peer production, of which one is the use of peer production for assigning accreditation and relevance. Two clear examples of this are Google and Amazon. Google uses peer production in several ways. First of all, all the website owners in the world that are linking to other websites. The more a website is linked to, the higher it appears in the search results. Secondly, Google offers the ability to tag images. The more tags an image has, the more the image appears in the search results. Amazon uses peer production, first of all, with “customers who bought items you recently viewed also bought these items”. Moreover, Amazon has the option to create lists of books based on a topic. Thirdly, there is the possibility to review and rate all the books that they sell.
Google and Amazon are strong examples, because these are the examples of peer production that are used most besides Wikipedia. However, some sources claim that using consumers for input does not constitute peer production, but should be defined as co-production. According to those sources, there is peer production if consumers are also seen as competitors.
