The first article is an interview conducted by Josh Hyatt (2008) for the MIT Sloan Management Review. The interviewee, Marten Mickos, is chief of MySQL. MySQL is the most popular open source database with a community consisting of 12 million coders who receive no compensation. In this interview, Josh Hyatt aims to discover how open sourcing can generate incredible innovation; what motivates innovators; what drives contributors; and why the number of companies making their source code available to everyone is growing. This article seemed relevant to me for companies as it gives great insights into the “secrets” of companies doing so well in open-source innovation. However, I would have preferred more information on why Mickos believes more companies are engaging in open-source innovation.

The second article, by von Hippel and von Krogh (2003), distinguishes two models of innovation: the private investment-model and collective action-model. In this article, the author advocates that open sourcing is part of a private collective-model, as it has inherits aspects of both models. Their reasoning behind this is that contributors use their own resources to privately invest in creating a software code and then choose to freely release it as a public good. I found this article interesting as it gave a different perspective to open sourcing. I do think it might be slightly outdated, as it has been published 12 years ago. Since then, I believe open sourcing has shifted more and more towards the collective action-model. Open sourcing nowadays includes communities of over 12 million coders; hence I believe there is less focus on private interaction.

The third article, written by Zhang, M. and Zhu, F. (2011), studies how incentives to contribute to an open-source network change with group size. In October 2005, Chinese Wikipedia experienced an exogenous disturbance, namely that the website was blocked to all users and contributors on mainland China. As a result, contribution levels of non‑blocked contributors shrunk by 42.8 per cent. Zhang and Zhu found that contributors receive social benefits from contributing, and that a smaller group size reduces these social benefits.I found that this article gave some interesting insights into how group size has such a major impact on perceived social benefits. It emphasizes that many contributors would rather contribute to a large online community. This article can be relevant to any company, as it would urge them to focus on increasing their community base prior to initiating an open-source database and to continue growing after this point.

To gain more knowledge about why more and more companies are engaging in open sourcing, I searched for an additional article.

In an article by Baldwin (2014), four reasons are discussed why businesses say yes to open sourcing. The first reason is that open sourcing reduces costs. The second reason is that it improves quality. If the source code is flawed, the developer community will quickly identify and erase the flaw. The high quality comes from a large community continuously contributing, testing and reviewing the product. Thirdly, open source delivers business agility. As open sourcing facilitates fast software developments, companies can react to demand on the market place quickly. They are not waiting for vendors to make the changes they want, which would slow down the development process. Finally, open sourcing reduces business risk, as companies are not dependent on one or few vendors. I found this article very helpful if you are new to open sourcing and want to get an idea of its advantages. I did have some critique with regard to quality and risk. Companies will never be able to guarantee whether the community consists of merely professionals and hence if quality can be maintained. At the same time, the company could increase its business risk, as it cannot ensure quality is maintained. If quality is below standards, the company has no right to sue anyone.

References

Zhang, M. and Zhu, F. 2011. Group size and incentives to contribute: A natural experiment at Chinese Wikipedia. American Economic Review 101(4) 1601-1615.

Baldwin, H. 2014. 4 reasons companies say yes to open source. Available: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2486991/app-development-4-reasons-companies-say-yes-to-open-source.html?page=4.

Hyatt, J. 2008. The oh-so-practical magic of open-source innovation. MITSloan Management Review 50(1) 15-19.

von Hippel, E., and von Krogh, G. 2003. Open source software and the“private-collective” innovation model: Issues for organization science

A few years ago I began to notice tweets of friends including an image with the text: “Find me on Path!” followed by a username and, for example, “7 moments”. Straight away I recognized this had to be a new social media network. Enthusiastically I navigated to the App store on my iPhone and downloaded the app.

As you may have found striking in the title of this post, Path is a private social network. What exactly does that mean? Founder of Path in 2010, Dave Morin, aimed to create an intimate social network where one could share photos and updates (“moments”) with a closed and small network of friends. In order to force users keep this social network private, Path allowed a user to have a maximum of 50 friends. The company began with an iPhone app and website, then gradually extended to offering the app to Android, iPad and Windows users.

“Our long-term grand vision here is to build a network that is very high quality and that people feel comfortable contributing to at any time.” – Dave Morin

After having used the app for about a week, I noticed that many of my friends weren’t actively using it and found it fairly boring. Regardless of the beautiful design and playful elements in the app, it just did not take off. The tweets attracting users started to diminish and after a couple of months I had forgotten that it had ever existed. Only today, the network got me thinking! What had gone wrong with Path? Why did it fail?

After having done some research, I found that Path has changed considerably since their launch in 2010. In 2012, they were urged to increase the maximum number of friends from 50 to 150. They are also planning on developing new apps to enrich the platform and make it more similar to large social networks. Hence, focussing less and less on being a private network (Bhuiyan, J 2014).

In theory, the idea of having a private network with close friends and family sounds appealing to many people, however the “privacy” of the network is the main reason for its failure. Many people found that in practice, the app turned out to be highly limiting and boring. Many users struggled with the small reach compared to social networks as Twitter and Facebook. Isaac Budmen described the application as “woefully insubstantial in meaningful content” (Budmen, I 2012).  I found it interesting to discover that many people are not necessarily on social networks for their close friends and family, but mainly for everything beyond this.

Today, Path sees 4 million users per day, allows up to 500 friends and still promotes itself and individual profiles with the hashtag #thepersonalnetwork. With every app update, the app moves further and further away of the private network it was upon its launch. What do you think of the idea of a private social network? Would it appeal to you? What would you (not) miss compared to regular social networks? What do you seek for in a social network? Have you ever heard or used Path?

If you are interested in trying out the app it is still available in mobile app stores!

References 

Bhuiyan, J. (2014). Path, The Personal Social Network, Battles To Be Popular Too. Available: http://www.buzzfeed.com/johanabhuiyan/path-the-personal-social-network-battles-to-be-popular-too#.gjplYxBQMR. Last accessed 1st Oct 2015.

Budmen, I. (2012). Path: Private Social Network with Good Interface, but Lacking in Substance. Available: http://infospace.ischool.syr.edu/2012/01/16/path-private-social-network-with-good-interface-but-lacking-in-substance/. Last accessed 1st Oct 2015.