{"id":2805,"date":"2014-09-29T08:59:44","date_gmt":"2014-09-29T12:59:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/?p=2805"},"modified":"2014-09-29T09:12:36","modified_gmt":"2014-09-29T13:12:36","slug":"what-the-wealth-wants-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/what-the-wealth-wants-part-two.php","title":{"rendered":"What the wealth wants, part two"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s been lots of breathless Internet chatter about the sudden social network phenomenon, Ello<\/a>. Constructed by a group of seven artists and programmers in Vermont, Ello seeks to be the anti-Facebook — an ad-free, exploitation-free social system built on a manifesto<\/a> that exclaims: “You are not a product.”<\/p>\n

\"Ello\"<\/a>At its heart, Ello is a counter-marketplace social endeavor. And its success depends on whether its leaders can swim against the rip-tide of return on investment.<\/p>\n

Yet, concerned enthusiasts of the concept claim that Ello may have already sold its visionary future<\/a> for scrap, by taking $435,000 in venture capital funding<\/a> back in January. Those investors, the assumption goes, will want a return on their investment. And returns at the scale they usually want will force this new venture down the most obvious road — gathering user profile, preference, and behavioral data, and selling it to advertisers.<\/p>\n

So the question now is whether passionate social purpose can be trumped by the markets that make it possible. And if that doesn’t sound like life in the nonprofit\/for-profit\/unprofit arts, I must have misread the concert program.<\/p>\n

I’ve written before<\/a> about the complex interplay of mission, motive, and other people’s money. It’s intriguing to see a very old problem with a smiley new face.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s been lots of breathless Internet chatter about the sudden social network phenomenon, Ello. Constructed by a group of seven artists and programmers in Vermont, Ello seeks to be the anti-Facebook — an ad-free, exploitation-free social system built on a manifesto that exclaims: “You are not a product.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2805","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-main","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2805"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2810,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2805\/revisions\/2810"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}