What a minimal amount of work to switch OPENSTUDIO to public membership! All the code and infrastructure was in place, and it was a matter of just flipping the switch. I made most of the changes yesterday while sitting in the back of John’s class. This morning I updated the site and announced the new policy on the OS blog.
With the original invitation requirement, OPENSTUDIO’s barrier to entry was very high because people could only join the community via invitation from an existing member. Each new member was socially connected to the PLW by an unbroken chain of invitations, each link in the chain offering a property of transitive accountability. Though superficially a small change, open public membership effectively lowers this barrier one very important notch; suddenly we are allowing anonymous, totally unknown users, with no connection to anyone, and no inviter whose reputation is at stake. How will the community develop without the imposed connections? Of course these unconnected users may in turn invite others, potentially leading to more fragmented subcommunities, Chris Anderson’s “tribal eddies.” How will these new dynamics affect the site’s content, the character and quality of the drawings, tags, commissions and transactions?
Of course all these ponderings are meaningless if no one bothers to join. Is there any life left in OPENSTUDIO one year after launch, or are participatory media and virtual microeconomies too mainstream for people to take notice of this funky little art site that’s been humming along in its own little dreamworld? We’ll find out.
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