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The above screen capture is pulled from the explanation for Burak Arikan and Engin Erdogan's exciting new User Labor project. With this venture, Burak and Engin have developed User Labor Markup Language (ULML), an XML format for determining the value of online activity, interaction and connectivity. The project neatly dovetails with other web initiatives like Data Portability and OpenSocial but moves beyond discussions about online identity and data ownership into the realm of quantifying the value of user contributions to web services. The User Labor statement contextualizes the project in light of a Web 2.0 business model we have all become rather accustomed to:

Granted, the user is already getting compensated by using the service for free in exchange with advertisement exposition. But, the value of the web service is based on the sum of service facilitation and content production, and the user appears as a stakeholder twice in the service ecology, as the consumer and the producer of the service. Thus, in order for the production cycle to sustain itself in the long term, there should be compensation for producing the content as well as using the service for free. Before speculating on the form of compensation, the value of user contribution needs to be transparent and its metrics should be defined.

This is a really exciting and empowering proposition for the legions of self-appointed and collectively elected info-brokers that populate the web. The mere existence of a metric like this speaks to the possibility of collective ownership of rather than congregation around online communities. At the very least User Labor makes undertakings like Facebook's Social Ads seem like a fairly self-interested means of tracking and capitalizing on user-generated content.

I don't really have time to do this project justice, but you should definitely check out userlabor.org for a full description and lots of examples of how ULML could be deployed. Craig Bellamy also weighed in on the project last week and contextualized it in relation to academic production. ULML is currently implemented on Meta-Markets, perhaps we'll see it elsewhere soon? Great work Burak and Engin!