The June 2008 report on “Collaboration and Social Media” by the Gilbane Group suggested that “the future of social media focuses on delivering vertical solutions complete with rich domain expertise.” This is a view that I have found to repeatedly ring true.
This further reinforces my belief that open source collaboration solutions are inherently superior to non-open source alternatives because open source allows for the widespread proliferation of different vertical solutions based on the same platform, by different members of an extended community. Open source provides the framework within which each vertical solution provider can maximize their chances of success by being extremely focused, at the same time benefiting from economies of scale and scope by being part of a larger community.
In open source environments, value is primarily created (and monetized) by “maintainers” of the code who keep each vertical solution up-to-date and relevant to the needs of targeted users, since the “stock value” of the code has been communalized. The cost of maintaining the code is shared, enabling each vertical solution provider to incur far less cost than if they were to develop the solution using a proprietary model. At the same time, their competitive differentiators are not undermined, since code does not stand still – it requires constant maintenance and “flow values” generated by the “maintainers” is what customers will pay for.
As there are countless vertical solutions possible with a platform as comprehensive as TikiWiki, this presents a remarkable opportunity for entrepreneurs and consultants to take on responsibility for maintaining new vertical solutions for markets that they have relationships in, and to monetize it in the way most suitable for each market.
We hope more and more open source entrepreneurs and consultants will join in. There are significant developments at the core of the TikiWiki community to facilitate this, for example, the upcoming Installation Profiles system and TikiWiki “Magic” (codename for the new data driven admin panel) will make it much easier to configure and maintain different vertical solutions.
