The world is full of Tom Sawyers

Remember when Mark Twain's trickster-hero Tom Sawyer is given the irksome chore of whitewashing his auntie's fence? Tom would much prefer to let someone else do it. To achieve that, he pretends to enjoy the job so much that his friends want some of the fun. They beg Tom to let them help, to paint a few strokes at least. Tom refuses, then finally gives in - on the condition that his friends pay him for the privilege of painting the fence.

Tom Sawyer's innocent con game has become the big business model of the twenty-first century. It's called GOOGLE, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and ebay. The genius of ebay is that, although it is a retail business, it carries no inventory and incurs no handling costs.

They have all become multimillion-dollar businesses with what is respectfully called user-generated content. All are founded on the premise that users will do all the "work" for free. Someone is making a lot of money - someone, but not the people whitewashing the Internet's fences!

Never thought of it that way? Now you do!