The Rise of the Knowledge Market
Forbes by Jennifer Hick, 27 June, 2011
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Through the centuries, knowledge has been used to subdue and liberate. In many ways, knowledge has always been commercialized. A cobbler has knowledge of how to repair a shoe; your plumber has knowledge you pay for when your pipes burst on a cold winter day. Collectively, we are all full of knowledge and yet we do little with it.
Today, we are beginning to see the emergence of online knowledge marketplaces where you can sell your personal knowledge. You can see its roots in the crowd sourced Q & A trend that spawned sites like Quora, Aardvark, Stockoverflow and others. And sure, you can go to Google or Ask.com and get your questions answered for free.
I can hear you now. Sell my personal knowledge? Sure, think about it. You can buy, trade and sell almost everything today on the internet – eBay, Etsy,Craigslist, etc., so why not knowledge? Why not pure information?
Way back in 1980, two graduate students from Duke University brought usUsenet, essentially the first online forum for information exchange. Back then, we didn’t know what we had, but we liked it and used it. Usenet was free and you get what you pay for, so there was no confidence the information you received was correct. I picture Al Swearingen in Deadwood when the first telegraph poles went up, saying this would change everything. Usenet did change everything – it softened us for what was to come – putting our personal lives and knowledge on the internet.
Everyone desires knowledge. In Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy saga, folks constructed a super computer, Deep Thought, to find the answer. The only problem was they didn’t ask the question.
Until now that is. Two new companies, one Swedish and one Italian, are focusing on changing e-commerce through the monetization of your personal knowledge.
Fresh off their second investment round of $1.1 million from two prominent Swedish investors, Mancx is proving their concept of an online knowledge market to exchange personal information for money is a reality. They have set out to create a new set of standards in social search and global trade of knowledge.
This pivotal round of funding was led by Bo Axel Ax:son Johnson, a private investor whose company, Coding Technologies was sold to Dolby, and Nils-Robert Persson, executive chairman of the board for Cinnober Financial Technology, the Sweden-based provider of electronic trading platforms. This second round of funding indicates confidence in the long-term viability of an online marketplace for knowledge.
Mancx is billed as a fully transactional knowledge market with global payin/payout capabilities. For information buyers, Mancx is the place to go to for answers to the business questions they face on a daily basis. For information sellers, Mancx offers a way to capitalize on accumulated knowledge and to build their personal brand profile as sources of valuable information. Mancx provides a secure environment and anonymity to negotiate and broker a deal of knowledge selling. Mancx takes a 20% commission on every concluded transaction.
Think of it as Quora that you pay for, the mature Quora. With Mancx, users are encouraged to verify themselves with LinkedIN for the purposes of credibility as well as matching knowledge, but in the end users are responsible for all information they buy and sell ...
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