I think these guys have the money making down - that said, they earn on the basis of free labour - this is not sustainable

giggle

Re open source: totally agree not a self sustainable framework, parasitic to day jobs, hence *net
money - see twine on money for some juicy bits, I will cross here with 'money' tag
non monetary reward system - see *net and subtwines on twine, in particular valuation twine. BIIIIG topic, may break out on diigo as was on twine and cross best of (give me about 3 months) - but even on twine I had not covered the full spectrum, will take direction from your posts and post back in here from those groups (time, validation, surfacing/recommendation, trust, identity, reputation, etc etc

In general I believe that no one should or can own *net and have it be successful. This would warp its purpose. My solemn promise is if we do build *net, we will all be very wealthy simply by using it. *net should be self sustaining without resorting to funding drives (like wikipedia) or commercialization at the fringes (linux) this in the end means taking pieces of transactions (like siri is doing on surfacing functions only more transaction types) but for now as a mere social network, it is worthwhile to assume we still need to use 'conventional' funding sources like ads, referrals etc. until the economic value exchange engine is dropped into this puppy