John Robb posted last week about how he thought that a lot of these Web 2.0 companies are taking advantage of their most active users by not providing the ability to invest beyond their participation in the social services. My guess is that John feels they are not compensated with enough value from the services themselves compared to the value they are contributing to these companies.

This made me think that associations are uniquely positioned to address this issue. They don’t have shareholders, so value created for the organization can be channeled into creating more value for the members. This is something we should explore and talk about with our members. Sharing via your association can return more value to you and your field than it will via commercial services.