Consider the following line of thinking:

1. WhyNot is a place where people with ideas congregate.

2. What if it could become more than a place where good ideas are made better by their honing against others?

3. What if, in other words, WhyNot becomes a place where good ideas are not only made better, but also where good ideas are proposals for funding?

4. What if, in other words, WhyNot becomes a kind of marketplace where people with good ideas find others who share their interests, and where some of those other people are willing to invest in making the idea into a product or a service?

A bunch of years ago a buddy and I mused about this kind of offering. I've only slightly tweaked a 'one-pager' I wrote 3 years ago to make in WhyNot-specific.

As they say - I think there's a pony in all of this...

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An Idea:

What if WHYNOT becomes the world's first aggregator of distributed enthusiasm?

What if WHYNOT becomes a global wishing well. A place where groups form around common desires, where requests for new products and services are defined, and where funds are pooled to pay for their creation?

What if WHYNOT becomes, equally, a marketplace where people offer proposals addressing these requests?

Conventional wisdom about the value of the web is about to change -- again.

Internet pioneers once lauded the democratization of access to publishing. Not long after, we watched attempts to create on-line conviviality -- places dedicated to communities of shared interests. As the World Wide Web swept aside everything in its path, the new common sense focused on marketing opportunities: Corporations launched large-scale sites devoted to telling their stories to the world. And in decade just passed-- the Golden Years of the great Net Bubble, we watched something as remarkable as all that came before: We saw the emergence of the web as a venue of commerce.

So many of the dot.com's promised to get us better deals. They offered on-line analogs to stores and suburban shopping malls, they offered comparison shopping 'bots, they offered ways to get group purchasing discounts, and they offered the time-honored mechanism of auctions as ways to increase our ability to buy and sell.

What IF - WHYNOT is the next big idea?

The web must expand its role beyond passive consumerism: It should be about activism, about creating things anew. The web should be about groups of people taking control of their existence. It must become a place where unmet needs are fulfilled.

Unmet needs should be seen as marketplace failures. We express these needs -- these desires -- every day.

----- I'd pay a lot to see Katie Couric sing the national anthem.

----- Wouldn't it be great to get Vernor Vinge to write a novella-sized sequel to his "True Names" that'd be available on the web?

----- I sure would like to see a test pilot film of a passenger airliner doing aerobatics.

----- They ought to put a second crossing-guard in front of my child's elementary school during the afternoon pick-up time.

----- I'd pitch in real money to discover credible evidence of a certain politician's wrongdoings.

As casual as they are, our utterances can suggest products and services that don't exist. (Or, at least, don't exist locally) We need a marketplace for these desires. We need a marketplace where people of like minds can aggregate their requests as well as their funds, and where others can look at these requests and propose solutions.

What IF WHYNOT becomes a very different kind of marketplace.

Consider a marketplace where you discover thousand of others that'd love to read a sequel to Nick Hornby's "High Fidelity." Consider a marketplace where you discover five thousand other Perl Jam fans that'd love to hear them sing Britney Spears' "Baby One More Time."

Consider a marketplace where you discover a geographically dispersed community of parents of children with the 'orphan disease' of juvenile ALS. A community that'd be willing to underwrite a clinical trial of a drug reported in Canada as possibly retarding the disease's progression.

And crucially, consider a marketplace where these aggregated requests are be bid on by prospective providers.

What do you think of this idea or comment?
(You can change your vote at any time)

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