Media & Content Creators

To get straight to the point:

Please do not make content out of Valetudo, because the economics of that don’t work out for Valetudo.

I of course can’t force you to not do that, but I can explain why that would be a purely one-sided value extraction process.

Content economics

If you take a look at a very zoomed-out view of the consumer tech world, you see

1. Producers
2. Marketers
3. Users/Customers

and each of these parties benefits of each other.

Users

Users are the easiest to explain. They just have a problem and want a solution. The Producers have those solutions, but the Users might not be aware that they exist. Or maybe multiple solutions exist and the users can’t really decide.

They give attention, ad revenue and clicks to the Marketers and money, power, influence and maybe new employees to the Producers.

Marketers

Now the Marketers come in. They know the output of the Producers and needs of the Users and can build the bridge between them. They also add further value for the Users through stuff like testing/reviews, critical coverage etc.

For this, they earn clicks and loyal fans from the Users and ad revenue from the Producers.

Producers

The Producers do have a product and want to get that to Users. The motivations behind that are

• acquiring Money
• acquiring more people/employees
• acquiring power/influence

To do that, they need to acquire Users and let the world know that their product exist. Furthermore, they also have an interest in the world knowing that their product is the best product in that segment.

Bottom line

While in the real world there is occasional conflict about the exact balance and who gives and earns what, as you can see from this zoomed-out view, the system is solid. Every involved party plays an important role, gives something and gains something in the return.

Not only that, but the sum gain is more than the sum of what everyone gave, making it a net positive mutually beneficial well-balanced ecosystem.

Content economics and Valetudo

So, having established how it’s a net-positive mutually beneficial ecosystem, why did I use a term as strong as “value extraction” before?

Well, here’s the problem:

Valetudo looks like a duck and sounds like a duck. It however is not a duck.

Valetudo does exist in the consumer tech space and is in essence a polished product. Valetudo does also solve a problem Users have. However it is not made by a Producer as defined above.

That means that none of the mentioned goals above do apply to Valetudo.

Finances

Valetudo is not monetized. There is neither a subscription nor a one-time payment nor are there any plans to ever change that.

What Valetudo however has is cost. Every single User induces cost for the project through support requests, unsolicited opinions and general drama. This cost varies from user to user but it is at best 0.

This means that I do not want more users. I do still share Valetudo with the world, because it is the right thing to do and because many people come with 0 cost, but there is no point in me actively trying to gain users but a lot of point in explicitly not doing that.

Heads

Valetudo was created as a fun hobby coding project by a developer (me) who in his nature as a developer likes to do developer things. I like coding. I like the architecture work. I like all of that.

What I don’t like is coordinating with other people, having to discuss differing opinions and generally giving the enjoyable coding work away and receiving unenjoyable management work in exchange.

That means, that I do not want more people that might “help with the project”. I like the project. I like working on it. I like doing everything myself. I can do that management work (and do it quite well I think) so I don’t want anyone else doing that either. I just don’t want more of it unless it’s unavoidable.

Power

As said above, I am a software developer. I can (and enjoy!) building solutions to problems I have. I’ve also grown to be decent-ish enough at reverse engineering to “bend tech reality to my will” if you allow me to call it that.

That means, that I do not need influence or power, because I can just do the things I need myself. I don’t need to convince someone else that something needs to be done. I can just lock myself into my basement for 3 days and do it alone.

Wrapping Up

As you can see, none of the things that would normally benefit me as a Producer benefit me in context of this project. That however doesn’t change that the things that normally cost me as a Producer do in fact still cost me in context of this project.

What normally happens is two things. Either:
a) Abandonment
or
b) Sellout

And that makes sense, because if the rules of a system/space only work for a specific style of operating, you either operate in that specific style or leave the space.

I do not want to pick either of those options. I think it would be a bad outcome for the world if I were to pick either of these.

Therefore, I’ve spent a nice sunny sunday morning in my basement writing this page and trying to explain why you really should not be making content out of Valetudo. I appreciate the interest and as a User myself, I also appreciate what you do, however for Valetudo, you’d only do harm so please don’t.

Thank you for reading and understanding