It looks like yahoo is getting into the community currency game with Yootles. A quick read of the their FAQ indicates a highly “economics” based approach. Also I don’t see an indication of the meta understanding that what’s necessary is to provide a playing field for people to create currencies, rather than just Yet Another Currency (YAC).
But, there is a very interesting quote buried near the end:
“My long-term goal at Yahoo is to change the way society thinks about group decision making. Step 1 is changing the way we think about money. I want people to think about money more the way computer scientists and AI resarchers and theoretical economists think about it — as a measure of people’s utility functions, which is where the name yootles comes from.”
An here’s another in answer to the question: Why not just use money?
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“But you’re quite right, it’s just another currency. Everything you know about money should carry over to yootles and if you spot any meaningful differences, we’re probably doing something wrong.”
Hmmm….
[tags]currency, yootles, community currency, money[/tags]
Thanks for the Yootles post! This is still a highly experimental research project at Yahoo and we’re eager for feedback. You bring up the question of whether Yootles would be just another currency vs a way to let people create their own currencies. By the latter do you mean something like what ripplepay.com has in mind?
— Daniel Reeves, Research Scientist at Yahoo and creator of Yootles
Yes Daniel, something like ripplepay, but not quite because ripplepay doesn’t generalize out the notion of what a currency is assuming that it’s only about economic transferrs. But better examples are my own work in the open money project and Arthur Brock’s work with targetted currencies and OS Earth.
Thanks for the links (note they aren’t clickable). Trying to get up to speed on open money and targetted currencies now.
Btw, we’re looking to hire talented hackers with a track record in open-source development who are excited about helping implement the Yootles system at Yahoo!