What Is A Social Purpose Corporation?
A Social Purpose Corporation (SPC) is a type of corporation recognized by Washtington State which allows a social purpose to be stated in the articles of incorporation, making it much more difficult for current or future owners/shareholders to deviate from the stated purpose in order to maximize profits. For an Internet destination website like SWO-SPC, which is committed to less advertising and community ownership, a SPC is a great way forward. Our articles of incorporation can be found here.
Who is South Whidbey?
Without a precise answer to this question, big-tech is answering this question for us. We are, according to Google, what TripAdvisor.com and USNews.com says we are, as these are the top two private-party-website search results for "South Whidbey." On Amazon, we are Lantern Press, LLC, a Seattle-based retailer with locally branded products Nationwide. On Facebook, we are a cafe in Langley, which is cute, but make no mistake about it: The lack of definition surrounding 'who we are' is fuel for more screen-time, more searching, and this outsourcing of our identity to big-tech is lining their pockets at our expense.
By the numbers: Our community members are viewing, on average, $55/month in online ads, nearly all of which are for non-local goods and services(1). Additionally, our organizations are spending an average of $100/month on ads & SEO to be found in this global marketplace. Collectively, this is $11M/year in hard-dollars leaving South Whidbey. The soft-dollar costs are even greater: just by accounting for the revenue impact of the non-local ads we're viewing, the soft-dollars leaving South Whidbey come to an additional $41.2M/year(2).
Fun Fact: Did you know organizing the web into directories is the only known way to reduce excessive, unwanted advertising? This is according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Netscape's Marc Andressen, per their Open Directory Project, which SWO-SPC plans to mirror in many respects. Interested in reading more?
How divisive is Google's ranking system?
A closer look at the local impacts of big-tech is warranted before unpacking how our local community can do better. As organizations invest in Google ads and SEO, our community becomes part of a zero-sum game as no amount of investment will ever enable Google to promote all South Whidbey organizations. This is because Google's ranking system is coupled with an even larger de-ranking system which requires winners and losers. Take, for example, the 110 general contractors in South Whidbey. Only 3 can rank in Google's top 3 and only 10 can rank on the first page. So what about the remaining 100? Should they invest in Google ads and then raise their prices to cover the cost? No! All this would do is drive up the cost of the ads while the ranking system of top 3/top 10 will stay the same. Google is the only winner in this scenario, as seen in the legal profession where the demand for "car accident lawyer" has skyrocketed to over $300 per click!
The same type of popularity contest is in play at Facebook, only with different terminology as the rankings are determined by the number of followers. In both cases, winning at the community level is impossible, unless we take a different approach.
(1) IAB/PwC Internet Ad Revenue Report 2024
(2) $10.4M/year in ads per #1 above, multiplied by 4 as the average Return On Ad Spend.