Yesterday I coined a catchphrase — "Sawyersourcing" — to refer to the process of making work seem fun in order to encourage people to do it, much as Mark Twain's hero convinced his neighbors to whitewash his aunt's fence. In the book, if you remember, Sawyer not only escaped an odious task, but he earned a pocketful of knick-knacks for his efforts. (The passage is here.) It struck me that Web 2.0 companies are today's Tom Sawyers, if you'll forgive the Rush reference, getting users to do the work of generating content and profiting from their efforts.

In Twain's book, Sawyer didn't simply expect his neighbors to take up his brush and paint. Instead, ever the huckster (Huck-ster?), he sold them on the idea that whitewashing was an enjoyable, even meaningful, pastime. Web 2.0 companies use some of the same arguments, which probably says more about the American character than it does about technology. Here are some of the most popular:

1. Whitewashing the fence is fun. Sawyer's opening gambit is to question the nature of work itself. "Maybe it is, and maybe it ain't," he says when asked if his task qualifies. "All I know is, it suits Tom Sawyer." Similarly, many Web 2.0 businesses have promoted the idea that creating content they can sell ads against is an interesting hobby. Think of About.com, a company that sold for hundreds of millions of dollars based on pages of content created by volunteers — who collected nothing.

2. Whitewashing the fence is important. Sawyer plays up the critical nature of his task, saying that, "I reckon there ain't one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it's got to be done." In the same way, many sites that depend on user-generated content promote the idea that a consumer's contributions will be unique. After all, not everyone's cat can play the piano!

3. Whitewashing the fence requires expertise. In Twain's words, Sawyer discovered that "in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain." Perhaps for this reason, many Wiki sites appeal to the vanity of their users by creating a hierarchy with additional privileges granted at each step. Making money, however, is rarely one of them.

4. Whitewashing the fence is democratic. This is cheating a bit, since it's not part of Sawyer's argument, but I'll include it anyway. Part of the impetus behind citizen journalism is the idea of wresting power away from the elite, although anyone who believes journalists qualify as such hasn't looked at their paychecks. As Sawyer might have said, wouldn't the fence matter more if we all painted it together?

Participating in a Wiki site can certainly be fun, but, as Twain points out, so can anything if you look at it the right way. And if you're really dedicated to one of these projects, I have a car that needs washing.