In communities, people help each other without asking anything in return. By helping other people solve problems or helping them get ahead, you also increase your social capital, and it becomes more likely that people will help you out at some future point. The catch is that you have to be willing to help people first without any specific expectation that they will return the favor. This is the basic idea behind whuffie, a concept first introduced in fiction by Cory Doctorow in “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom,” but applied to today’s communities in Tara Hunt’s “The Whuffie Factor.” If you haven’t read these books, I recommend both of them. I’m currently reading the latter, so whuffie has been on my mind lately.

While the concept of whuffie applies to everyone, it is particularly important for freelancers and other web workers. Those of us working alone need to support and help each other, since we don’t have the same resources as people working on-site at large corporations.