In some ways, it seems ironic that our businesses, which arguably have their entire basis in the idea that people working together are more effective and efficient than people competing, must nonetheless compete with each other.

Although it’s a shallow, meaningless moral victory, I take comfort in the fact that BountyUp was underway before the likes of Causes, Crowdfunder.com, or ChipIn made any appearance. It doesn’t give us any particular business advantage (we derive that from the differences in WHAT we do, and HOW we do it), but I sleep better at night knowing that we came honestly upon the idea.

Here are the pieces of the collaboration space:

• Ideation - Letting crowds of people come up with ideas
• Organization - The “Folksonomy”
• Voting - The traditional “wisdom” of crowds selects and/or refines those ideas
• Funding - Aggregating funds from the crowd (Crowdfunding)
• Fulfillment - Best/Cheapest vendor from the crowd (Reverse Auction)

Every collaboration project attacks one or more of these items. Spigit, for instance, has a great approach to Ideation and Voting. ChipIn focuses solely on Funding, etc, etc.

In the space that BountyUp addresses (Funding and Fulfillment, so far), there are really only TWO close competitors: Cambrian House (who also address Ideation and Voting), and Crowdfunder.com.

While I came up with this idea independently, I was somewhat dismayed to discover it had already been done by the rails community here. However, it’s still brilliant. You can read all the gritty technical details on my other blog, but the short and sweet of it is using SSH Tunnels to simulate a local development environment for facebook applications, complete with FQL and the native FBML parser.

It is incredible how within the micro we can discern truths and patterns that help us make sense of the macro. Within the atom we can behold the universe and within the maturation of an individual we can clearly witness unfolding patterns of the evolution of human society. Do we not see in the individual how we begin as a single celled organism and begin to grow into a morass of undifferentiated cells subsequently evolving into organs that themselves create a higher level of organization in the form of organ systems? These organ systems, of course, then interact at a higher level of complexity and integration in the form of our bodies. What is remarkable is that at one level of organization it is virtually impossible to see the higher level if viewed from the perspective of that level alone. From the perspective of the lungs, the existence of a cardio-pulmonary system would not be easily apparent unless view that from a higher level of order. Is it really, then, that much of a stretch to imagine that there may be even higher orders of complexity? Is it possible to think that, just as the various organs form a larger collective with abilities that could far surpass any given organ in isolation, that as a human society we could actually form this sort of a higher level of functioning far surpassing the capacity of one individual? And that perhaps the magnitude of order that separates the functioning of one individual organ from the functioning of a human body could be mirrored with the functioning of the collective human organism?

As such…when we look at the evolution of a human from the selfishness of childhood into the impetuousness of adolescence and eventually into the maturity of adulthood, is it possible that human civilization follows a similar pattern? When we carry the selfishness of our childhood into our relationships as adults those relationships tend to be damaging and hurtful. As a human society, can it be said that we now need to shed ourselves from the selfishness of childhood, from the impetuousness of adolescence, and evolve into the maturity of the coming of age of human society? Can it be said that the parallel to the harmful selfish relationship of an individual adult can find its parallel in the relationship human society now has between nations and with the environment? I would say that our collective body has matured into an adult and it is now time to evolve emotionally as a human society. To transcend the limitations of narrow-minded nationalism and to break free from the shackles of conflict and competition as a means of progress. Competition is essentially a redundant method and yet virtually all of our systems are based on it! We create systems that ensure the inevitability of conflict and competition, but who is to say that this current system that was conceived in an era with completely antiquated assumptions has any value for our future civilization? Competition does not help the with the growth of society any more than our organs would help with the progress of our body by sequestering and hoarding plasma. This only makes sense if you really do believe that you are an island unto yourself…a belief that this little blogger clearly does not hold.

Leading the cutting edge of innovation in the music industry, the relentless Eric Dozier, former director of the Harlem Gospel Choir, has taken his legendary community gospel choirs into the era of digital commerce!! Yes folks, we have indeed abandoned stone age commerce in a digital economy. The Bounty has grown to over $4,000 in less than two weeks and seems to be continuing to grow with virtually no marketing of the idea as of yet. I had the opportunity to spend a few minutes with Eric a few nights ago and you can see a video of part of our conversation here.

We’re got our first two major submissions online now - both for the $10K MimosA video contest. Not only is it nice to be showing some traction, but it also gives us a bit of a story to drive forward the PR campaigns. (Not unlike the traffic that our somewhat tongue-in-cheek Dave+Winer+Jeweled+iPhone bounty did last week).

All that pales compared to what’s happening over on facebook, of course. The just-launched “Birthday Gifts” application is starting to spread on its’ own, and it’s not even really finished yet. (No editing features, very little in the way of ‘virality’).

Given a cloning machine, or some way to give up on sleep, and I would say we’ll be poised to take over the world by the new year. Sadly, we’re going to have to take another pause from the “real work” and run back down to the Valley to find some more money.

PayPal. Google Checkout, Yahoo Stores, Authorize.net, 2Checkout, WorldPay… the list goes on and on. How do you make a smart choice?

Well, to start with, what are your goals? The smallest possible fees - as a percentage? The lowest possible out-of-pocket expense to get up and running? The most transparent experience for the user?

BountyUp started with PayPal, like many online projects do, for the simple reason that a PayPal gateway can be set up and running within a few short minutes. We’re graduating away from that, of course, but it looks like we’ll take a short hop to Google Checkout for the time being, and move the rest of the way to a “real” merchant account after the big launch. Stay tuned.