Gig Economy 2.0, Human Capital 3.0: Monetizing Time in a Post-Skill Economy and Structuring Social Presence as an Economic Asset
This white paper introduces Beens, a mobile application designed to establish a new economic category centered on the monetization of time through organized, real-life experiences.
Time Read:
13min
Date:
Category:
Daisy Isabel Crichton-Stuart
Founder & CEO, Beens App
The system operates on the premise that time is the only universally accessible, finite resource — a commodity held by all, yet monetized by few. By developing structured mechanisms to exchange time for income via interest-aligned activities, Beens facilitates a transition from the "gig economy" to the time economy.
Table of Contents
Abstract
Introduction
1.1 Background and Premise
1.2 Market Gap
Problem Statement
2.1 Limitations of Existing Monetization Channels
Beens App: Product Overview
3.1 Core Use Case
3.2 Key Features
Strategic Differentiation
4.1 Monetizing Lifestyle and Vibe
4.2 Infrastructure for the Presence Economy
Sociocultural Context and Timing
5.1 AI-Driven Displacement
5.2 Decline of the Creator Economy
5.3 Rise of Soft Life and Social Intentionality
5.4 Underemployment and the Demand for Alternative Income Channels
Target Segments
Revenue Model
Risk Considerations
Conclusion
Author's Notes
References
1. Introduction
1.1 Background and Premise
In current economic models, monetization is tied primarily to production. Individuals earn by creating output — products, services, or intellectual property — often contingent on professional training, access, or social visibility.
This paradigm excludes a large and growing segment of the population: individuals without technical skillsets, formal credentials, or audience scale. It also increasingly fails to account for the economic implications of social capital, lifestyle alignment, and non-instrumental human engagement.
Beens challenges the assumption that only output has value.
Instead, it builds infrastructure around presence as product, defining time blocks as tradable units anchored in shared experiences.
Where the old economy paid for output, and the creator economy paid for audience, Beens pays for showing up.
1.2 Market Gap
Existing platforms cater to:
Labor-based marketplaces (e.g., Fiverr, TaskRabbit): Transactional and skill-focused; do not monetize presence or lifestyle.
Attention-based economies (e.g., Instagram, TikTok): Creator success is algorithm-dependent, labor-intensive, and content-driven; offline time is not monetized.
Social or romantic platforms (e.g., Tinder, Bumble): Primarily oriented toward dating or swiping; not structured for compensated companionship or group experiences.
Facebook Marketplace: Informal and product-centric; lacks infrastructure for time-based, people-first services.
Raya: Exclusive and social in nature, but not monetizable or scalable; access limited to pre-vetted elite.
Fly Me To You / Fly Me In apps: Largely built around high-end companionship or implicit romantic exchanges; lacks transparency, group safety, and non-romantic intent.
Meetups (India and global): Event-driven but non-compensated; community-based with no monetization layer for hosts or guests.
Airbnb Experiences / Klook: Destination-and itinerary-focused; limited to travel and service curation—hosts are providers, not peers.
ポコチャ (Pococha): Monetizes time via live-streaming, but restricted to 2D interaction; lacks in-person, lifestyle-based connection.
None facilitate real-world, non-romantic, group-compatible, and lifestyle-aligned time monetization. Beens enters to resolve this absence with a framework that is socially scalable, technologically mediated, and economically inclusive.
2. Problem Statement
The modern economy fails to address a simple truth: Everyone has time. Few know how to convert it into value.
Time is non-renewable and equally distributed, yet underutilized as an asset.
The platforms that dominate digital labor markets reward visibility, specialization, or output — criteria that are exclusionary by design.
The proliferation of AI accelerates the displacement of skilled labor, leaving personality, energy, and presence as some of the only remaining defensible human assets.
2.1 Limitations of Existing Monetization Channels
Model | Requirement | Exclusion Criteria | Beens App |
Freelance / Gig Work | Skills, tools, deliverables | Unskilled, untrained individuals | Monetizes time and presence — no skills or output required |
Influencer Platforms | Followers, engagement | Low-visibility users | No audience needed — everyone can host or join Plans and earn |
Creator Subscriptions | Content creation | Non-creators, introverts | No content necessary — value is based on shared experiences, not performance |
On-demand Services | Labor or technical output | Lifestyle-aligned users | Users are paid for curated presence, not for tasks or service completion |
Beens bypasses conventional restrictions where presence becomes both, and paradoxically neither, product and/nor service.
3. Beens App: Product Overview
Beens is a mobile platform that enables users to earn income through Plans: time-bound, real-life activities that are discoverable, bookable, and compensated.
The platform supports both value creation and value consumption, recognizing that not all users seek to monetize their time; some are primarily motivated by connection, lifestyle alignment, or experiential access. Beens thus functions as a time-socio-marketplace, enabling efficient peer-to-peer exchange within a unified system.
3.1 Core Use Case
A user creates a Plan: e.g., “Coffee & Quiet Work at Luna Café.”
Another user (Guest) books time with them and joins the experience.
Both parties confirm attendance and engagement.
The user is compensated directly through Beens’s integrated wallet.
No skills are transacted. No services are rendered. The value lies in being together intentionally.
3.2 Key Features
Plan Infrastructure
Plan Builder: Enables users to create customizable, bookable time blocks based on interest, location, and availability.
Group Co-Hosting: Supports co-hosted Plans to enhance user safety and social engagement.
Open Casting, Public, and Invite-Only Modes: Hosts can make their Plans open to applications, publicly discoverable, or restricted to invited users.
Chip-In Functionality: Allows multiple users to contribute financially to a Plan, facilitating shared cost structures.
Bidding: Users can submit monetary offers to join select Plans. Bids are time-bound, competitive, and evaluated by Hosts based on value, fit, or timing—introducing dynamic, demand-sensitive access.
Discovery and Personalization
Companion-Centric Discovery Engine: A discovery system that integrates mood, interpersonal alignment, and shared interests alongside traditional filters — optimizing for socially compatible Plan recommendations that are not purely transactional.
Interest-Based Algorithm: Adjusts the Plan feed dynamically using user behavior and stated preferences.
Intelligent Matching System: Optimizes visibility and recommendations by analyzing engagement patterns, Plan types, and social graph proximity.
Payments and Incentives
Escrow-Based Payouts: Payment is held until Plan completion, ensuring accountability and reducing disputes.
Tiered Access and Earning Incentives: Participation unlocks increased visibility, earning multipliers, and feature access based on platform engagement and rating metrics.
Verification and Moderation
End-to-End User Verification: Identity and profile validation measures to maintain safety and integrity.
Real-Time Moderation and Screening: Behavioral safeguards, chat monitoring, and content review systems mitigate risk and preserve community standards.
Rating and Review System: Post-Plan feedback mechanisms that influence user reputation and feed ranking. This follows a dual feedback model: internal ratings are quantitative — based on review volume, positive rating consistency, tip/gift ratios, and rebooking frequency — and inform user tiering and algorithmic ranking. External ratings are qualitative, showing the ten most recent reviews and displaying aggregated trait descriptors on user profiles (e.g., “Rated as Charismatic and Funny by 92% of users on Beens”). Applying this approach ensures performance tracking while avoiding public numerical scoring, preserving ethical, human-centered evaluation.
Communication and Community Tools
In-App Messaging: Enables pre-Plan coordination and post-Plan social engagement within a moderated environment.
Performance Insights: Hosts receive analytical feedback on reliability, engagement, and satisfaction to support behavioral optimization.
Social Connectivity Features: Users can follow others, engage in niche clusters, and build identity within lifestyle-based micro-communities. This refers to interest-aligned, semi-organic social groupings formed around specific behavioral patterns, values, or lifestyle preferences. In the case of Beens — these may be, but are not limited to — art-focused meetups, wellness routines, pet ownership, nightlife, travel, book-based gatherings, et cetera. Rather than enforcing rigid categories or labels, the platform allows these clusters to emerge dynamically through shared Plans and mutual interactions.
4. Strategic Differentiation
4.1 Monetizing Lifestyle and Vibe
Beens is the first platform to operationalize lifestyle and personality as economic levers, moving beyond the two-dimensional confines of content creation.
Traditional influencer platforms monetize representation (e.g., photos, videos)
Beens monetizes real-time presence
This transition:
Removes performance pressure
Encourages participation from everyday users
Expands access to casual and low-friction income
4.2 Infrastructure for the Presence Economy
Beens introduces infrastructure for what we term the Presence Economy — an economic layer wherein interpersonal engagement, mood-setting, relatability, and curated time are compensated similarly to other forms of labor.
This is particularly urgent in an age where automation threatens to replace replicable tasks. Presence, charisma, and connection are not automatable. Beens formalizes them as economically valuable and directly consumable.
5. Sociocultural Context and Timing
5.1 AI-Driven Displacement
The accelerated deployment of generative AI across industries has begun to displace not only manual and repetitive labor but also traditionally “secure” white-collar roles in design, content creation, customer service, and data analysis. As machine learning systems become capable of producing outputs once thought uniquely human, there is a growing labor gap for individuals whose core value lies in non-automatable attributes such as emotional presence, adaptability in dynamic social contexts, and high interpersonal relatability. Beens addresses this shift by building infrastructure around human traits that cannot be replicated computationally. For instance, professionals like Alex — formerly a freelance copywriter — are now applying their communication, creativity, and ideation skills toward interactive, human-centric Plans on Beens, transferring their expertise into direct, compensated interpersonal formats, which are projected to gain relative economic value as AI-driven automation accelerates.
5.2 Decline of the Creator Economy
The digital creator ecosystem — once an expansive growth engine — is now characterized by market saturation, diminishing engagement rates, and algorithmic volatility. Creators with substantial personal brands increasingly struggle to convert online visibility into sustainable income, particularly as content discoverability becomes less meritocratic and more platform-dependent. Beens provides an “offline” monetization channel where creators can continue to leverage their social capital and public persona in a context where real-time, three-dimensional presence, not two-dimensional content performance, drives infinite value. In this case, Jane, a lifestyle influencer with over 300,000 followers on a third party social media, has seen her brand partnerships dwindle. Through Beens, she transitions her popularity and current social value into active revenue — hosting coffee meetups or curated experiences where loyal followers can engage directly, allowing her to earn without depending on brands or algorithms.
5.3 Rise of Soft Life and Social Intentionality
Shifts in worker values — especially among younger demographics — reflect a widespread pivot away from productivity-maximization toward slow, intentional, and emotionally sustainable forms of labor. The "soft life" movement favors personal autonomy, emotional wellness, and income models that are aligned with one’s natural lifestyle and energy. Beens is positioned within this cultural transition by enabling users to earn through presence and participation, rather than output or exertion. This model promotes socially integrated, non-extractive engagement while responding to contemporary expectations around work-life balance. For instance, Mia, who left a high-pressure corporate environment, now uses Beens to host low-intensity Plans like journaling circles and nature walks — earning income on her own terms while preserving her lifestyle pace and giving her full autonomy over her time.
5.4 Underemployment and the Demand for Alternative Income Channels
Beyond lifestyle preference, a significant portion of the global population faces structural unemployment or underemployment — conditions where individuals are either without work or engaged in roles that do not fully utilize their time or earning potential. According to the International Labour Organization (2024), over 200 million people globally remain unemployed, with youth and informal workers disproportionately affected. In parallel, millions more seek supplemental revenue streams to offset income volatility caused by automation, gig work saturation, or inflation-driven cost pressures.
For instance, China — home to the world’s largest labor force — reported a national urban unemployment rate of 5.0% in May 2025. However, the figure obscures deeper structural concerns: the youth unemployment rate (ages 16–24), which includes a growing population of recent university graduates, remains elevated at 15.8% despite recent declines. This illustrates a broader global trend: rising education levels are no longer sufficient to guarantee employment, and many young individuals are entering labor markets misaligned with their skills, expectations, or opportunities.
6. Target Segments
Segment | Description |
Everyday Users | Individuals with no formal side hustle, seeking low-friction supplemental income |
Lifestyle-Oriented Creators | Former influencers seeking real-world monetization of persona |
Post-AI Professionals | Individuals in transition due to automation |
Soft Life Enthusiasts | Users pursuing intentional, low-effort, high-presence engagements |
Urban Nomads | Travelers or expats seeking community-based earning opportunities |
Unemployed and Underemployed | Individuals without access to traditional employment, seeking alternative income through time monetization |
7. Revenue Model
Beens’s monetization structure is designed to be multi-tiered, scalable, and aligned with both platform usage and user lifecycle. Revenue is derived from the following sources:
Transaction Fees: A platform fee (10–20%) is applied to each completed Plan transaction, based on Plan value and user tier.
Premium Access for Elite members: Paid subscription tiers unlock enhanced profile visibility, interest targeting, detailed analytics, Plan performance insights, and access to exclusive Plans or features.
Commission on Curated Plans and Events: Beens curates high-demand Plans or branded experiences (e.g., city tours, thematic social events) and collects a commission on bookings.
Brand Integrations and Sponsored Plans: The platform enables native brand participation by allowing vetted partners to sponsor Plans or reward users with branded incentives.
Gifts: Users may send virtual gifts — purchased in fiat — to express appreciation, build rapport, or signal interest. Gifts function as microtransactions and enhance engagement, emotional value, and community dynamics. Beens retains an added 10% of the gift’s value.
Marketplace Tools and Add-Ons: Monetization via upsells such as boost credits (to promote Plans), custom Plan branding, or limited-time Plan features (e.g., visibility boosts, early access).
AI-Powered Discovery Boosts: Users can pay to enhance their visibility in the Plan discovery feed through AI-prioritized placement based on user interest alignment.
Community Verification Services: Optional paid services for deeper vetting, trust badges, or verified host status for higher-earning users or niche Plan categories.
Commission on Chip-In and Group Plans: Beens collects a small percentage from aggregated payments in group Plans or chip-in features, particularly when pooled payments exceed a threshold.
This hybrid structure allows Beens to monetize both casual and professional users across a wide range of use cases, while maintaining a flexible, user-driven economic model.
8. Risk Considerations
Safety & Trust: Required robust user verification and real-world safety protocols
Cultural Norm Sensitivity: Varying attitudes toward compensated companionship must be accounted for in market rollouts
Regulatory Scrutiny: Ensured compliance in local labor, tax, and service classification regulations
Off-Platform Security: Beens facilitates connections but does not oversee interactions outside the app. Users are responsible for their conduct off-platform and are advised to exercise discretion
9. Conclusion
Beens redefines the way value is assigned in modern economies. By enabling individuals to monetize time through presence rather than performance, it introduces a category-defining model: one that is socially native, economically inclusive, and structurally aligned with the future of human labor.
In short, Beens does not ask what users can produce. It asks:
“How can their time — structured, shared, and intentional — become a source of income?”
Beens is not the next evolution of the gig economy. It is the first step into the time economy.
10. Author’s notes
Time is the only resource every person is born with. It is not earned, inherited, or acquired — it is simply given. Whether rich or poor, skilled or unskilled, influential or unknown, everyone begins each day with the same 24 hours.
Unlike money, time cannot be saved. Unlike skills, it requires no prerequisite. Unlike access or education, it is not determined by privilege or geography. It is the great equalizer — and, paradoxically, the most overlooked asset in the modern economy. Yet despite its universality, time is rarely treated as a tradable or investable resource. It is often wasted, passively consumed, or structured around other people's demands — especially for those without traditional credentials, platforms, or means of monetization.
Beens begins with the radical idea that time is not only finite — it is inherently valuable. The innovation is not just in helping people manage their time better, but in creating the infrastructure to monetize time directly. Not time in the abstract — but time spent being human: coexisting. This idea is not without precedent. Consider the annual eBay charity auction with Warren Buffett, where lunch with the investor has raised over $53.2 million for Glide across 21 auctions. Buffett’s time is valuable not merely because of his credibility or expertise — which is already widely accessible through books, interviews, and digital media — but because of the unique value of direct, unfiltered interaction. The opportunity to engage with him in real time offers relational depth, contextual nuance, and personalized insight that cannot be reproduced through static content. This illustrates that time gains value not only from what someone knows, but how and with whom it is shared. Considering this reasoning, what about the next person: whose presence, perspective, or energy may hold deep personal, emotional or experiential value to someone else?
Beens democratizes that principle. It offers everyday users — including those without niche skills, traditional employment, or online influence — a mechanism to convert their time, personality, and lifestyle into income. In doing what it sets out to achieve, Beens unlocks an entirely new income layer for everyday people: those who don’t have niche talents, massive audiences, or digital portfolios — but do have time, personality, and the desire to share moments with others. Where the traditional economy sees idle time as waste, Beens sees potential. Where platforms monetize creators' content, Beens monetizes their company. Where labor markets value expertise, Beens values existence — structured, curated, and compensated.
In short, Beens makes time not just something we spend but something we earn from.
10. References
Bruch, R. (2023, April 27). The value of time: Understanding and maximizing time affluence. Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH) Capital Partners. https://www.bbh.com/us/en/insights/capital-partners-insights/the-value-of-time--understanding-and-maximizing-time-affluence.html
Goldszmidt, A., List, J. A., Metcalfe, R. D., Muir, I., Smith, V. K., & Wang, J. (2020, December). The value of time in the United States: Estimates from nationwide natural field experiments (Working Paper No. 28208). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://www.nber.org/papers/w28208
Zilber, A. (2025, May 31). CEO warns AI could wipe out 1 in 2 white-collar jobs in next five years. New York Post. https://nypost.com/2025/05/31/business/ceo-warns-ai-could-wipe-out-1-in-2-white-collar-jobs-in-next-five-years/
Toi Business Desk. (2025, June 2). AI to hit entry-level white-collar roles hardest: Jefferies report. The Times of India.
Ito, A. (Business Insider. (2025, June 2). AI is causing a white-collar recession. https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-hiring-white-collar-recession-jobs-tech-new-data-2025-6
Maguire, L. & Schulz, M. (2025, April 30). Unpacking the creator economy battleground. Vogue Business. https://www.voguebusiness.com/story/technology/unpacking-the-creator-economy-battleground
Enberg, J. (2024, May 20). Creator economy revenues forecast, 2024. Insider Intelligence.
https://www.emarketer.com/content/creator-economy-revenues-forecast-2024
International Labour Organization. (2024). World Employment and Social Outlook: May 2024 Update.
https://www.ilo.org/sites/default/files/2024-06/WESO_May2024%20-%20Final_30-05-24_2.pdf
