The Blurring Line in Production – Why That Matters
From a business plan I am writing for one of the Agency’s clients:
Wikipedia, in the last 7 years, has racked up nearly 2.3 million English-written entries. There are over 300,000 entries each in German, Spanish, Italian and French and a 100,000 in Finnish, Romanian and Turkish. When you include sub-pages, user profiles, templates, tutorials and discussions the number rockets to nearly a 100 million aggregate pages. And the average article is essentially indistinguishable in terms of accuracy when compared to any for-profit publication. This seems overwhelming, if not impossible to replicate when you imagine that they were written by amateurs sitting in their living rooms. What this ignores is that as its base Wikipedia rests on the bedrock of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, which fell into the public domain and was absorbed into the site. Also incorporated is the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, W.W. Rouse Ball’s Short Account of the History of Mathematics and Chamber’s Cyclopedia, among many others. Wikipedia was seeded by professionals.
Communities cannot be willed into existence. Communities need more of a reason to form than superior technology. Almost every massively successful community can be traced back, not to the owner, the technology or the genre, but to a group of incredibly passionate users at the core of it.
Businesses almost always have that. They sit dormant in cubicles or overwhelmed with soul-crushing office politics. And the only reason they fail in the transition to the web is that they cannot unleash those assets. Remember, corporations are incapable of love but individuals are full it. Top down businesses continually stagnate on the internet because no one is willing (or allowed) to get down and dirty and do the work.
So what if someone took the pro’s and had them start at the bottom just like everyone else? What if you had the ‘best in the world‘ as your 1911 Britannica? That’s what I’m trying to figure out now – I was at YouTube on Monday and with a band that’s sold over 50 million records on Tuesday – and I think what we’re on to is game changing.
I’m trying to understand your last paragraph, but I don’t think I get exactly what you are trying to say. Didn’t the pro’s start at the bottom at one point and move on from there? … are you saying they are too embedded in the system to work bottom-up?
Didn’t some of the best in the world write the 1911 Britannica?
This is about doing something new. How you turn a star into an asset or a business.
You’re writing business plans now? Can you elaborate on what exactly it is that you do?
Is this post purposefully ambiguous? Not really trying to call you out on it, since it does make for compelling reading, but I’m not really sure where you’re going with this.
Well, I meant to give everything away and I guess I really messed up.
There is a lot of stuff I can’t talk about and even more I am just uncomfortable discussing. But, like I’ve always talked about I am working in LA at the very highest levels, doing all the stuff that I used to think about in theory.
Got ya. Actually I probably wouldn’t have asked but I skipped the paragraphs about communities and businesses and only saw the phrase “game changing.” Whoops.
How do you keep these new suppliers of more efficient content distribution from turning into the current suppliers of efficiently distributed shitty, content? It sounds like the secret is in the new ratios for monetizing online distribution via advertising or whatever.
I remember the Microsoft/Yahoo! offer causing so much disruption because, as one blogger put it, their DNA was what was faulty. What’s the DNA here that keeps the new more efficient gate keepers from turning into the old ones?
I’m definitely seeing some similarities to ‘The Starfish and the Spider’ in this post, considering the premise that a “group of incredibly passionate users [are] at the core of [successful communities].” The Catalyst, that single individual embodying a tremendous amount of energy and motivation, is important; even before that, however, a focused ideology which attracts the passions of others is most essential.
The companies which can tap into the strongest communities, addressing the topics people are truly passionate about, will be the ones to succeed. Now, more than ever, I feel that business will be about directly addressing the needs and interests of the consumer instead of simply providing the options most efficient in the interest of the producer.