What Would Google Do_ - Jeff Jarvis [11]
This system requires that everything about you, your product, your business, and your message has a place online with a permanent address so people can search and find you, then point to you, respond to you, and even distribute what you have to say. More than a home page, it’s a home for every bit of what you do. Through what you put online, you will join with other people—friends, customers, constituents—in networks made possible by links, networks built on platforms such as Blogger and Google. You can now connect with people directly, without middlemen. The link and search are simple to use, but their impact is profound.
Do what you do best and link to the rest
The link changes every business and institution.
It’s easiest to illustrate its impact on news. If the news business were invented today, post-link, everything about it—how news is gathered and shared and even how a story is structured—would be different. For example, in print, reporters are taught to include a background paragraph that sums up all that came before this article, just in case a reader missed something. But online, reporters can link to history rather than repeat it, because one reader might need to know more than a paragraph could impart whereas another reader, already informed, may not want to waste time on repetition. There are more uses of the link. When quoting from an interview, shouldn’t a story link to the transcript or to the subject’s site? If another news organization gets the only picture of a news event, shouldn’t readers expect a complete story to link to it?
The link changes the structure and economics of a news organization. Every paper doesn’t need its own golf writer when it’s easier and cheaper to link to better tournament coverage at sports sites—freeing up resources that could be better used locally. Every paper doesn’t need a local movie critic when movies are national and we are all critics. Papers should not devote resources to the commodified news we already know. They need to find new efficiencies, thanks to the link.
The link changes the structure of the industry. If a paper is going to stand out—if it wants people to find its content via search and links—then it needs to create stories with unique value. If they are to survive, newspapers must concentrate their resources where they matter, sending readers to others for the rest of the news. In short: Do what you do best and link to the rest.
Outside of media, retailers should link to manufacturers for product information. Manufacturers should link to customers who are talking about their products. Authors should link to experts (if only books enabled links). Headhunters, conferences, industry associations, and universities should use links to connect people who share needs, knowledge, and interests.
For almost every industry and institution, the link forces specialization. The notion of providing a one-size-fits-all product that does everything for everyone is a vestige of an era of isolation. Back then, Texans couldn’t get the news directly from The New York Times, the Guardian, or the BBC, but today they can. Chicagoans couldn’t buy great hot sauce in the local A&P, but now they can go online and buy it from HotSauce.com. These same pressures of specialization have killed generalist department stores—first with niche competitors in the mall and now with highly targeted retailers online. Serving masses, as we’ll explore, is no longer the be all and end all of business. Serving targeted masses of niches—as Google does—is the future.
The specialization brought on by the link fosters collaboration—I’ll do what I do and you’ll fill in my blanks. It creates new opportunities to curate—when there are hundreds of lighting stores online or a thousand sites about Paris, there’s a need for someone to organize them, linking to the best. And specialization creates a demand for quality—if you’re going to concentrate on one market or service, you’d better be the best so people link to you, you rise in Google search results, and