What Would Google Do_ - Jeff Jarvis [32]
The impending shift away from the mass-market economy was chronicled famously in Chris Anderson’s era-defining 2006 book, The Long Tail. Anderson said that as the internet creates the means to make, find, and pay attention to an unlimited variety of content about anything, culture and commerce will be less dependent on mass hits. Very few people might watch a single video about how to catch butterflies, but when we can create and watch an unlimited supply of such highly targeted content, the total audience for all these niches together will accumulate to take a sizable share of the audience’s attention. In 2008, Anita Elberse challenged Anderson in the Harvard Business Review, arguing that his theory wasn’t proving out in practice because a small number of titles still capture a large share of attention and sales. Anderson handily and graciously dealt with her objections on his blog, LongTail.com, reinterpreting some of Elberse’s data and definitions to show that the tail, as he measures it, is indeed a factor: Though consumers still buy many copies of a limited number of hit CDs from Wal-Mart, their attention devoted to music not sold in Wal-Mart is substantial and growing.
A seminal work in this debate is, believe it or not, a PowerPoint presentation: Umair Haque’s New Economics of Media (search Google for “Haque new economics of media” to find it; I also suggest you browse his blog, Bubblegeneration.com, which has influenced Anderson and me). Don’t be deterred by his 107 slides and their dizzying economics charts. Haque’s lesson is clear: The age of the blockbuster is past. Making money through controlling production, distribution, and marketing is a diminishing game. Haque says media 2.0’s three sources of value creation are revelation (finding the good stuff ), aggregation (distribution 2.0), and plasticity (enabling content to be extended through, for example, mashups). This economy, he says, requires openness, decentralization, and connectedness through niches—not blockbusters. The new opportunities lie in the long tail.
I know the arguments to the contrary: the Oscars, the Olympics, Harry Potter, The DaVinci Code, American Idol, Wal-Mart. Yes, stipulated, there will still be blockbusters. But let’s also agree to these factors: The tools that enable anyone to create and distribute goods and media will yield almost unlimited choice. The public will increasingly seize upon that choice. The attention given to and thus the value of this new wave of choice will grow. There are new opportunities in enabling, organizing, and monetizing this abundance. The blockbuster strategy always was a gamble; as it continues, it is a bigger gamble than ever. The mass market’s hold over the economy diminishes.
The mass market was a short-lived phenomenon. It began with the large-scale adoption of television in the mid-1950s—and the consequent death of second and third newspapers in most American cities, yielding one-size-fits-all mass products in both broadcast and print. It was in the mid-1980s, in the age of the remote control, that I became the TV critic at People magazine, the last great mass magazine launched in America. In its first decade, the magazine was pretty much a piece of cake to run: Put a star in a big show on the cover and watch it sell. But I remember the day that ended, when my editor and mentor at People, Pat Ryan, yelled at me from the other end of the hall: “TV’s dead, Jarvis! It’s dead!”
She had just received the latest in a string of bad sales reports on covers featuring stars in top shows. They didn’t produce guaranteed hits anymore because Americans were not all watching the same shows. No longer did we wake up as one nation asking, “Who shot J.R.?” Instead, while I was watching MTV, you were watching the History Channel, she was watching the Golf Channel, and the kids were using that new-fangled VCR