Zie ook de bijbehorende video.
So we have lost monopoly power over the public conversation.
That is the world we now live in. We who used to control, you know, the culture. Now I have to compete with an army of amateurs, who share that control.
We would create these block buster products, The Vogues, The Vanity Fears, The New Yorkers, The Wireds, and we had the extraordinary power, you could not as an amateur do what we do. And we competed with other block buster products in this relatively limited market place of the bestsellers. Now we compete with those other magazines and news papers, but we also compete with 20,7 million blogs.
The old model was that you had producers and they pushed , and they sort of made everything. And the consumers took it. So one was active, and the other one was passive. So the new model is that you have both. We are all producers and consumers. Some of us are very consciously producing. I mean the blogs, the youtube videos, the music etc. And some of us are sort of we don’t think of ourselves as producers, but we do as I mentioned the notion of just reviews, rating things, or your cook tale trail through an e-retail site, has the effect of producing usefull information that makes the entire market work better.
So this one way street where, especially we in the media, there would be a lecture, we would talk and you would listen. Now it’s a conversation, which is to say, we can talk but you can talk too. And if we don’t listen to what you are saying, you are not going to listen to what we say. So obviously this starts of in easy things like comments, and trackbacks, and all this kind of stuff. This sort of recognition that opinion of the consumers matter. You can know measure the opinions, you are obliged to respond to it, as it be a two way street.
Why do people create for free? The old model was you had to pay people to create. The new model is well they are clearly doing it for other reasons. Few people make money with their blogs, no one makes money from YouTube videos, from Myspace music, you don’t make any money from contributing a Wikipedia entry. So something is clearly changed, we thought we had to pay people to write for Encyclopedia and now they are doing it for free. Why would they do that?
The answer is that there is another currency. Not just money, but reputation. Why do people do anything? They do things for fun, they do things for expression, they do things to be red and they do it to be respected.
And to be able to share your knowledge with the world. And how that entry becomes the source of knowledge for everyone. To be referred to over and over again has got to make you feel a little proud. Your knowledge is been respected. And it turns out that respect is a currency. It is enough to incentive people to create.
De laatste opmerkingen van Chris Anderson deden mij weer denken aan The Whuffie Factor en aan “Relationships Matter More Than Transactions“.
