Painting Eric’s Fence: The Evolution of Business Models
“A few months ago, I read a post calling for authors for a book called The Age of Conversation. It sounded interesting, so I put in my name and will be one of 275 people (listed below) contributing a single page 400-word essay on the theme of “Why Don’t People Get It?”
Here’s where I need your help. When I signed up several months ago, May 15th, the deadline for contributions, seemed eons away. But May 15th is suddenly next week, and because I’ve been distracted by finishing up my degree, I haven’t started on my essay yet.”
Eric was even considerate enough to end the post with “Thanks!” like a tossed off e-mail. Is this dude nuts, or what? He actually wants other people to do his work for him.
Count me in. Unfortunately, I don’t have a background in business. But perhaps I can speak with a bit more authority when it comes to my field of study, journalism.
News organizations are a great example of a shift from industrial era business models to networked business models. I agree with Jeff Jarvis in his assertion that news orgs should “cover what you do best, link to the rest.”
As newspapers shrink in size and focus, they’re being forced to have a renewed focus on their core competency. Amidst information abundance, maybe it doesn’t make sense for the New York Times to do sports coverage. It’s not what they do best, so why bother? Setup an automated SportsMeme aggregator if it’s a helpful service to readers, but don’t waste your talent on areas where you’re not a market leader.
Because while you’re giving away potential pageviews, if you can be the best in the world at your beat, you’ll more than make up for your losses in inbound links. People will know you’re the king of your own hill, instead of uselessly clamoring for acres of territory.
In many ways, links provide the fabric of the networked business model, as it allows us to eat each other’s lunch, or drink each other’s milkshake. In fact, it’s no coincience that every one of those corny “10 Ways to Create a Successful Blog!” posts mentions the power of linking out. It’s the best organic way of getting links back in.
I’d argue that the business model of Solo cups, or of mango farming, hasn’t change all that much. When we’re talking about the evolution of business models, we’re really talking about the evolution of buiness models as they relate to the information trade. This is all covered beautifully in Yochai Benkler’s “The Wealth of Networks”, and this talk (via Digidave):
In fact, I suspect that information itself is becoming a currency that can be converted to dollars - via CPM, or CPC, or paid placement - but information is also a currency that competes with the dollar. I’m not particularly worried about a recesssion, because my superior ability to navigate through information allows me to rely less on spending dollars for anything related to information, and that includes finding commodity rate prices, or discovering lifehacks and best practice information that can save me a surprisingly large amount of money over time.
I suspect that this phenomenon partially explains the economy’s current recession. The monopoly of information being held by the Gordon Geckos of the world is quickly falling apart. And that is primarily a result of mutual information sharing, or fence painting. It might not involve as much dollar flow, but it is a business model, and an increasingly successful one to bet on.
So as a test, let’s see if someone else can help me continue painting Eric’s fence.
