"Shift happens"
Andreessen once famously put the New York Times on deathwatch
for its stubborn insistence on trying to save and prolong its legacy print business. With all the recent excitement in media quarters recently over Apple’s upcoming iPad and other tablet computers, and their potential to create a market for paid digital versions and subscriptions of newspapers and magazines, I wondered if Andreessen still felt the same way. Does he think the iPad will change anything?
Andreessen asked me if TechCrunch is working on an iPad app or planning on putting up a paywall. I gave him a blank stare. He laughed and noted that none of the newer Web publications (he’s an investor in the Business Insider) are either. “”All the new companies are not spending a nanosecond on the iPad or thinking of ways to charge for content. The older companies, that is all they are thinking about.”
But people pay for apps. Wouldn’t he pay for a beautiful touchscreen version of a magazine? Maybe, if it were something genuinely new that blew him away. It would have to be more than an article with video and graphics though. (I agree, otherwise it’s no better than a CD-ROM).
Oh, and he points out, that the iPad will have a “fantastic browser.” No matter how many iPads the Apple sells, the Web will always be the bigger market. “There are 2 billion people on the Web,” he says. “The iPad will be a huge success if it sells 5 million units.”
Despite trying time and again, Andreessen’s observation is that media companies have no aptitude for technology, nor do they really understand what technology companies do. The one thing technology companies do really well is deal with constant disruption. “Microsoft is going through this right now,” he points out, “Ballmer is not complaining about it.” He’s tackling it head on. So did Intel when Andy Grove gutted it to shift from memory chips to microprocessors. So does every technology company CEO. It is ingrained in the industry Andreessen comes from, so it is just obvious to him: “You are cruising along, and then technology changes. You have to adapt.” Media companies need to learn that lesson fast. To the extent that their products are now delivered and consumed as digital bits, they too are becoming technology companies.
Beyond the iPad, he believes that all the talk once again from big media companies about erecting paywalls or somehow charging for news, articles and video online is shortsighted at best. He comes back to the simple fact that the open Web is where the users are. Talking about paywalls and paid apps is like saying, “We know where the market is and we are not going to go there.” Print newspapers and magazines will never get there, he argues, until they burn the boats and shut down their print operations. Yes, there are still a lot of people and money in those boats—billions of dollars in revenue in some cases. “At risk is 80% of revenues and headcount,” Andreessen acknowledges, “but shift happens.” You’d have to be crazy to burn the boats. Crazy like Cortes.
The Webster's Canon
The Webster’s Canon:
The key books about how to transform the world by using the Web:
- Rules for Radicals, by Saul Alinsky (pre Web, identical distributed power dynamic, indispensable)
- Free, by Chris Anderson;
- The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson;
- The Argument, by Matt Bai
- The Wealth of Networks, by Yochai Benkler
- The Websters' Dictionary, by Ralph Benko (The neutrality of this entry is disputed.)
- Crowdsourcing, by Jeff Howe
- Code v2, by Lawrence Lessig
- The Cluetrain Manifesto, by Levine, Locke, Searls and Weinberger
- Tribal Leadership, by Dave Logan (not Web, simply indispensable)
- Viral Loop, by Adama Penenberg
- Planet Google, by Randall Stross
- Everything is Miscellaneous, by David Weinberger
- Small Pieces Loosely Joined, by David Weinberger
- Burn Rate, by Michael Wolff
- The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, by Joe Trippi
- Taking on the System, by Markos Zuniga
Net(squared): what it takes
To summarize precisely what it takes:
Narrative (or counter-narrative)
Network (of your allies)
Exposure (via media)
Empirically-based program (not doctrinally-based)
Team (who will execute)
Technology (the easy part)
The Narrative is most important.
The Webster's Twelve Laws
How to Use the Web to Transform the World, by Ralph Benko
Visit the Websters' Bar & Grill by clicking on the tab in the navigation bar toward the very top of the homepage. It's a friendly place. Make yourself at home to learn the latest.
Here are the Webster's 12 Laws of how to use the Web to transform the world.
1. Pulitzer’s Law: "Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so that they will remember it, and above all accurately so they will be guided by its light."
The very best "mission statement" for the Web, composed an eon ago, still applies.
2. Nast’s Law and (Boss Tweed’s Complaint): "They can see pictures."
As Boss Tweed famously said, “Stop them damn pictures. I don’t care so much what the papers write about me. My constituents can’t read. But, damn it, they can see pictures.”
The Webster says: Use compelling graphics.
3. Clarke’s Second Law: "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."
4. Beecher’s Law: "No great advance has ever been made in science, politics, or religion, without controversy."
The Webster says: Controversy is golden – interesting, draws attention, drives traffic, and excites the community. But use common decency.
5. Lazarus’s Law: "Unleash the imprisoned lightning."
On the Statue of Liberty is engraved a sonnet by Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus.
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles….
photo credit: by Tengis, of replica statue near Ulaanbataar, Mongolia, hosted at Flikr.com
The Webster says: The Web can be our means of unleashing “the imprisoned lightning” of millions whose voices have been exiled and who deserve to be heard.
6. Metcalfe’s Law: "The value of a communication system grows at approximately the square of the number of nodes of the system."
source: A Complex Adaptive Intelligence Community: The Wiki and the Blog, by D. Calvin Andrus, Center for the Study of Intelligence vol 49. no. 3, CIA. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=755904
The Webster says: The more people we enroll and connect with one another, the more powerful we become.
7. Bianchini’s law of Viral Loops: "When your currency is ideas, people become emotionally attached."
"Chen calls a viral loop the 'most advanced direct-marketing strategy being developed in the world right now.' *** [I]f you create something people really want, need, or merely enjoy, then your customers will grow your business for you. Users, just by using a product, are, in essence, offering a testimonial 'When your currency is ideas, people become emotionally attached,' Ning's Bianchini says. 'Then you become a public utility like Blogger, YouTube, or Facebook.'" (Emphasis supplied.) Source: FastCompany.com
The Webster says: Offer something people really want, need or enjoy.
9. Trippi’s Law: If you pay attention to the community you’re building, then the community will step up and do the work."
12. Cage’s Law: "Begin anywhere."
The Webster says: It can appear daunting, the Webster knows. But just listen to John Cage, the greatest experimental composer of the 20th Century – and a profound philosopher – and begin. You will discover what you need as you go.
photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/extranoise/169187125/
Brilliantly and with wit, Ralph Benko provides agitators and advocacy groups the way to get out our message and to "organize" in the Web 2.0 world. Couldn't be more timely -- or needed. --Steve Forbes, President and Chief Executive Officer of Forbes and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes magazine.
Spinning silica into worldwide webs of glass and light, the Internet has become a planetary community in need of a global guidebook. The Websters' Dictionary is it -- a cornucopian resource for all compendious world-warpers. -- George Gilder, author of Wealth and Poverty, Telecosm and Microcosm.
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