The word "attention" is being misused a lot these days. Umair uses it extensively as a synonym for "marketing" in that PowerPoint.
Another thing that is being misused is the old chestnut about there being too much information in the world for any one person to take. I was hearing that one 25 years ago. BOOO-ring.
Having said that, once you wade through all the graphs Umair does start making some novel points in his slide show, even if he does use neologisms where old words would suffice. Overall, I'd give it a 37, but I couldn't dance to it.
Scott Karp
· 3 years ago
Paul -- Wow, I've heard a lot of "dismiss it out of hand" arguments, but saying that the difference between information overload today and that of 25 years ago only makes you yawn -- that really takes the cake. I'll be very curious to see how many takers you get on that one.
I think "attention" is exactly the right word. The difference between now and 25 years ago is that the geometric growth in media has fragmented attention to the point where its getting increasingly difficult to make money from it. Sure, there was info overload 25 years ago, but there were still sufficiently few choices that the economics worked.
I agree that Umair does some funky things with words -- but his analysis is spot on. Can you address the substance of his analysis other than by quibbling with his terms?
Paul Montgomery
· 3 years ago
Look at it this way, Scott. 25 years ago there was already too much information in the mass media for one person to consume in completion. The main barrier for choice back then which has been solved now is distribution, but the same thing applied to the first Internet boom and there weren't distribution problems then either, so that's obviously not the central issue.
The central flaw in Umair's analysis is that maybe the majority of people WANT blockbusters. It may seem to media economists that everyone should have a highly sophisticated strategy for consuming media in reconstituted microchunks through smart aggregators, just as they do, but a significant portion of the populace may not want to invest a lot of their precious time figuring out this Media 2.0 environment and will instead stick to a few trusted sources. Those sources may change over time, and the Media 2.0 phase may just be a repositioning of who owns the hit channels - or what channels the usual owners change to.
Related to that flaw is the distinct possibility that the supply side is in a temporary state of innovation, which will be snuffed out because the small startups have no way to gain easy IPO-level scale to compete with GEMAYA since Sarbanes-Oxley, and thus all th eplayers will either get bought out or out-executed. That's most likely going to be the way it happens, if it happens.
I'm not saying that that is definitely how it's going to be, but it's got as much if not more of a chance to be the real future as Umair's vision, mainly because inertia is on its side. As 3D was wont to say: inertia creeps, moving up slowly. (Sorry for the lyricism, I have a bad head cold and brain fuzzy no worky worky.)
Paul Montgomery
· 3 years ago
Ah, and I see Kedrosky said it before me.
Paul Montgomery
· 3 years ago
AAAAAACHOOO. Dammit.
Scott Karp
· 3 years ago
See my response to Paul's comments and others in this discussion in the Update above.
joakim
· 3 years ago
Yes, people want blockbusters. Shared references, a common topic to chat about at the job. And there will be:
1) As information overload increases and you can watch any show at any time, broadcasts in real-time will seem more unique and therefore higher valued.
2) There will always be hypes, both because of lazyness and because of eagerness to know what's cool. Even if file sharers of today can choose between millions of songs, some turn out to be enormously popular and some are hardly recognized.
Of course there will also be a wild variations in media consumption, but the one thing doesn't exclude the other.
anonymous
· 3 years ago
Your argument is flawed in that it only represents a personal epiphany. It is true that attention is the scarce resource in the new media economy, but this doesn't mean that attention will become chaotic and haphazard, it just means that winners will be about managing the overabundance of content.
Scott Karp
· 3 years ago
Anonymous, IF the bubble pops it will be because no one figures out how to "manage the overabundance of content," leading to "chaotic and haphazard" consumption. I can't quantify how big the risk is, but it's there. I'm hoping we'll dodge the bullet -- this is a call to action.
You're right, I did have a personal epiphany -- many others on the "edge" are having the same epiphany. There key issue, as I explained in the update above, is whether the virus will spread to the center.
Joakim, good point about the popularity of some music -- but the iTunes revolution is still in its early stages -- it still sells the same albums that line the shelves of Walmart. Time will tell whether blockbusters in music remain tenable -- Jon Fine has some interesting thoughts on this.
Ted
· 3 years ago
One counterpoint to one of Paul's comments above:
The companies that 'win' won't be making you make all kinds of choices about your content consumption. All of that will happen behind the scenes, and you'll visit those sites/channels/whatever precisely because they deliver what you want, how you want it, WITHOUT much work on your side at all.
Bartley Forsythe
· 3 years ago
Our 'attention' will be guided more and more from 'trusted sources'. With choices for media consumption increasing daily, "director" sites like slashdot and digg will keep creating the "herd effect" which will drive most end users to content that appeals to them - whether that content be text, audio, video or PowerPoints. In today's parlance, imagine a TV channel that features review-references to current shows and people are driven to channel 137 to view what is recommended. Now throw it into IP: highly recommended videos from unknowns (and previous knowns) get heavy paid-per-show traffic based on herd-recommendation AND user appetite. Trusted "Director" sites may have 100 recommendations but I may choose only 2 or 3. The cream will always rise to the top in time.
Allen Riddell
· 3 years ago
I agree with all this (below) except the claim that "no one is going to be able to build a profitable business model." There will be profit, just less of it, and that's certainly what scares--or should scare--the larger media outlets.
When the cognitive dissonance of too much media choice becomes too great, individual media behavior, i.e. the allocation of attention, will become chaotic and haphazard. When this happens (and it already has), no one is going to be able to build a profitable business model because the two types of media dollars  advertising and content fees  won’t be able to flow efficiently.
joakim
· 3 years ago
Umair certainly has a pedagogical point in separating between blockbusters and snowballs, but of course in reality the line isn't clear. The big corporations will continue selling big hits for big money, even though competition grows tougher. What they loose by reduced prizes they will win back by smaller costs in production and distribution.
What they do need is to adopt more snowball-like strategies. Such as influencing high status people so that the product gets popular among the rest, or being really good at making predictions of when is the right time for a subculture trend to "gentrificate" and meet the masses.
David Wineberg
· 3 years ago
Plus ca change... A little historical perspective is definitely required before this goes over the edge... It was only 80 years ago that shared experience came into existence... with radio... It is the shared experience and the blockbuster that are the novelty, the anomaly and the exception. It reached its peak in the 1950s with television, when toilets all over the country flushed at the same time - when the commercial break came in I Love Lucy. Since then the media have proliferated, exploded and expanded, with FM radio, cable TV, pay per view, on demand, internet, file sharing... ad infinitum, if not ad nauseam.
What we are witnessing is simply the pendulum swinging. It is a continuum, not a bubble. Everyone is continually adapting to the times, and so it will always be. The next big thing might still be something that further democratizes the media. Or it might be something that starts the pendulum back on the way towards the mean. We just don't know until we see it, and all the microspeculation on the network effects of blogging, podcasting, and file sharing is simply a forest vs. trees issue. The bigger picture is this: we adapt. We will deal with it. And some entrepreneur will capitalize on it it, whatever it is.
If anyone told me 20 years ago that I would have a personal start page with 100 live headlines and quotes on 90 stocks, I would have rightly told them they were crazy. Who could keep up with that amount of data all day long? Well, it turns out I can. And I'm looking for more.
lukasz
· 3 years ago
this post and umairs original presentation make little sense.
i reveiwed some of the curves umair did. looks like he is an economics undergrad and learned about a few curves without really having the intellectual capacity to apply them righ at other spaces.
further, he leaves a few things out like ads being performace driven (CPO or CPA) and trackable.
there is/ will be a bubble, when people who dont get it, invest in shit. the shit will still attrackt eyballs, but not enough to finance venture capital inflated fix cost structures and mba sallaries. but there will still be enough fragmentations to create a lot of proffitabble mid-size players. there surely will be one or two new big players eveloving out of this place, too (facebook could make it, in my view, when the people there continue it to get it right... + they have to globalize faster).
this is not intended to be a flame, just mere facts.
All Comments
Another thing that is being misused is the old chestnut about there being too much information in the world for any one person to take. I was hearing that one 25 years ago. BOOO-ring.
Having said that, once you wade through all the graphs Umair does start making some novel points in his slide show, even if he does use neologisms where old words would suffice. Overall, I'd give it a 37, but I couldn't dance to it.
I think "attention" is exactly the right word. The difference between now and 25 years ago is that the geometric growth in media has fragmented attention to the point where its getting increasingly difficult to make money from it. Sure, there was info overload 25 years ago, but there were still sufficiently few choices that the economics worked.
I agree that Umair does some funky things with words -- but his analysis is spot on. Can you address the substance of his analysis other than by quibbling with his terms?
The central flaw in Umair's analysis is that maybe the majority of people WANT blockbusters. It may seem to media economists that everyone should have a highly sophisticated strategy for consuming media in reconstituted microchunks through smart aggregators, just as they do, but a significant portion of the populace may not want to invest a lot of their precious time figuring out this Media 2.0 environment and will instead stick to a few trusted sources. Those sources may change over time, and the Media 2.0 phase may just be a repositioning of who owns the hit channels - or what channels the usual owners change to.
Related to that flaw is the distinct possibility that the supply side is in a temporary state of innovation, which will be snuffed out because the small startups have no way to gain easy IPO-level scale to compete with GEMAYA since Sarbanes-Oxley, and thus all th eplayers will either get bought out or out-executed. That's most likely going to be the way it happens, if it happens.
I'm not saying that that is definitely how it's going to be, but it's got as much if not more of a chance to be the real future as Umair's vision, mainly because inertia is on its side. As 3D was wont to say: inertia creeps, moving up slowly. (Sorry for the lyricism, I have a bad head cold and brain fuzzy no worky worky.)
1) As information overload increases and you can watch any show at any time, broadcasts in real-time will seem more unique and therefore higher valued.
2) There will always be hypes, both because of lazyness and because of eagerness to know what's cool. Even if file sharers of today can choose between millions of songs, some turn out to be enormously popular and some are hardly recognized.
Of course there will also be a wild variations in media consumption, but the one thing doesn't exclude the other.
You're right, I did have a personal epiphany -- many others on the "edge" are having the same epiphany. There key issue, as I explained in the update above, is whether the virus will spread to the center.
Joakim, good point about the popularity of some music -- but the iTunes revolution is still in its early stages -- it still sells the same albums that line the shelves of Walmart. Time will tell whether blockbusters in music remain tenable -- Jon Fine has some interesting thoughts on this.
The companies that 'win' won't be making you make all kinds of choices about your content consumption. All of that will happen behind the scenes, and you'll visit those sites/channels/whatever precisely because they deliver what you want, how you want it, WITHOUT much work on your side at all.
What they do need is to adopt more snowball-like strategies. Such as influencing high status people so that the product gets popular among the rest, or being really good at making predictions of when is the right time for a subculture trend to "gentrificate" and meet the masses.
What we are witnessing is simply the pendulum swinging. It is a continuum, not a bubble. Everyone is continually adapting to the times, and so it will always be. The next big thing might still be something that further democratizes the media. Or it might be something that starts the pendulum back on the way towards the mean. We just don't know until we see it, and all the microspeculation on the network effects of blogging, podcasting, and file sharing is simply a forest vs. trees issue. The bigger picture is this: we adapt. We will deal with it. And some entrepreneur will capitalize on it it, whatever it is.
If anyone told me 20 years ago that I would have a personal start page with 100 live headlines and quotes on 90 stocks, I would have rightly told them they were crazy. Who could keep up with that amount of data all day long? Well, it turns out I can. And I'm looking for more.
i reveiwed some of the curves umair did. looks like he is an economics undergrad and learned about a few curves without really having the intellectual capacity to apply them righ at other spaces.
further, he leaves a few things out like ads being performace driven (CPO or CPA) and trackable.
there is/ will be a bubble, when people who dont get it, invest in shit. the shit will still attrackt eyballs, but not enough to finance venture capital inflated fix cost structures and mba sallaries. but there will still be enough fragmentations to create a lot of proffitabble mid-size players. there surely will be one or two new big players eveloving out of this place, too (facebook could make it, in my view, when the people there continue it to get it right... + they have to globalize faster).
this is not intended to be a flame, just mere facts.