I can’t wait until our comment featureas are back in action… Clyde Smith, ProHipHop, quickly took us up on the offer to continue the conversation about the unplatform but it got stuck in my reformatting queue. Promise I’ll do better if you want to join in. The full text is in extended comments; here’s an excerpt:
I think the fact that big media has been overly controlling of its content should not lead to the conclusion that there should be no control of content or that all the money should go to the infrastructure or software guys.
Full text follows:
Clyde Smith, ProHipHop: Reading Jeff Jarvis’ post about the unplatform reminds me of why I don’t read Jarvis unless a lot of people are linking to him. He very rarely makes good sense to me and I’m just not interested in following people simply for being provocative. Plus, his link on the term unplatform goes to an administrative login so I’m not fully sure of what he’s getting at with that concept.
But his idea that media companies should be “giving up the notion that your business is about controlling distribution deals or content creation” reminds me of those sites that don’t tell you what products or services they offer, just the solutions that fail to tell me what they do or how much it costs. In Jeff’s case, I wonder how he expects these companies to make money.
If what they’re really selling is a way for people to communicate, then that helps explain why venture capital tends to go to tech companies rather than content companies since they’re the ones who make the real money off all this communicating.
His feeling that wanting to have a say in what happens with one’s content translates into “restrictive relationships that keep you from doing things because the other party wants control, too” strikes me as rather odd. What’s being set up is a binary, absolute control versus giving up control, which ultimately denies a middle ground, one that multiplatform suggests, even if it’s already getting run into the ground as a concept.
Consumers want to access content in multiple ways. Content creators need some control in order to monetize their content so that they can keep creating it. Print media was already multiplatform. Newspapers, magazines, zines, books, etc. are all different forms that require different approaches. In many respects, digital media is just more of the same. More platforms, more channels, more flows.
I think the fact that big media has been overly controlling of its content should not lead to the conclusion that there should be no control of content or that all the money should go to the infrastructure or software guys.
Unless, of course, Jarvis is discussing an anarchistic society (in the best sense) in which a lot of his income sources are going to disappear. In a truly free society, institutions like NYU and, ultimately, Buzzmachine would be irrelevant. Jarvis needs other people to control things so that his wacky punditry can be monetized.
Related: Forget Multiplatform; Think Unplatform
– Goldman Sachs Communacopia: Tom Freston, Co-COO, Viacom
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