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Category: economics

No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail Better

Published November 4, 2007 by cgerrish

Samuel Beckett

A link tossed in to the stream by Joe Tennis on Twitter, stirred up thoughts about failure. Joe’s pointer was to a blog posting on the process of creating computer games, and the ideal of setting up an environment where failure can happen faster and isn’t punished. That’s a unique idea in this day and age.

It brought to mind a quote from a late Samuel Beckett novel called “Worstward Ho.”

Ever tried.
Ever failed.
No matter.
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better.
Samuel Beckett

If you intend to participate in a creative profession, whether it’s writing fiction, making paintings or plays, creating companies, products or software— you’ll need to learn to live in, and with, failure. In a sense, success is the failure that we’ve made an accomodation with. We shoot for perfection, and we always fall short. Dave Winer summed it up in 1995 in his motto for Living VideoText — We make shitty software, with bugs. Software must ship prior to perfection, in that way it’s like life. We must live our lives prior to perfection. If we wait, we’ll miss everything.

Failure is tied to risk. If failure is not an option, risk is not an option. If risk isn’t an option, only a very small kind of success is possible. The principle is the same as an investment portfolio. You can banish risk, but you can’t expect a high level of return. Risk is a requirement of potential high return. The same is true in any creative pursuit, if you want a big success, you’ll need to learn to live with risk and failure.

And not just live with them, but to call them friends. Learning how to fail faster means learning how to succeed faster. Creating a safe environment for failure encourages risk taking and exploration. It gets you there faster. But just as with success, not all failure is equally successful. Failures need to be crafted just as carefully as successes. Just ask Samuel Beckett…

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The economics of user-generated content & attention

Published October 31, 2007 by cgerrish

Bubbles

The current set of Web app firms have valuations based on the generous contributions of users like you. The platforms, in and of themselves, aren’t worth the valuations that VCs, or acquiring firms, are attributing to them. It’s never about the software, it’s about the community, the audience, the users. In fact, the most interesting developments are the most simple. Think about blogging software, RSS, Twitter, podcatchers— it’s not the software it’s what is enabled for the users.

Audiences used to be aggregated so that you could sell their eyeballs to advertisers. Now, to a large extent, the audience creates the product. Jason Calacanis was criticized for wanting to pay the audience at Netscape. But if the user contributes to the value of a platform, shouldn’t the platform owner pass some of the revenue through? The economics of “user-generated” content will be similar to the economics of user attention data. The user will want to retain, or be compensated for, the value of both their raw attention and the content they’ve created.

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Stream of Gillmor

Published October 4, 2007 by cgerrish

I can’t help it, I’m facinated by Steve Gillmor’s stream of consciousness. As usual he ranges widely and predicts the future boldly. I agree with his thoughts on the iPhone. The chatter around the iPhone seems to assume that it’s no big deal twisting the giant telcos around your little finger. No one should underestimate their power. I’ll grant that they’re the biggest impediment to getting real bandwidth over a wire to our homes, and through the air everywhere else. They still believe that voice is a qualitatively different kind of data than text or sound. It’s all just ones and zeros and the more of them you can stuff through the tubes of the internet, the more interesting the possibilities become.

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You’re the Top,
You’re the Mona Lisa

Published October 2, 2007 by cgerrish

The Top

We like top 100 lists. The best films of all time, the most influential books, the best baseball players and the best cars. We like the best, the best is good. The problem is figuring out what the best means. Mahalo wants to create portals to the top 20,000 Web pages. “Top” in terms of most requests. Calacanis bemoans the it next list. Techmeme has begun to rank its “contributors.” Scoble thinks that it’s the end of blogging. Frankly, not appearing on a list is not the same as death.

Cole Porter had an interesting list of the “top.” It included Mahatma Gandhi, cellophane, turkey dinners and Garbo’s salary.

You’re the top!
You’re the Louvre Museum.
You’re a melody from a symphony by Strauss
You’re a Bendel bonnet,
A Shakespeare’s sonnet,
You’re Mickey Mouse.
You’re the Nile,
You’re the Tower of Pisa,
You’re the smile on the Mona Lisa
I’m a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop,
But if, baby, I’m the bottom you’re the top!

Top stuff lists are meant to drive traffic. The popular is by definition popular. But the popular is, as Leonard Cohen says, just what everybody knows.

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