Month: April 2005

Rupert Murdoch, global media owner, had an interesting take on the changing world in a recent speech to other media moguls. He encouraged the editors and owners to bridge the gulf between the “digital immigrants” of older generations and young “digital natives”. Two quotes show how he was thinking.
My two young daughters, on the other hand, will be digital natives. They’ll never know a world without ubiquitous broadband internet access.
They don’t want to rely on a God-like figure from above to tell them what’s important. And to carry the religion analogy a bit further, they certainly don’t want news presented as gospel.

Fine sentiments but perhaps Mr. Murdoch hasn’t realized the full extent of the changes wrought by the Internet. I believe it’s more Revolution than Evolution. That’s Revolution as in the French Revolution. The French Revolution occurred and the monarchs were no more. This was true even though you had monarchs such as Louis XIV of France who is often cited as an example of a benevolent dictator. He is the one who supposedly said, “L’état, c’est moi!” The State, it’s me. Well the French Revolution changed all that.

The Internet provides essentially free communication so that no one has a privileged position. Money can achieve a certain visibility but does not give power. Equally it is very much more difficult for anyone to control information now. There’s just been a striking example of that in Canada with the Gomery Commission into the Adscam affair. Judge Gomery attempted to put a communications ban on the proceedings, even though the hearings are open to the public. So the Internet quickly had all the information posted on a US blogger’s site outside the good judge’s jurisdiction. Power now only comes through the strength of ideas. This is the stuff of Revolution.

Mr. Murdoch went on to see a new role for newspapers, seeing a promising future for both printed and digital versions. He didn’t choose to get into the current discussion on the possibly conflicting roles of journalists and bloggers. He even sees an expanded role for newspapers.
But our internet versions can do even more, especially in providing virtual communities for our readers to be linked to other sources of information, other opinions, other like-minded people.
That’s great, Mr. Murdoch. However remember that on this new level playing field, which is the Internet, you’ll find there are already a host of players. So by all means, come join the Revolution.

Tags: Rupert Murdoch, Internet, Newspapers, revolution.

Dear Chris Anderson,

You describe your blog, The Long Tail, as A public diary on the way to a book. I’m not sure you’re shooting high enough. Your fundamental idea is mind-blowing. I’m sure your book would have a similar impact to some others that capture a truth that we just weren’t seeing. For example there’s Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing. Another for me is Steve Krug’s book on Website design Don’t Make Me Think. In each case, the title almost says it all.

Indeed most of us business types don’t have time to read books. Of course some books contain lots of checklists and useful tools for improved performance. They can be handy. You know the type of thing I mean, Business Strategy for Dummies, and others with provocative titles like that. However what you’ve shone a search light on is much more basic than that. I think it deserves to be a Principle. That’s something that when you hear it confirms a basic truth.

You’d join a very select crowd. One of the earliest of course was Archimedes’ principle. I believe he also came up with the Lever Principle.

Since then from time to time, great minds have come up with some pretty earth-shaking truths. Early ones were Huygens’ Principle, Bernoulli’s Principle and the Fermat Principle. More recently some principles have become pretty complex dealing with some of the fundamentals of physics. So there’s been the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the Pauli Exclusion Principle and Bell’s Inequality Principle. There’s even one called The Principle Of Least Action although that’s tougher than it sounds.

Thankfully the word Principle is still used by us normal mortals. So we have the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) Principle, the NIMBY Principle and the SNAFU Principle. We’re even seeing some pleasing alliteration coming into play with the Peter Principle, the Pigeonhole Principle and most importantly the Precautionary Principle.

The latter is important in the present context. It states:
If one is embarking on something new, one should think very carefully about whether it is safe or not, and should not go ahead until reasonably convinced it is. It is just common sense.

It seems to me, Mr. Anderson, that your finding is much more apt than another Principle that is often quoted. That’s the misnamed Pareto Principle. Mass markets are less and less common and that old 80/20 rule may seriously delude modern marketers. The Long Tail concept is bigger than a book. It deserves to be promoted to be a Principle. So I say go for it, the Anderson Principle has a nice ring to it.

Respectfully submitted.

B.W.

Related Books by Chris Anderson:

• Long Tail, The, Revised and Updated Edition:
  Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More
• Free: The Past and Future of a Radical Price

Tags: Principle, Pareto, Long Tail, Chris Anderson.