It's very difficult to understand how you can use something if you don't own it. Particularly in the commercial world, where the deepest instincts are too control. All of which can lead to a More, More, More Mentality. And particularly in the world of data. After all, when was the last time you heard the words, "I think we need a little less information here"? After a few hundred years of industrial empire building, it's hardly a surprise. Many industrial metaphors have been effortlessly shipped over into the networked world to give us data warehouses, data mining and data processing. In my yard, this mindset manifests itself in the desire to monitor all web content to assess sentiment, word-of-mouth and to extract maximum value. After all, if you get enough of anything you can get something valuable from it, right? Salt from enough sea. Oil from enough earth. Gold from enough hills. So suck up enough data and you can extract....er, something valuable. Right? Maybe not. Matt McAlister joins the dots between Umair's Evil thread and Scott Karp's analysis to point out the pitfalls of this outlook: "I really like the idea that the future of the media business is in the
way we build value for all constituencies rather than the way we
extract value from various parts of a system. It’s not about how you
secure marketshare, control distribution, mitigate risk or reduce
costs. It’s about how you enable the creation of value for all." To my mind, the simple idea is that the skills required to operate within networked media are new because no one does - or can - own all the data. It's a bit like a library. You can't really own it because it's
actually a system rather than a thing. However, you're very welcome to
borrow stuff. And maybe if I recommend some good books and you share them with friends we can get together over coffee as a result. Then we have created a little group (aka social network) that can be valuable to us all and might become a big group. Or not. Alternatively, you can create your own library at home. And put a big lock on it to keep all the value in.
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Hey,
Thanks for sharing your experiences with us.
Let me apply these things in my business and see the result...
Posted by: Internet Marketing Guru | February 15, 2008 at 05:16 AM
No problem IMG, please let me know how you get on.
Posted by: James Cherkoff | February 15, 2008 at 08:24 AM
Hi, Great post! I felt great reading your blog post. I’m working with my friend in a small internet marketing business as a web developer. When I’m free I go around for some IT info
Posted by: Jeff Paul Big League Players Club | April 15, 2009 at 08:36 AM
Increasing effeciency and cost minimization is the buisness key concern , you may experience pitfalls in way to success but how to create value is important .
Posted by: Jeff Paul internet marketing | September 30, 2009 at 06:02 AM