Saturday, October 22, 2005
Fractals of Change
Tom Evslin has been posting on Web 2.0 aka Bubble 2.0, the Long Tail, blogging and the economics of networks at Fractals of Change. His recent comments on extra-value networks are about the same Metcalfe's law as my blog on the MSN/Yahoo instant messenger link-up. More on that later.
Tom has some interesting ideas on directions on the internet, largely brought about by the development of broadband and computers capable of playing DVD-quality video. I particularly like his blog on Reed's law, an embellishment of Metcalfe's law, which he believes is a step too far in equating value with the mathematics of network size. I tend to agree, but more on that later.
The Long Tail is the idea that the anytime, anywhere nature of the internet will allow media demand to migrate away from mass entertainment towards niche entertainment - people will be able to select exactly what they arei interested in and when they are interested in watching or listening to it. The idea was first publicised by Chris Anderson in a Wired article in 2004. There are a lot of niche subjects that are currently addressed only by magazines and whose video output is published as expensive VHS video.
An example of this is the military, rail and aeronautical genres, which are covered by a business I recently helped into life, Watchmore TV. Watchmore is run by people with enormous knowledge and experience in this area - some of the content they created themselves either during their respective careers in television production or especially for their new channel. Some of their programming is truly unique, available from no other source, and much of it is available to download. I can particularly recommend 16th Special Ops, tracing the history of American Special Forces, and Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, which shows how these few historic aircraft are maintained in safe flying condition, with unique footage from various exhibition flights. This is the Long Tail at its top-quality best.
Tom has some interesting ideas on directions on the internet, largely brought about by the development of broadband and computers capable of playing DVD-quality video. I particularly like his blog on Reed's law, an embellishment of Metcalfe's law, which he believes is a step too far in equating value with the mathematics of network size. I tend to agree, but more on that later.
The Long Tail is the idea that the anytime, anywhere nature of the internet will allow media demand to migrate away from mass entertainment towards niche entertainment - people will be able to select exactly what they arei interested in and when they are interested in watching or listening to it. The idea was first publicised by Chris Anderson in a Wired article in 2004. There are a lot of niche subjects that are currently addressed only by magazines and whose video output is published as expensive VHS video.
An example of this is the military, rail and aeronautical genres, which are covered by a business I recently helped into life, Watchmore TV. Watchmore is run by people with enormous knowledge and experience in this area - some of the content they created themselves either during their respective careers in television production or especially for their new channel. Some of their programming is truly unique, available from no other source, and much of it is available to download. I can particularly recommend 16th Special Ops, tracing the history of American Special Forces, and Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, which shows how these few historic aircraft are maintained in safe flying condition, with unique footage from various exhibition flights. This is the Long Tail at its top-quality best.
# posted by Tom Foale : 2:36 AM
