Internet, making the rich richer
Posted: January 4th, 2011 | 4 Comments »When preparing for Lift11, I interviewed David Galbraith (co-founder of Yelp) who came up with a point that was going against what I was thinking about the internet. He told me the following:
Laurent Haug: Another big change ahead?
David Galbraith: The death of the long tail. The idea behind the long tail is that all the little guys are worth more than the big guys. But mediums do one thing: they amplify celebrity. Since Rudolph Valentino, the world’s stars have always been bigger than all the little guys. The phenomena has been amplified by the internet. An artist like Lady Gaga is generating petabytes of data download for Google, Justin Biber is accounting for 3% of Twitter’s servers infrastructure. The point is that the internet is a place where the rich get richer. It is a story nobody wants to here but it is true. The left part of the long tail – the one with the big guys – is bigger than the right part – the smaller guys. This is not getting better, also because of global competition that forced a merger of niches.
The internet was supposed to be making the amateur and the professional equal, to allow each of us access to our fifteen minutes of fame. That is how I was thinking until I looked at Youtube’s year in review, and the ranking of the top ten music videos of the year: five artists share the top ten spots, with Justin Biber taking the first, sixth, seventh and ninth spot. Eminem and Rihanna place three videos in the top 10, and lady gaga two. That’s four artists taking nine out of ten spots…
Two conclusions:
- Indeed, the internet makes the rich richer, at least in a domain like music that is still controlled by the majors. No indie band or amateur made it to the top of the rankings, and this should really make us rethink the notion of user generated content. Sites like Youtube don’t live off the home made videos, but from content generated by professionals – or hacked from TV networks.
- The most viewed indicator does not make sense unless you are in the dominant demographic of a specific site. Obviously, Youtube is populated with teenagers who will put Justin Biber on top of the rankings. If you are not in that demographic, this indicator is useless for you as it is for me. There is a need to separate audiences by demographics, and to come up with new ways to spot trending videos. Most viewed when measured on the full audience does not make sense anymore.
[...] Laurent Haug’s blog » Blog Archive » Internet, making the rich richer liftlab.com/think/laurent/2011/01/04/internet-making-the-rich-richer/ – view page – cached When preparing for Lift11, I interviewed David Galbraith (co-founder of Yelp) who came up with a point that was going against what I was thinking about the internet. He told me the following: [...]
I don’t agree that the imbalance which is certainly there means the death of the long-tail. In broadcasting, terrestrial transmitters still dominate the radio and TV market. If you work out the equivalent bandwidth, then broadcast TV is still doing better than most channels on Youtube. But look at the number of specialist channels that have sprung up because they were ignored by mainstream media. Technology has empowered a new generation of storytellers, some using their own material, others cleverly editing the work of others. I would argue that one of the best videos on Youtube at the moment is a mashup of Pixar movies called The Beauty of Pixar. And charitywater and other NGO’s have been able to get attention for causes that were ignored by mainstream media.
So I am not pessimistic at all. Just as think that LIFT can carve out an excellent niche for itself in the jungle of conferences that has sprung up since the TEDX craziness. Really enjoy what you guys are doing in Switzerland and France.
Now that you mention TEDx, it’s interesting to see that conferences are another domain where the gap is getting bigger between the big guys (TED, Davos) and the rest. When you look at online videos, TED’s numbers are increasing while other’s reach is falling. Seems the public really needs a simplified access to the knowledge, and won’t search complicated keywords to find the content they want.
TED understands that, they use their platform to promote other conferences’ content (like Lift), but in other places the number one player wants to keep all the attention, and won’t share. That means less diversity of opinions, less voices, points of views more centrally controlled, and we’re back to the pre-internet days (at least in the niches like music).
Different domains have different long tail dynamics. As regards music, the telegraph.co.uk recently reports:
The music industry is at risk of being dominated by “ageing crooners” because music labels are drastically cutting back on funding the development of new talent.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/media/8237466/Veteran-rockers-set-to-dominate-music-scene.html