Jeff Jarvis writes:
Scale doesn’t scale anymore.
The old days of big players in the economy collecting consumers, audience, distribution, manufacturing efficiency, buying power, or capital in the grip of centralized control are waning. That used to be the way to find efficiency and size. That used to be the way to scale.
But they are being foiled by our new distributed world. And they are being replaced by a more efficient means of finding size and efficiency.
Aggregation is the new scale.
consider how [the]…model of decentralization — of control at the fringes — can, should, and will hit other industries:
News: As a producer, why depend on the 300 (expensive, snarky, recalcitrant) reporters you pay for when you could have 3,000 aggregated reporters to get more news less expensively than ever before.
As a consumer, why depend on one or two sources of news a day when you can aggregate the best of 200?
Media: As a distributor, when you can no longer use your stranglehold on channels to guarantee you an audience, you will have to aggregate audiences to reach scale.
As a creator, you’re going to have to establish your own direct relationship with your audience: You have to do your own aggregating.
As a member of the audience, why adjust your schedule and taste to the distributor when you can aggregate your own entertainment from anywhere, anytime?
Fred Wilson adds: “You cannot collect all the pieces of a marketplace in a centralized way and control all of it. The technology won’t allow that to happen. You can’t ‘get to scale’ that way. You must be open to others owning pieces of the equation. You must let the users get the value of scale however the choose to create that scale. You must facilitate the creation of virtual scale.”
