Skip to main content

Surrendering curation and promotion

Facebook, Linkedin, Google, Apple and Amazon have very little ability to promote a specific idea or creator.

That sounds crazy, but culturally and technically, it’s true.

In 1995, Oprah got to put just one person as the lead in an episode of her show. That choice was a commitment and a signal. It said to her viewers, “there were many people who could have been on the show today, but I chose this person.”

In 2000, Random House got to pick one book to be their big business title for November. Just one. Their curation sent a message to bookstores, who stocked more copies as a result.

They were curators and their curation led to promotion and attention. There was a cost to picking junk, and a benefit to earning trust.

The tech giants have surrendered that ability, with the costs and benefits that come with it. They end up disrespecting creations and their creators.

It doesn’t matter if you know someone at Google or if Amazon promises that they’re going to heavily promote your new Kindle book. The people who work at these companies don’t have a dial to turn. Amazon is good at selling everything, but they’re terrible at selling a thing.

Apple gets some zing for a recommended podcast now and then, or for a heavily promoted record, but the same rule is generally true with them–98% of all their content is driven by the algorithm, not a human with something at stake. They don’t care which record you pay for, as long as you pay for something.

The platforms are built on the idea that the audience plus the algorithm do all the deciding. No curation, no real promotion, simply the system, grinding away.

This inevitably leads to pandering, a race to the bottom.

Netflix is an exception because they have so much at stake in the investment of their own products that they insist on curating and promoting, bending the algorithm in the direction they wish it to go.

When a site tries to do both (like Buzzfeed), it’s a perilous journey. The metrics and the algorithm will swallow up the best intent of taste and culture making.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Focusing on money above all else was one of my worst mistakes as a CEO

This CEO thought that having a company-wide goal centered on revenue would bring his team together. He was wrong. Driving revenue is an essential part of building a business. And for many entrepreneurs and CEOs, it’s often at the top of the list when it comes to setting goals . But should you make revenue your primary objective? At Thinkific ,  a software that allows entrepreneurs to build their own online courses , we tried this, and it failed. Read Full Story
Post a Comment
Read more

You’ll never guess Airbnb’s hottest destination for 2020. Really.

Here’s a hint: It’s in the U.S. Planning a trip in the next year? Airbnb has released its hottest destinations for 2020 —a list of cities, countries, and states across the globe that are seeing the largest year-over-year percentage growth in bookings. Of course there are gems you would expect: Hundreds of miles of palm-lined beaches in Kerala, India (which saw a 95% YOY increase), for instance, or the European cultural hot spot Bilbao, Spain (which saw a 402% YOY increase). Read Full Story
Post a Comment
Read more

Narratives about modernity

If we give an isolated community access to the internet, very quickly, the quality of life will improve. Time will be saved, research into proven solutions will produce value, and people will become connected to a larger population. Those connections will lead to productivity and learning. And, then, soon thereafter, they will become less happy. Not because they’re worse off, but because the dominant media narratives that arrive exist to make them feel insufficient, inadequate or simply jealous at how green the grass is over there. Our narrative defeats our surroundings, every time.
Post a Comment
Read more