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Michael Orshan wrote:
Some of this is over my head, but I do see something missing that I'd like
to add. What I have been doing, and it is recognized as different, is using
journalism to guide people to a social network where they will find people
of like mind. Now this is my assumption...that people of like mind will
trade together. This can be for money or mind, but trade.
I suppose this depends on what you mean by trade. If you define it as
some sort of transaction like: person A delivers X to person B and
person B delivers Y to person A, then I don't think it's true. I.e. if
you define trade that way, then people of _like_ mind will not
necessarily trade.
I say that because of the well-defined nature of trade. If X and Y
must be well-defined, then the majority of like-minded people won't show
any _more_ instances of trading than we see amongst different-minded people.
I think part of the reason for this is that trade (where X and Y are
well-defined) comes about mostly because people value X and Y
differently. E.g. Bob has plenty of cows but no sheep and Joe has
plenty of sheep but no cows; so they trade. If the two people are
really of like-mind, then trading will be at a minimum because the two
people are most likely to _already_ have equivalent resources and
equivalent values.
What's more likely is that Bob and Joe are of _different_ minds. Bob
really doesn't value sheep very highly and Joe really doesn't value cows
very highly. So, Bob and Joe don't share the same values, which opens
the door for trading.
There's room for gradation, of course. If Bob and Joe are too
different, then they can't trade. E.g. if Bob values sheep at zero and
Joe values cows at zero, then they won't trade. And, as above, if
they're too similar, then there's nothing to trade. So, as always,
there's an interesting region of complexity in between the two boring
extremes.
Now just because some content is out there doesn't mean people will flock to
it. That requires advertising and traffic. Is there something in the model
you are discussing that regards moving traffic to a network?
If you imagine a sub-group-aware advertising spectrum from totally
unaware, where you're exposed to snippets about topics totally unrelated
to whatever you're doing at the time, to captive, where you try to sell
something to someone you already know _wants_ whatever you're selling.
Movie trailers are a good example in between. When you rent an action
flick, the trailers on the DVD are usually for other action flicks.
But, they can also use other dimensions like other films from the same
production company.
Ultimately advertising in a sub-group aware way is cross selling,
targeting current customers with slightly different or complementary
products. And the key lies in maximizing the overlap between the
sub-space (of interesting dimensions) that characterizes a network and
the sub-space that characterizes the network you want them to come to.
- --
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
I have an existential map. It has 'You are here' written all over it. --
Steven Wright
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