Let me explain with a silly example scenario: In asia "Para Para" is
or was a popular popmusic/dance trend, while in western areas this is
almost unknown. Now do a search on MySpace for Para Para and you will
find some western fans of this as well. If their number grows, MySpace
will know this much earlier than anybody else, and they could and
would sell this information. They won't sell it to anybody on this
list, of course, but only to those, who will be able to pay much more
for it. Or maybe they don't sell it at all but get into the
Para-Para-business themselves similar to how Ebay bought Paypal.
Now what does this mean: For example it will change the job of the
trend scouts and A&R people. They will look at MySpace, but they will
always be at least one step behind MySpace.
OTOH the real trend scouts now are the users of MySpace, working for
them without being paid at all, without even recognizing that they
work for MySpace by building networks.
Yea the name Myspace is irritating and lame.. it's liek how windows
names your computer.. my computer.. like you weren't sure of who owned
it.. or is it irnonic since a large number of windows users in business
technically don't own the computer.
Yes, it's actually very simular with computers and software.
Commercial software more and more goes into a direction of being a
*service* instead of a finished product. You subscribe to MS-Office,
you don't buy it in the future. That's one of the reasons why
personally I only use Free and Open Source Software and why I promote
its use by giving free support on various mailing lists or websites
but not on MySpace. ;) There was some talk about elitist behaviour
here recently (livecoding, "no more myspace" etc.), so I'd like to
point out that I'm not promoting Free Software and I'm not warning
about MySpace out of an elitist view (like "Windows users are stupid,
MySpace is for kiddies" etc.) but from a deeply anti-elitist
motivation.
There will never be a sole social netowrk provider.. why?? because
there will allways be those who wish to reject the mainstream and will
form there own communities.
I hope this will be true, but it won't realize itself automatically.
Ciao
--
Frank Barknecht _ ______footils.org_ __goto10.org__
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