The introduction of property rights with strong guarantees would certainly improve the situation for creators on the web. But in addition the legal structure of the platforms themselves also needs to be rethought.
Category: Digital Business
A Quick Illustration of Twitter’s Flaws
An observation: My attentionecono.me piece Attention Theft vs. Relevance as a Business Model was shared on Twitter some 30-odd times. But according to my stats on Medium, the story was only viewed 23 times (Medium also provides a KPI called Reads which is an approximation of the number of people who actually read it; that number is even…… Continue reading A Quick Illustration of Twitter’s Flaws
Polarizing Brands & Products Win
A slightly edited version of my post at the Stratechery forum (subscribers only). It’s a response to Ben Thompson’s very good piece and the related exponent.fm podcast episode. In those works, Thompson develops the argument that the internet changes what kind of products are going to be successful. Namely the ‘best products’ instead of, as formerly, those that manage to…… Continue reading Polarizing Brands & Products Win
Stripe’s Path to Become Infrastructure
It’s a good place to be an infrastructure provider. It’s even better to have the potential to become a generally relied-upon infrastructure provider. Particularly if investors accredit that potential to you. That’s the case for Stripe Inc. which just raised a new funding round at almost twice the valuation of its last round, according to the New York…… Continue reading Stripe’s Path to Become Infrastructure
Yochai Benkler on the Company of the Future (follow-up)
The company of the future topic (which I recently tackled here and here) sticks around. Why a second follow-up? Because I just came across a paper (PDF) by (the highly esteemed!) Yochai Benkler. It goes by the title Peer production, the commons, and the future of the firm so it naturally grabbed my attention, particularly for the…… Continue reading Yochai Benkler on the Company of the Future (follow-up)
Follow-up: Challenges for The Company of the Future
This week I wrote an essay, examining how the company of the future might look like. After dissecting six trends which I assume are indicative of said future, I eventually arrived at a (rough) outline: Our company of the future will be rather small as it has a comparably narrow scope. On the other hand, it will be…… Continue reading Follow-up: Challenges for The Company of the Future
Companies Will Improve Gig Workers’ Experience Over Time
A few days ago I tackled the common pushback against gig economy platforms (or talent aggregators as I refer to them) from a macro-perspective. Today, I want to focus on the micro level in a b2b environment¹. One of the biggest issues currently discussed with regards to the gig economy – as it currently presents itself, one ought…… Continue reading Companies Will Improve Gig Workers’ Experience Over Time
Internet Media Business Demonstrated by The Verge
As The Verge is working on a relaunch of its site, Nilay Patel published a great piece that lifts the curtain on the business model of a modern internet media company. Whether you are in the media business or in online marketing, you can certainly learn a few things from it. Here, I summarize my major takeaways.…… Continue reading Internet Media Business Demonstrated by The Verge
On Pushback Against Gig Economy Platforms
A week ago I wrote about the the Small/Big Dualism of Networked, Decentralized Systems. In there, I talked about some of the ‘gig economy platforms’ like Uber or AirBnB (I dubbed them aggregators in conformity with the article’s theme). Because I took a broad, systemic view in the piece I remained very neutral. I wrote: If we…… Continue reading On Pushback Against Gig Economy Platforms
Rough Notes 