Today, Techcrunch reports that Cnet's traffic is dropping like a baloon losing air.
Today, Chartreuse put up a password so you have to earn the ability to read him. What? He put up a quiz about his posts for the last 9 months. Without the right answers, you don't get the new password. I was a regular peruser of his posts and couldn't come close to answering his questions.
You have to pause and think about that. Purposefully tearing down what you built vs not being able to hold your position no matter how you rearrange the deck chairs.
Point is though, TV Networks, Radio Networks, even the cable world is being obliterated because of all the options out there. Chris Anderson had it right in his Wired article The Rise and Fall of the Hit
It’s altogether possible that NSync’s first-week record may never be broken. The band could go down in history not just for launching Timberlake but also for marking the peak of the hit bubble – the last bit of manufactured pop to use the 20th century’s fine-tuned marketing machine to its fullest before the gears were stripped and the wheels fell off.
Cnet aggregates information too much to sell advertising. Chartreuse is doing something interesting because the big hit numbers are not as productive as producing qualitatively better experiences for each person. Use technology in some ways and you can scale it, but Cnet isn't that kind of business model. Movies, newspapers, radio, TV - and internet sites are largely effected by the interesting empowering effects of the 'net, as well increasingly open social norms.
What does this have to do with CBGB moving to Las Vegas? It means that the easy road to success of being more open to fringe interests is also under asault. It was easy for CBGB to be 'entrepreneurial' and let the market determine its niche because Punk music had no where else to go. It was far from an acceptable social norm, which became a galvanizing force, which made Punk punky. It was possible to be remarkable by just giving the Ramones and Talking Heads a stage. CBGB was supposed to be 'Country Blue Grass and Blues'. Now, they are institutionalized, along with that easy stategy, to Las Vegas. Being on the fringe made you noticable before, now it won't. Now we actually have to do something - we have to compete more - to create value.
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