“Media products act like solidarity goods – a permanent economic class of goods that become more valuable the more they are consumed. So, if no one sees it, it’s not worth anything. The more it spreads, the more eyeballs it accrues, the more its worth.”
For people who liked my final Poptimist column, this quote is the “replication” perspective in a nutshell. Not that it doesn’t apply to imitative stuff too, but if this is the criteria for value and worth, then things that spread by imitation will always be less economically efficient than things which spread by replication.
The thing that keeps being missed out, it seems to me, is that spread only increases the chance something will enter your filter as a strong signal (one shared by lots of people you know). But once something IS in that filter as a strong signal the extent of its shared-ness OUTSIDE the filter is largely irrelevant.
In other words, economically social media is all about spreading at scale, but from a subjective cultural perspective, stuff your small group does WITHOUT it spreading is as valuable/important/good (insert yr adjective of choice) as stuff your small group does which has already spread.
Social media, basically, is really good for small-group projects. Only talking about it in terms of memes, virality, mass spreadability, etc. does it (and the culture it creates) a huge disservice. “Awesome” is not a function of scale.
(via tomewing)
