Smiling Curve
The Smiling Curve, originally created to explain the PC market, is one of the best frameworks to understand how the Internet is transforming industries, especially publishing.
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The spate of recent acquisitions in the gaming space — Take-Two and Zynga, Microsoft and Activision, and Sony and Bungie — make sense in the context of the Smiling Curve.
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The implication of the Smiling Curve is not only that aggregators have increased economic power, but that differentiated suppliers do as well; Omni Software is an example.
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Publishers used to live at the point of integration. The value of that integration, though, is gone with the Internet, which means value flows to suppliers and aggregators.
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Ben @ Code Media on The Great Unbundling
A video of Ben presenting at Code Media.
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DistroKid, The “Publisher’s Right”, Shopify Results
Distrokid is small, but it’s a powerful example of the how distribution is not a value-add, the implications of which European publishers have yet to learn. It’s a lesson that doesn’t just apply to media, either.
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Media Monday: Bill Simmons’ HBO Show Cancelled, Axios Unveiled (Kind-of)
It’s the return of Media Monday, including the cancellation of Bill Simmons’ TV show and the unveiling of Axios, and what both say about finding value in media.
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Samsung Buys Harman International, Qualcomm Acquires NXP, The Nintendo Classic Edition
Both Samsung and Qualcomm are moving into cars: I like Samsung’s move better, but both make sense. Then, Nintendo continues to have trouble adapting to the reality of today’s market
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The FANG Playbook
The FANG companies — Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google — are far more similar than you might think. Their rise in value is no accident, and it is connected to Aggregation Theory.
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Grantland and the (Surprising) Future of Publishing
ESPN’s decision to close Grantland seems to be more evidence that there is no future outside of massive scale or one-man operations. Bill Simmons’ recent successes, though, suggest that the answer could be the exact opposite.
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Facebook and the Feed
In a week where much of the Internet was all atwitter about Mobilegeddon, Google’s pre-announced algorithm change that will favor mobile-friendly sites in mobile search results, a potentially far more impactful announcement was much more of a surprise: Facebook is tweaking the News Feed algorithm. This is a big deal for publishers in particular: according […]
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Daily Update: Samsung’s Retreat, The Uncrossable Curve?, Gawker Writers Seek to Unionize
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Daily Update: Samsung and Qualcomm, AOL: Stuck in the Middle, New York Times Reports Strong Results