The Golden Fleece

I’m hoping part two of the latest Gillmor Gang will prove more interesting.

If you remember the Jason and the Argonauts tale, you might know how Jason succeeded in conquest over the Seed men by casting a stone at one, who thought it was his neighbor, and letting them all kill each other.

That’s what Steve Gillmor seems to do by letting the fellas discuss the importance of Google algorithms and whether site owners can get a cut by having search engines bid for their site search.

If Steve would have put the “knockoff” Cheerios down for a sec I know what he would have said.

It’s not whether Google’s algorithms hold up, it’s whether they can garner more stock in the conversation with all their attention data.

The winners of the future are not the best technologies. We’ll all be able to plug into those the same way we plug into an electrical outlet.

The winners are the services which add value to the conversations happening throughout distributed web networks.

These networks and conversations are fluid and changing constantly in response to our gestures.

Those who don’t get this are either thinking too hard or just not enough.

In a similar way that facial and hand gestures are a meaningful supplement to spoken conversations, the gestures which we talk about with attention are the metadata of the conversations happening on the web.

That equates to economic power because markets are conversations.

I agree with Jason Calacanis that many in the SEO business are trying to game this system, but I disagree when he says the system works. People are trying to game the system because it does not work. It just works better than the previous systems.

I can prove it Jason. I’ll write a better piece on a new cell phone than Engadget and see which shows up higher on Google.

No. Those dynamics are only part of the game.

The richer system envelops us with answers using our data and our network’s data in a chameleon like fashion, never static like Google. That’s child’s play.

Jason(Argonaut) succeeded in getting the Golden Fleece but was fickle and left Medea for another Princess.

Likewise, in the shorter term companies may succeed by amassing link attention.

The true winners won’t be seeking the Golden Fleece at all. They will be removing the barriers and letting the crystal waters flow in, filtered and clean, Pure Conversation.

Can Media companies “get out of the way”

Jeff Jarvis mentions a post from a colleague of mine, Scott Anderson, about Big Media’s failure to successfully embrace online communities.
Jeff likes to quote Craig Newmark of cragislist, saying Media needs to “get out of the way” and enable the end users.
Of course he’s right, but that is a two-part show.
1. Recognize the need to get out of the way.
2. Get out of the way.
Obviously, there are intelligent people working for these companies who understand that. Scott Anderson proves that, so let’s assume the first step is or will be successful.
Part two involves actual action. These companies are huge ships to steer in a day when you need a PT Boat to be competitive.
Let’s assume that issue can be overcome. There is one final mine field. Wall Street.
Getting out of the way and enabling communities on the internet is the same disintermediation** that is making eBay, Craigslist and others successful. That success has a short term (at least) negative effect on the traditional “cut” for Big Media, like classified ads.
Since many of the companies are publicly traded, the shareholders are going to have to accept that there will be a short term hit from within on some of their traditional strengths in order to be a long term player.
No war was won without the winning side conceding some loss for the end goal of victory.
Will the shareholders accept that these companies may need to damage currently successful practices for a long term goal? I don’t know.

**Disintermediation and media both stem from the latin medius, or middle. Interesting, considering the strategy suggested here is to get out of the way. It seems to me that we are asking media to pick a side.