The one point that stuck with me most from these two readings is how rapidly the marketplace is changing, due in large part to the explosion of opportunities afforded us by the internet and other digital mediums. The first reading really laid out a sort of ultimatum for corporations, urging them to start focusing more on the people who will be using their goods, and stop seeing them as statistics or just consumers. It set forth 95 points for businesses to change their business models, most of which focused upon just how inhuman and mechanical the communication that corporations provide to their consumers is. This point really struck a chord with me because I can’t even count the number of times I have been frustrated by being on hold on the phone listening to some bullshit line about how much the company cares about my business. One of the 95 points that really stood out to me was “ We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take one reporter from The Wall Street Journal.” To me that sums up the biggest point in this article – we are the people who are buying your products – we deserve more respect.
The second article was about how we as a culture are moving away from being focused solely on hits in terms of films, music, books etc. and how business models are changing alongside that. I found it really interesting how they analyzed businesses like iTunes and Netflix and gave statistics showing how much of their business comes from big hits, and how much comes from smaller films, songs from artist’s back catalogues, etc. I think that it is really cool how these sort of businesses are allowing people to dig past the top 40 hits and really find the good stuff. What is even cooler to me is that they have found a way to make money off of doing it.
I think that it is time that people studying communications began to take a closer look at the open-source software movement. This is because as we found in the readings people are beginning to get sick of big businesses and mainstream companies telling them what to consume, how to consume it and when it should be consumed. The open source software movement is offering an alternative to this, allowing people to more or less call their own shots, and learn how to better the system not by talking with the companies, but by talking with other open source users.
Discussion questions:
1.) Do you think that as businesses such as iTunes continue to grow, society will eventually move away from the “top 40″ culture that we have been living in for so long?
2.) With the rise of more consumer-centered business models, do you think that it will begin to force more and more business to switch to this model in order to compete?
