Specialization is the shortcut
To build a high-value network, don’t focus on scale
Fifteen years ago, long before I realized how many Molly Bartons in the world I would compete with for Gmail addresses and Twitter handles, writers began to ask me how to get their book published. I used to tell them to go to the acknowledgements page of books that were similar to what they were working on, so they could learn which editors and agents that writer was working with. I would also suggest that they read authors they admire, buy their books, go to readings, and generally be effective, passionate fans. Pay it forward. Build a network. These are all analogue activities that may not be scaleable.
George Gilder (author of Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing the World) used Metcalfe’s law to articulate the importance of scale in modern business. Originally, Metcalfe’s law described the communication power of fax machines, saying that each new machine on the network exponentially increased the value of that network. More recently, Metcalfe’s law has been used to describe the value of “network effects” across millions of people made possible by Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Scale and reach are undeniably important. But now that massive social scale has been achieved, we are moving into a new era of social websites and platforms that are highly specialized. Sites like Facebook and Twitter are wonderful as a catalog of everyone—and everything that everyone is saying. But they are tools built for mass audiences with a focus on the most recently posted material. (Medium is a fantastic new exception to this.)
Today a high-value network requires the participation of specific people, not just lots of people.
This is especially true if you are creating something and looking for critical feedback on your work. You don’t want input from just anyone, but from people who are intimately familiar with what you are trying to accomplish, people who specialize in doing the same thing that you do.
Nerds have been comfortable using the internet to establish these intimate virtual communities for decades, way before bitmapping, when bulletin board systems were full of likeminded people sharing information about tornado tracking and collaborating on everything from gaming to interplanetary discovery (SETI).
But artists are just beginning to trust the internet as a way to develop collaborative relationships. In part, this is happening because the internet has given artists the ability to “pull back the veil” on their creative process and invite super-fans in early and directly. But something new and even more focused is occurring: Platforms are being developed that are tailored to the particular needs of specific creative fields and have the potential to give artists more control over the development and distribution of their work.
Take The Talkhouse, a website where bands, rather than critics, review other bands. The idea is that musicians are uniquely qualified to describe the sounds of another musician’s work, because they think and talk about music all day and hear lots of new stuff before most people. There is an authenticity in the engagement between creators that can’t be matched by marketers, critics, labels, or distributors. Their love of the craft is palpable, and because their artistic reputation is on the line, they are driven by a desire to be as honest and as accurate as possible.
“In the embattled world of modern music coverage—in which reviews are so often shrunk to the size of a fist and sensible opinions are crowded out by the din of a million voices—[The Talkhouse] stands out for its devotion to slowing down, and consolidating, a certain kind of conversation that often goes unheard.”—New York Observer
Seed & Spark is another great example of creators—in this case, filmmakers—coming together on a platform tailored to their needs, to help each other with everything from the mundane sharing of equipment to the amorphous and challenging task of building an audience.
The Talkhouse and Seed & Spark have structure and rules around the engagement on their platforms. When Lou Reed reviewed Kanye West, only Kanye had the ability to comment on what Lou said about him. On Seed & Spark, in order to be eligible for crowd-funding, filmmakers must declare who is working on the film, what they are going to make, and why they want to make it.
I was particularly happy to see The Talkhouse and Seed & Spark launch their beta sites recently, because I was driven by similar motivations when I founded Book Country a community platform for writers that works to solve two problems: How can you write the best book you are capable of? And how can you get anyone to care?
Book Country provides a structured process for revising with peer feedback—you need to read someone else’s work and give feedback, before posting your own work. The site brings like-minded writers together early in the writing process so that when they go on to publish, they are (virtually) surrounded by supportive peers who understand their book and how to describe it to potential readers.
When it works, this sort of collaboration between artists has the power to reframe traditional media entities’ approach to shaping a piece of artwork and growing the natural audience for that work.
This sort of reframing of creative industry dynamics is not new. United Artists who eventually released Pink Panther, James Bond, and Rocky, began as a rebellious collaboration between early Hollywood talents Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith. They started their own company in response to producers and distributors tightening control over creative decisions and reducing actor salaries. Richard A. Rowland, then head of Metro Pictures, proclaimed, “The inmates are taking over the asylum.” On the eightieth anniversary of United Artists, the Guardian, who covered the early history of UA, proposed “that the jokes about the idiots and the asylum be retired, and the lesson learned, that the most creative people in the picture business should do all they can to look after each other. No one else is going to do it.”
That’s what The Talkhouse, Seed & Spark, and Book Country are all doing. These sites provide highly customized tools and rules for engagement that allow artists to build high value networks with fellow artists and in some cases directly with their audiences. This may be history repeating itself in terms of reframing media industry dynamics, but today there are much better tools for effective creative collaboration. This is just the beginning of specialized social platforms that provide fertile places to develop artistic work and the early audiences who will serve as ambassadors out to wider audiences. It’s good old fashioned word of mouth, but it places the creators at the center connecting with colleagues they respect and shaping the dialogue about their own work.
Image credit: You Are Here
