Or maybe that should be, borderful.
Here is a quick and colorful illustration of 5,000 years of historical conquest centered around the Middle East.
10/9/2006
Borderless History
The Long Tail in Micronews
A quick recap: the Long Tail was first conceptualized by Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine.
He observed that niche titles, when aggregated, can actually generate more revenue than the Big Hits (see Power Laws). And as a result, several tech firms such as Amazon, Apple and Google have successfully profited off of this ironically “Big Boutique” business model.
A recent article in Slate discusses how Bloomberg News has succeeded during a time when traditional newspapers have faltered. And one passage in particular stands out:
To use an old 1990s software cliché, Bloomberg excels in producing granular news. It doesn’t matter much to your pocketbook if the price of a barrel of oil moves 10 cents, nor is a record of that movement likely to find a place in your daily newspaper. But fortunes are made on smaller price swings than that, which means very small audiences will pay handsomely for the micro-news Bloomberg delivers inside of micro-news cycles. This turns the daily newspaper concept inside out: Dailies strive to discover and report news that appeals to the many. For that reason, nobody should live on a steady diet of Bloomberg. You’d get scurvy. Still, the Bloomberg operation has earned Gerald Loeb Awards, bestowed mostly by a panel of other business journalists, for its work.
Via Paul Kedrosky.
The Economics of You
The Stalwart raises an interesting point about defeating paparazzi practices. Beat them at their own game. Hire some photographers to take pictures of you and then sell these to publishers — and in the process, undercut the ever resourceful photophiliacs.
The timing is interesting as 30 baseball’s signed by Pete Rose were recently auctioned off. The back story has an interesting twist. Rose originally signed these balls, inscribing them with “I’m sorry I bet on baseball” for free. When the owner died, they were put up for auction and sold for $1,000 a piece. And the kicker is, Rose now sells similarly inscribed baseballs on his website for $299.
Which reminds me of a hypothetical scenario I’d be interested in studying: the inflation and subjective value of autographs. Le us say that Michael Jordan got bored one day and decided to go to a sporting good store. He bought 20 basketballs and took them home. He then sat down and autographed each one of them. And in turn sold them on eBay. I think that this would be an easy to understand illustration of how inflation works. Because each and every time he sells basketballs, the relative value decreases (at least it would if based directly on scarcity/supply).