DISQUS

Scripting News: Gatekeeping is a losing strategy (Scripting News)

  • RickyF · 4 months ago
    Is the implied gatekeeper of this tale Apple?
  • dave · 4 months ago
    No -- that's the danger in these pieces, everyone thinks they know who it's
    about -- but it's not about anyone in particular. It's about gatekeeping as
    a practice. If to you that means Apple, great -- but honestly I wasn't
    thinking of Apple when I wrote it.
  • Tobin Truog · 4 months ago
    Dave!

    Thank you for helping me out. I was in a conversation with a potential new customer the other day trying to explain this very concept and what I was saying just wasn't getting through. I have previously used the example of the big corporate coffee shop that moves in across the street from the local coffee shop and they BOTH end up successful, but I think this gets more to the point of connection / participation and "give before you get." Thanks for the interesting take.
  • dave · 4 months ago
    Excellent!

    I almost specifically said that you could refer to this piece if in a
    meeting someone insists that you must go through a gatekeeper to get to the
    market. Being more creative will often get better results. For example, when
    I did the rollout of bit.ly I went to Marshall, because I thought he would
    understand and like the product and find the stuff that made it interesting,
    well -- interesting. It turned out very well, of course. But the
    conventional wisdom was that RWW, his pub, was not a gatekeeper. I don't
    think it is, but I don't think anyone really is a gatekeeper, it's kind of
    an illusion. The mistake is to act on the illusion.

    Glad I was able to help and good luck with your potential customer! :-)
  • Jim "Genuine" Turner · 4 months ago
    You went to Marshall not as a gatekeeper but as an amplifier. He may not have got in you to the cool kids group, but he had a larger audience in the genre you were looking to reach. The gatekeeper would have been someone that allowed you to have Marshall's ear.
  • Mark Essel · 4 months ago
    Maybe I'm overly affectionate of the Soup Nazi analogy here, but its a great statement. The relay provider, or portal of discovery, has been a sustainable creation. It aids in our navigation of free flowing information. I especially like your point that any attempt to wall off information, while it may be temporarily effective, is immediately an act of self obsolescence.
  • Sophmom · 4 months ago
    Great post. I've thought for a long time that the laws of physics apply to interactivity. Your water analogy is spot on.
  • manielse · 4 months ago
    Hubs are always more powerful than spokes. That said, without the spokes, the hubs become less powerful. The same holds true on the Gatekeeper analogy. If the "influencers" no longer have advantages of information or an lack of audience they become less powerful. There will always be an elite that helps a circle (usually already in the elite).
  • isilverthe · 4 months ago
    Very depressingly optimistic this is why I fallow you.
  • spinchange · 4 months ago
    We willingly return to what sends us away; We willfully flee what keeps us contained.
  • StephenPickering · 4 months ago
    As long as there is a true free market gatekeeping is a losing strategy. And for now the internet, the communications Revolution, is the ultimate free market. But in industries where there is a false vacuum, ie Telecom, Financial, gatekeeping still works. This is why, although bandwidth prices halve each year, my comcast and cellphone bills keep going up each year. It's not because Comcast and AT&T are evil, it's because regulation, the sword of Damocles, keeps capital from flowing into competition. Now that sword is thrusting into healthcare. It won't be long until that slippery slope finds it careening into the internet itself.
  • benjaminjtaylor · 4 months ago
    Well said! Anil Dash alluded to "gatekeepers"in a recent video interview with Big Think. It's good to see this sentiment echoed elsewhere. Great post.
  • Bob Calder · 3 months ago
    Journalists are gatekeepers. Their traditional function is to filter information so I wonder if the Obama-as-Hitler-Socialist-Fascist-Commie influence would have got past them and into the collective ear of the susceptible.