Bootstrapping the Long Tail in Peer to Peer
Bernardo Huberman and Fang Wu from HP labs have just released a paper describing a way to help P2P networks deal well with niche content. “It is difficult to satisfy the diversity of demand without having to resort to client server architectures and specialized network protocols… We solve this by creating an incentive mechanism that ensures the existence of a diverse set of offerings regardless of content and size. While the system delivers favorite mainstream content, it can also provide files that constitute small niche markets which only in the aggregate can generate large revenues.”
Going to dive into the research of Huberman and Wu during the following days, as their work seem to complement the thinking about p2p incentives we’re doing in Kaplak. This is what I call important stuff.
Thomas Magnussen is a British-Danish actor with a voice talent. His first job was a minor part in Tom Hanks’ tv-series Band of Brothers (2001), and since then his work has been a mix of theatrical plays, voice work and a number of roles in film and television. He has done a few international commercials. On his website, Thomas uses this video to introduce himself :
Thomas was kind enough to send me a quicktime file of the film, which I uploaded to YouTube (whose true merits we discussed briefly here), because I think it is important to show the video here as well. When you expressly put a text, an image or a video (like in this case) into a new context, it makes it stand out in a new way and helps create new meaning. And create meaning is what we want to do, because this creates value for this particular spot on the internet. I’m surprised, with Thomas’ resume, that I couldn’t find him on YouTube or in other places, because this kind of activity helps build traffic for his website, and it doesn’t cost anything.
Kaplak : Can you tell us a little about yourself and your niche business? How did you get involved with your line of work?
Thomas Magnussen (TM) : I am an actor, trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, working freelance in both theatre and films. I have several years of experience in doing various voicework such as: Documentary speaks, cartoon dubbing, voiceovers and commercial speaks. As I am bi-lingual English-Danish I’m equally skilled in both languages, and therefore work in both.
Kaplak : What kind of digital product do you produce (if any)?
TM : The digital products I produce are primarily the above mentioned voice related works, but I would be open to any idea which could involve acting related jobs, such as e-learning products for instance.
Kaplak : What constitute the greatest opportunity for your business on the internet?
TM : The greatest opportunity the internet offers me is that I can reach out to potentiel clients/employers in every part of the world by simply being visible via my website.
Kaplak : What are the greatest challenge?
TM : The greatest challenge is to find out where to focus my attention and how to get people to find out that I exist.
As an actor, Thomas is a hired gun. He is primarily a freelancer. The main portion of his work is done for clients, i.e. other creative producers and companies. Even when hired by a theatre, jobs are per project and run for a limited time. In several respects, this makes him different from the hobby-oriented “just for fun” niche producer and the professional-level producer we’ve met earlier on this blog.
First, he doesn’t usually own the digital end products he helps create. There could be exceptions to this, and surely there’s a lot of convergence happening, where a one day freelancer may be a producer on his own terms the other day (I’ve worked like that myself for years). As a “classic” freelancer though, one doesn’t usually gain rights to the work produced, but more often has to give them up.
Second, Thomas’ primary problem is visibility. But not towards people who buy the end digitial product (still, we keep out all points about convergence for now), but towards his clients, the producers all over the world, who want the product he offers. In other words, to get in touch with the producers who will want to hire him, if they knew he existed.
To sum up, it’s not the visibility for “end customers”, transport of data og payments which are Thomas’ challenges. In this sense, at first glance, he’s not an obvious Kaplak customer. But still he’s a very attractive customer for Kaplak. Why? Because he has a website! And he has something to sell, besides his acting product.
Thomas’ website is right now not much more but a showcase of his previous work, a curriculum vitae and some contact information. But it is also (or could be) an entry point to Thomas’ fan base or network. These people are valuable customers for the products, which Thomas’ acting efforts help produce, and possibly also for other types of related products. Imagine, that Thomas could help sell one of his recent projects, i.e. James Barclay’s next feature film Aurum, via his website. Imagine that the entire cast on this film (most actors have their own webpages) could help sell the film via their websites. Not only would this be great marketing news for the producer, but could also help provide a little extra for each actor.
Kogt i Roen is a Danish comedy band based in Skive, a town situated in northwestern Jutland in Denmark. The band name is difficult to translate directly. It is Danish slang which could imply that the band members have stayed out too long in the sun… So far the band have made three CD’s of songs and acts, of which all tracks are available from their website.
Mikkel Christensen, who incidentally also run the hosting company which hosts Kaplak.com, is a member of the band, and we caught him between two jobs to get his take on what kind of project Kogt i Roen is.
Kaplak : Can you tell us a little about yourself, your niche community and/or business?
Mikkel Christensen (MC) : Our music is solely for fun. We basically want to have some fun and want to share our joy with others. If we can get people to “donate” a few Danish kroner each time they download our music, it only makes us happy. We don’t expect to get rich from it. We call our genre for Standup Rock. I think we spend no more than a few weeks every year on our hobby.
My company is the complete opposite. We are professionals and among the best. We don’t compromise with quality, and when we engage in something, we do it wholeheartedly, or not at all.
Kaplak : How did you get involved with your community/business?
MC : I really don’t remember. I have been in this business since my early teen-days.
Kaplak : What kind of digital product do you produce (if any)?
MC : We produce digital entertainment :)
Kaplak : What constitute the greatest opportunity for your business on the internet? What is the greatest challenge?
MC : Nothing really, we don’t expect to earn any profit from our music but if the opportinuity emerges we will certainly take advantage of it.
The first thing that strikes me from Mikkel’s answers is that Kogt i Roen is a completely different type of niche producer, in comparison with DigDoc Film Production, which we met last week. Where DigDoc is a professional “expert-driven” company working hard to create documentaries which do sell, Kogt i Roen is a completely hobby-based project, which do not critically need to earn money on their music and acts.
We’ve seen, that DigDoc’s end products were directly and entirely digital in their nature, i.e. films, videos, audio and photography. Kogt i Roen’s digital product (the music and acts) may perhaps be said to be almost a biproduct of the band getting together for a lot of fun. The “real product” is the gig. The music files are also used on the band’s website to “sell” the gigs. As both a biproduct and something used to promote the band, the band apparently can afford to give the music away for free. Or perhaps more simply, because it doesn’t cost the band anything extra to put up the songs anyway.
It’s difficult to estimate the global appeal of something as “local” as Kogt i Roen. However, there are Danes everywhere in the world, and the band’s humour may find appeal anywhere, especially if the word is spread by likeminded, exiled Danes from northern Jutland via networks of interlinked personal websites, forum posts and social networks such as MySpace or Facebook. The website is in Danish only, however, as well as most of the band’s lyrics and acts, which supposedly limits it’s audience to Danes and Danish-speaking almost exclusively, although some songs such as the English-worded, Iraq War-critical Mr. George Bush may find broader appeal.
What’s more important however, is that there’s a lot of likeminded bands globally. A lot of people simply play and enjoy music (and standup) as their hobby. It just so happens, that the internet makes it very easy to make your music publicly available while you’re at it. While the band do not necessarily need to make a million on their music (those days of the “hit economy” seems counted anyway), their product (and many, many other products, which are similar to it in “localness”) may help contribute value to other products, so much so, that it may turn in some extra income. Even though Mikkel understates any need for this, even an amateur band has costs to pay, including the website and gear for the band, so a little extra may not be what drives the band, but may come in handy, while they’re at it.
To create a surplus of value, which goes beyond the “cost per song” economy of the industrial model, the trick is to reach the creative audience who need to tap into this wealth of material. And then to give them access and allow them to rip, mix and burn what they like. In some cases this creative audience are hobby producers such as Kogt i Roen themselves, but it could also be more professionally oriented producers, who are able to ask a higher price for their product, and therefore to pay a higher price for their “material” in return. We’ll have to see if this analysis holds up, when we put it further to the test.
Kogt i Roen is not an ideal first customer for Kaplak. The band doesn’t feel the “pain” too hard – there’s no imminent need for greater visibility or financing. However, the band is a shining example of the creativity being unfolded all over the internet, simply because it can be made accessible very cheaply. They, however, and the many, many other hobby producers of the web could be slightly better off, if they were able to tap into the surplus of value they create by giving away their music for free.
Kaplak need not motivate a hobby producer customer like this band so much (it won’t work anyway, as they don’t do it for money or fame) but rather simply demonstrate, that it is possible to earn a little extra just as easily, as it is to make their product publicly accessible.
The first potential customer to test our assumptions about what niche businesses look like is Hilke Elisabeth Saggau of DigDoc Film Production, which (among other things) have specialized in documentaries on archaelogical digs. In 2006 she produced the remarkable documentary So süüt dat ut – Ausgrabungen in Hüsby (English title That’s the way it is – The excavation at Hüsby), which follows the dig of a bronze age burial mound through more than a year.
Elisabeth agreed to answer a few questions, and I’ve decided to quote her at length, because her answers give great insights into the life, work and challenges of an expert documentary producer.
Kaplak: Can you tell us a little about yourself, your niche community and your business?
Hilke Elisabeth Saggau (HES) : As a media producer I see myself not sitting in a niche but walking barefoot on a rocky yet scenic path. My various current clients have one thing in common: they can pay me only little or no money at all. Among others my topics are history, archaeology, ethnology, arts, religion and politics.
Kaplak: How did you get involved with your business?
HES : Growing up in the 50′es on a remote estate in Holstein, TV was my only window to the world. I always wanted to climb through that window and become a filmmaker myself. But I was born too early – film cameras were still expensive and unwieldy, and filmmaking was men´s business anyway. At least plan B worked out and I became an archaeologist. When video equipment eventually became affordable I bought a camera and an editing programme and started filmmaking in the late 90′es. In 2004 I got a chance to take part in FilmTrain, a two year’s German-Danish Interreg project for media start ups. In 2005 I founded DigDoc Film Production as an independent filmmaker.
Kaplak : What kind of digital product do you produce?
HES : I produce mainly video documentaries, but also music clips, image films and experimentals. Recently I started producing audio files for a digital tourist guide.
With co-producer Moses Merkle I just finished a 1h documentary “From Kiel to east of Warsaw” on the Australian musician Phil Conyngham. Also with Moses Merkle I am editing footage which we shot in Kosova. With editor Imke Scholvin-Watts I am working on a 1h documentary on the revival of a historic ferryboat on the Eider river. With Ahmed Rashid Mohamed I am working on Arabic subtitles and an additional Arabic booklet for my documentary “That’s the way it is” (2006). Moreover I am doing a very time and energy consuming research for a new documentary on the history of Buddhism in Schleswig-Holstein.
Kaplak : What, in your opinion constitute the greatest opportunities for your business on the internet?
HES : The distribution of my products will be easier. No need for burning DVDs, buying envelopes printing covers und bills, buying stamps… I could probably save time, sell my products for less money and still have a better profit. Probably much more people will come across my products and have an easier, direct access.
Kaplak : What is in your opinion the greatest problem for your business on the internet?
HES : Right now there still seem to be technical problems in launching my films. The access via mobile phone has to be improved, especially with regard to my audio tourist guide. People who are interested in the topic of my products tend to be very old fashioned when it comes to digital equipment and are reluctant to buy or to use it.
Elisabeth is an example of a niche producer who fits our customer profile near perfectly. She is an expert in her field. She has a recognizable problem, and one we’d like to help out with (earning enough money). She produces high-quality films. She has a website and seeks to promote her productions online, yet it is difficult to find information about her film and subject matter (visibility problems). She has interested markets globally (there are archaeologists, film festivals (of which So süüt dat ut has participated in a handful) and historically interested audiences all over the world), and therefore potentially could connect to and open new markets.
In addition to these things, there are a few other important insights to note. The first is the old-fashionedness and resistance of her market, which could be a problem. Are her customers currently using the internet to obtain films like this? No. Will they?
It’s also obvious that she is involved with a lot of different projects, so there’s something which will or could appeal to different kinds of markets, which means there’s a greater chance at least some productions will fly. It’s also interesting to note the conception of the internet as a means to save time, and the technical infancy of some product solutions, which reflects the insecurities of a new media landscape : what technologies will fly, and how? What formats should be used, so that customers will be able to receive and get the picture in the other end? This is also related to the need for subtitling, for translating a local language to languages spoken and understood at the receiving end (in this case, audiences in Arabic-speaking countries).
Lastly but not least, Elisabeth bears witness to the media revolution which has made digital cameras and other means of production so inexpensive and accessible, that it is even possible to create the films she produce.
At Kaplak we’ve adopted the use of the term ‘niche’ in order to describe an aspect of the industrial economy, even though it is quite insufficient to describe the changes and challenges we mean to describe. We’ve already gotten a clear definition of ‘niche’ from Chris Anderson, which is that ‘niche is something which interests few people passionately’, in contrast to mainstream, which is what many people are moderately interested in.
However, this is looking at things from the viewpoint of an industrial economy, not from the perspective of the people and businesses who live and experience a particular field of expertise, meeting and selling to particular customers.
Inevitably, to begin with we’ll have to use the vocabulary of the industrial economy to describe what’s happening in the new economy of a digitally connected world. Along the way we’ll find if the meaning of the terms we use change to mean something else, or if we need to invent completely new concepts to describe what’s happening.
If we want to understand how niches work, we need to get in touch with you, who may be our future user and customer. What do your online activities entail? What do you produce? How do you sell it? What are your greatest opportunities and challenges? To paraphrase Steve Blank, “opinion is inside the building, data is outside the building”. This is what we need our mailing list for. We hope to obtain your help to give us a refreshing reality check on “what life is about on the slim end of the long tail”. If you’d like to help out, you can do this, by signing up on our mailing list here. We’ll get in touch.
This blog will keep on investigating the challenges we face, not just theoretically. With your help, we’ll seek to unfold more examples of online niche communities and businesses which shed more light on the day-to-day methods, practices and challenges in what we (so far) refer to as branches of a global “niche” economy.
This just in from Chris Anderson :
