A Precursory Look at Reed’s Law

So for the past few days, on Fred Wilson‘s blog, there have been comment after comment about what to about, well comments.

A good deal of this has to do with what to do with Newspapers in the Internet ecosystem, and their relationship to their readers, especially as their print medium is dying off and changing.  Already, the world’s oldest newspaper still in print (since 1645), the Post-och Inrikes Tidningars, of Sweden, only prints one copy. It is otherwise distributed online, and is a portent of the way newspapers are to go.

Beyond a deep historical analysis (to be discussed later, because it is extremely important, how newspapers historically co-op technologies), one of the most significant changes  to newspapers is the way they define their economic system.  Currently, we define newspapers in accordance to Sarnoff’s Law, which states that the power of Newspaper’s, among other sources of verified content, Growth is N. Therefore the power of their network’s equivalent to N. (N is their number of users.)  The More Credible the media outlet, in the most languages/most translations, the higher the N. It is effectively defines the monetary value of a broadcast out only medium.

Even though ideally, for historical reasons I do not want to be saying this (for reasons to be made clear another time, involving the creation of photography and the telegraph, especially international telegraph in story of media and the news), the internet threw a wrench in all of this.  Reed’s Law states, that the power of communal networks are in fact more valuable, in a exponential way: 2^N-N-1.

As we find ourselves parts of more networks, that 2^N number (N-1 gets compressed away), seems to be wrong in an era of many networks doing link-sharing from certain central sources.  This includes Mass Media, which is turmoil because it’s definition of how it holds a profit and an audience is in fact defined by  N.  Since it is now inside a network where in fact N can be exponentially larger than previously though and be passed through multiple channels, it isn’t clear how to make money through N, let alone the rest of the networks where there  are also seemingly unknown amounts of N’s occurring.

The first step for newspapers and other Mass Media channels (and I would put the Huffington Post and other extremely large Portal Blogs in this, which get exclusive coverage about their industries, sometimes before print distribution,) is to start thinking about the fact that there is not now 2^N Networks,  but in fact a maximum of N^N, that for every face that sees your article, s/he could choose one or many ways to share that point of contact- and that the maximum level of points to see that article is the maximum amount of networks that person is a part of.

Why N^N? Because verifiable sources still have to maintain N worth of growth affiliated with their brand in a networked world. For each individual n subset of N, a Media organization has to prove the same sort of outward bound credibility as a traditional medium of say newsprint before the Internet-except that credibility now exists within many powerful networks. That credibility is easily compounded by the sheer existence of these networks, or easily damaged.

This means two things- one, the power of multi-point networks is growing larger and more dynamic (see FriendFeed as a way for cross-pollination among many different network points, if one point is shared through one network it can be shared again through another type of network, making the power of FriendFeed immense), and two, that sources of original content, particularly sources of verified original content, are necessary for the growth of any multi-point system.  Without them, there is nothing to feed through the system and to create and build new content on.  Good sources of content strengthen the interdependency of these different networks and how they rely on each other.

Even though newspapers and other forms of Mass Media feel very weak right now, in the long term, the system as it stands to grow will be a boon to their long term growth once they learn how to handle the new world.  In the meantime, they should look to see how their past touches with new technology influenced their growth as conglomerates.  But that is another post. 

NB: One- I claim Carp’s Law  or Carp- ____ Law if this ever gets to Wikipedia Level/Academia Level stature

Two-  For N^N, I realize is only perfunctory mathematically, and could n fact be wrong, the same way that there is actyally an N-1 in Reed’s Law  If someone out there would kindly look over the math, that would be nice and I am graciously thanking you in advance

For more information about Reed’s Law and Sarnoff’s Law, as well as Metcalfe’s Law, go here.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Virtual Worlds Show Promise for Newspaper Communities (pbs.org)
• Mary Ellen Harte and John Harte: Hybridizing Newspapers with the Internet: a New Model (huffingtonpost.com)
• Media World: HuffPo finds original reporting is not as easy as it looks (dailyfinance.com)
• Washington Post meets Huffington Post (news.cnet.com)
• What Happens When a Town Loses Its Newspaper? (time.com) (Sad one)