Ben Thompson: evaluation

Transcript context

…You're being self deprecating here, obviously. But I think a big part of the reason, and this is behind Ben's question to you of it deserves canonical work, is the reason these are accepted truths and realities now is in large part due to your work. It is a bit humbling to be a writer because I think people would understand all those things had I not written it. I think at best, they understand that maybe a few months or at best, a year or two before it becomes common knowledge. That's just the reality of the game. The edge you can provide is usually measured in months, years, or a very low number of years. I do think Aggregation Theory should be a book. It was probably, again, more pertinent at the height of all these sorts of things. Maybe it's so pertinent now. But (1) they're just a logistical issue. I write every day. To your point, I make way more money writing every day than I would writing a book. That's number one. (2) There's a fear factor, which is people think I'm very productive, but I, in reality, have daily deadlines that spur that productivity. The absence of those daily deadlines would terrify me in terms of a book. (3) There's a second fear factor, which is that a book is frozen in time. If I would have written an Aggregation Theory book a couple of years ago, I probably would have centered it on Netflix. That ended up being wrong. It was wrong in another way that I wrote about, where content is super important. That's how you break away from aggregators, is by having high diversion content. I had the balance wrong between Netflix's aggregation effects versus the power of content, so I'm very fortunate to write that book. Whereas now, I was still wrong, but I have the medium and ability to come back and say, well, I was wrong. This is where I was wrong. What does this mean for Discovery, Time, Warner? What does this mean for Disney? What does this mean for the other platforms? That is a fear factor. (4) I think there is an aspect. Yeah, maybe it deserves a treatment, but Stratechery is very much of the Internet. I think the nature of the Internet is that it's transient, it's not permanent. Again, another thing people got wrong. I think, actually, one of the biggest mistakes Twitter made—and it's understandable, no one could have seen it at the time—Twitter should have had disappearing tweets from day one. It should have always been a just in the moment social network. I think it'd be a much better product. Honestly, I think they still do it now. People experience it and think of it as an in-the-moment product and then are stuck with this archive that induces fear, induces ruin, and reduces the facade of what it's like to be on Twitter. That's a big reason why Twitter is not what it used to be, because now people are scared. To the Aggregation Theory point, I think I've heard you make this argument before. Articulating it the way you have over the years and revising it on Stratechery, it's actually a better product than if you were to have written a book five years ago.…

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