The key insight of Kevin Kelly is that if you are a metal band you don’t optimize for the number of listeners on spotify. You don’t try to please everyone but you can focus on providing value to a niche audience that can personally interact with you.
It’s possible to build products that aren’t for a mass audience but get funded by true fans. That might be obvious today in 2020 but in 2008 when the article was written there was no patreon, kickstarter, onlyfans or substack. There a good chance that onlyfans is named the way it is because of Kevin Kelly’s article.
Right, and that’s a valuable point especially in historical context. If KK had written his post in a way that emphasized this business strategy while driving home that it still takes about as much work to make $X as a content creator as in anything else, I wouldn’t have had any qualms.
I don’t think it’s a failure of a post about cultural commentary not to be focused on self-help and trying to estimate how hard it is to make a living as a content creator. It’s just not the main point.
The key insight of Kevin Kelly is that if you are a metal band you don’t optimize for the number of listeners on spotify. You don’t try to please everyone but you can focus on providing value to a niche audience that can personally interact with you.
It’s possible to build products that aren’t for a mass audience but get funded by true fans. That might be obvious today in 2020 but in 2008 when the article was written there was no patreon, kickstarter, onlyfans or substack. There a good chance that onlyfans is named the way it is because of Kevin Kelly’s article.
Right, and that’s a valuable point especially in historical context. If KK had written his post in a way that emphasized this business strategy while driving home that it still takes about as much work to make $X as a content creator as in anything else, I wouldn’t have had any qualms.
I don’t think it’s a failure of a post about cultural commentary not to be focused on self-help and trying to estimate how hard it is to make a living as a content creator. It’s just not the main point.