“…the path to profit is to manufacture attention more cheaply than what you get paid for it.” -Ev Williams

A big part of our economy is centered around attention. Some would argue we are living in a de facto attention economy. That is now our scarce resource. There are only so many waking hours in a day and every company and social media platform is fighting for their sliver of your attention.

However, the irony of the attention economy is that, while it has gotten easier to make and share “content” with the world, the quality of that content matters less than the attention it garners. Because that’s what the system rewards. Whatever you may think about Trump, he has mastered the art of attracting attention.

Ev Williams – co-founder of Twitter and CEO of Medium – recently wrote a piece on this topic called: Words still matter. It is very much about the mission driving his publishing platform, Medium. Here is an excerpt:

It’s not that there aren’t journalists, publishers, and thinkers doing great work and putting it out there. But the realities of the attention economy are very tough for those who create things designed for anything but the widest possible (i.e., lowest-common-denominator) audience. For ad-driven sites, the revenue per reader has been dropping for years (while the experience worsens and privacy disintegrates), leaving little room for research, fact checking, or polish… let alone nuance or complexity. The system demands quantity. It demands speed. And it demands little else — except our clicks.

Their solution is the Medium Partner Program. It is an “open paywall” that allows publishers of great content to lock some of their best content behind a paywall. Their view is that to fix the attention economy, we need to move beyond ad-supported lowest-common-denominator content. 

This not entirely novel, but they are calling themselves the first “open paywall” platform. I would be curious to hear your thoughts about this in the comment section below. I’ve had a few people suggest to me that I employ a similar approach for this blog. I’m not convinced.

Today is the 4 year anniversary of this daily blog.

Sure, I’ve missed a few days over the years (my estimate is 4-5 days), but for the most part I have shown up here every day and written something. 

Sometimes that something is very short and/or bad. I’ve had a few people say to me: “I can tell when you’re super busy. Your posts are shorter.” I’m okay with that. Part of this exercise for me is simply about the discipline. 80% of success is showing up, right?

In some ways, what I do here is an anachronism. Here is a good vintage article (2011) that talks about two different schools of thought when it comes to blogging.

The reality is that it’s painfully slow and difficult to build an online audience via a personal blog using your own domain. It takes years, unless you’re a celebrity, which I am most certainly not. That’s why many people give up.

Instead, many people/influencers choose to build their audience on top of an existing network, such as YouTube, Instagram, or Medium. Medium is pretty tempting and I’ve seen lots of bloggers port over their personal blogs.

The idea here is that you simply bring your content to where your/an audience already lives, instead of trying to get them to come to you. 

Of course, one of the risks of this approach is that you don’t own/control the platform. What if people one day decided to stop using MySpace? I like the idea of owning (at least part of) my online presence.

So here’s to another year on the blog. Thanks for reading! I really do appreciate it. Regular scheduled programming will resume tomorrow.

I am reading about the Dashilar Platform this evening. I am sure that some of you are already familiar with what’s happening in this Beijing neighborhood since the platform was founded in 2011. But I am just turning my attention to it.

The Dashilar Platform is an approach to urban regeneration that grew out of a perceived failure, namely the redevelopment of Beijing’s historic Qianmen neighborhood in the lead up to the 2008 Summer Olympics.

In this latter case, a top-down tabula rasa approach was adopted and the entire precinct was demolished to make way for what – I am told – is now a kitschy tourist area that has lost most, if not all, of its urban authenticity.

The Dashilar approach runs counter to this and is trying to work bottom-up. Below is a description of their strategy from the Dashilar Platform website. (It feels like it was written using Google Translate.)

Dashilar Platform is an open platform founded by Beijing Dashilar Investment Limited. As opposed to the conventional concept of blanket development, Dashilar Platform will utilize key nodes which act as catalysts for change in the area. Through research and design investigation, Dashilar Platform will promote certain archetypes, modules, and best-practice examples for both residents and outside investors. The aim is to encourage the community to move independently yet coherently towards the strong yet flexible goal of creating a sustainable community with increasing depth and diversity. All parties are welcome to join Dashilar Platform and participate in our [progressive] Dashilar Project.

Some view this “urban acupuncture” strategy as simply a way to promote gentrification through small injections of culture and design. But gentrification, without displacement, strikes me as being the point given that the area was in decline. It was also probably one of the only sensible approaches given the fragmented ownership and illegal structures in the area.

What stands out for me as I read up on the Dashilar Platform, is the acknowledgement that the market alone will not preserve all of which is thought to be currently desirable in the neighborhood.

Here is an excerpt from a Medium article written by Masha Borak – a journalist and translator based in Beijing:

Collaboration is not the only interesting thing about the [Dashilar] project. In the words of their representative, the platform wants to take on the role of a “urban curator" that would decide which kind of businesses could get cheaper rent so they wouldn’t be left to the market.

Given the discussion that is going on in Toronto right now about 401 Richmond Street West – a non-profit and cultural hub in an area of the city seeing significant development pressures – this struck me as being particularly timely and relevant.

Markets are not perfect.

If any of you have any familiarity with the Dashilar Platform and what has been happening in this neighborhood, I would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.