Anderson & Arrington on Rose: The Impact of Modern Day Pirates

I'm not much of a Charlie Rose buff, but when he invites two individuals who I admire tremendously onto his show, I have to pay attention. Earlier this month, Chris Anderson and Michael Arrington joined him for a broadcast on 'the future of technology and the internet.' For those who aren't familiar with those two, Anderson is the author of a phenomenal business book, The Long Tail (which happens to be heavily focused on the music industry), while Arrington is the head-hancho at TechCrunch, a blog about Web 2.0 startups and one of my first destinations every morning.

Rose started off with Anderson, and reiterated how TIME Magazine deemed him 1 of the 100 people shaping the world. Anderson explained how technology is changing the world of ideas. As he was developing his projects, he gave up IP concerns and benefited by receiving tremendous amounts of feedback in return. Anderson addressed what he believed as two additional economies that are often overlooked by the monetary economy: the attention and reputation economies. He believes the attention economy is crucial because 'time equals money' and it dictates how we spend our limited time. The reputation economy is defined by word of mouth and manifested through mediums such as ebay's rankings and what we link to.

I agreed with almost every point Anderson made in The Long Tail related to the state of the music industry, and it was no different when he made mention of it towards the end of his segment. As he explains, musicians "don't make money selling product...[they] make money selling performance!" He argues:

Considering the cost of distributing a digital track is essentially zero, why not use the product as marketing for performance...spread the undifferentiated [album] to stimulate demand for the really scarce thing of seeing the band [in person]

When it was Mike Arrington's turn, he discussed his obsession with his current job of evaluating the latest internet startups. Here's a quote that summarizes his take:

I love to cover [the Googles of the future]. They're either 20 years old or they just left high paying consulting job...whatever it is, they have an itch they have to scratch...they start a company...I love it! I think they're modern day pirates. They want to destroy existing companies and rip them apart...and they have this crazy view on the utility of risk...they're gamblers

As a lawyer in his previous profession, Arrington had become infatuated with entrepreneurs and their seemingly crazy ideas. As he tells Charlie Rose, he cannot wait for myspace or facebook or (fill in the blank) to have their "google moment," when they turn themselves into a monster source of wealth. Since he started TechCrunch in 2005, his website has quickly become one of the most trusted and reliable sources for daily information on the 'modern-day-pirates' of the web world.