Peter,
Hmm...could have been better phrased, you're right.
What I was trying to say is that a market is a mechanism for balancing
supply and demand - if people are willing to pay more for your goods or
services than it costs you to make them, then you win. If not, then you
lose.
Two external factors impact our market - the first is that many museums
receive public subsidy, and hence there is a presumption of demand rather
that a straightforward 'people want this so it will be economic/profitable
to supply it'. This places an artificial constraint on the operation of a
free market (we technically operate our services as a peculiar hybrid of a
free market and a controlled market, largely due to the non-statutory but
public-service nature of our industry).
The second (which impacts equally across all industries) is that the
Internet has drastically reduced the barriers to entry. It is now perfectly
feasible to buy a domain, set up a hosting account and set up a website all
for £6.99. When things reach this level, you actually don't need a single
visitor ever to come to your site on purpose - you'll probably still receive
enough of an incidental trickle through Google to make the whole exercise
worthwhile.
This situation places the burden of responsibility back onto the person
setting up the site. If the tipping point between publishing and not
publishing is set this low, then the old equations of popularity, demand and
economies of scale go flying out of the window.
In the bad old days, you really had to be pretty certain of amassing a large
enough audience (or having a big enough distribution chain) before you
invested in the printing press. These days, considerations of audience are
largely secondary, certainly to the economics of the situation. This
eventually means that publishing or not-publishing comes down to a personal
or organisational choice rather than a thought-through business proposition.
Nick
Nick Poole
Director
MDA
The Spectrum Building, The Michael Young Centre,
Purbeck Road, Cambridge, CB2 2PD
Telephone: 01223 415 760
http://www.mda.org.uk
http://www.collectionsforall.org.uk
The revised edition of SPECTRUM, the UK museum documentation standard, is
now available. Download it for free at:
http://www.mda.org.uk/spectrum.htm
-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Gray,
Peter
Sent: 15 February 2007 10:49
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: A greener internet?
> In any other medium, it's the market. On the Internet, sometimes
unfortunately, everyone decides
for themselves.
>
> Nick
Isn't that the definition of a market?
Pete
--
Peter M Gray
Museums Officer
East Lothian Council
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