Online Economics 2001: David Wins,

Online Economics 2001: David Wins, Goliath Loses

Daniel Rutter writes hardware reviews. Pretty funny too. His latest piece (published at shorewalker) is not about hardware. It’s about the 2001 web economy.

“So there’s only so much gold in them thar hills. Big companies may be able to get hold of more of it by digging a big expensive mine, but it turns out that single people squatting by the river with a pan end up with better margins.”

“Big media companies have huge overheads to pay. They’re companies with three hundred yards of fluorescent lighting, cleaners that come through every night, fire exits to handle an office occupancy of a thousand persons, cafes on the bottom floor and a masseur who comes in on Fridays. They’ve got marketing departments, creative departments, programming departments and system administration departments. They’ve got ads on TV and on radio and on the sides of buses. They’ve got security guards and parking lots lit all night by metal halide lamps. They’re companies with sound and video editing booths, with which they create multimedia content that, rounded down to the nearest thousand, nobody ever views.

All of this stuff, you’ll be staggered to learn, costs money.”