week 7 Into the cloud: the long tail and the attention economy

The topic of this week is the long tail and the attention economy into the cloud. As Ted mentioned that information wants to be free at the same time it is expensive as well. Information is profitable which means information transition in a sense is economic transaction. For instance, online users prefer do some reading through cloud rather than print books. Mass amateurization on the internet leads to decreasingly production in press industry. We argue that whether increasingly mass amateurs could directly impact the press industry. Personally, I think online amateurs indeed influence the production of press industry; on the other hand print books still have its value. In spite of I am enjoying online reading because it is very convenient, but I purchase books because of storability. Obviously, web blog publishing and any other forms of self-publishing attract lots of online users; it is however beneath the press industry.  

I am very interested in the readings of this week. Within Weblogs and the mass amateurization of publishing, author portrays weblogs as efficient tool for distributing the written word rather than a new system of financial reward. Though a mount of self publishing been uploading online, majority of them are amateur. In the other words the competition between online publish and press publish is the struggle between amateur writer and professional writer. For instance, seems like pop culture and classic culture, pop culture can not replace classic culture. Shirky states that weblogs make a radical break for press industry. The other idea inspires me a lot which is mentioned by Anderson. He states that

“This is not just a virtue of online booksellers; it is an example of entirely new economic model for the media and entertainment industries.”

Indeed, online reading becomes popular in recent years, does it mean print industry lost its value? At least, I do not think so. Eight generative values are mentioned in reading Better than Free, which are immediacy, personalization, interpretation, authenticity, accessibility, embodiment, patronage and findability. I agree with it. Instead of online reading, I am more enjoying print books reading because they can be stored.