Tools and the long tail

Have you ever made a video that was seen by someone you didn’t know? Or written something that got shared outside of your inner circle?

The odds of either of these things happening a generation ago were close to zero. Now, it’s common. The skeptics said that people wanted to watch videos, not make them.

Nearly everyone with a phone is now a self-published media creator. The combination of production tools and free distribution has completely upended the media, which in turn has upended the culture.

65,000,000 people have uploaded a video to YouTube. In 1980, there were 8 movie studios actively producing mass market movies.

More than 10,000,000 people have uploaded a song to Spotify… you get the idea.

And now, it changes again. The number of people writing software tools and games is on the very same curve. We’re going to go from hundreds of software companies to millions, in just a few years.

Change the tools (and their distribution) and you change the future.