Digital Media: Distributed Commerce will Reduce Friction

Fred calls it Superdistribution, and I think it’s one of the most important points he’s ever made.

Superdistribution means turning every consumer into a distribution
partner. Every person who buys a record, a movie, reads a newspaper, a
book, every person who buys a Sonos or a Vespa becomes a retailer of
that item. It’s word of mouth marketing, referral marketing, but with
one important difference. The consumer is the retailer.

I want to turn everyone on to Arcade FIre. I want to them to sell 100
million Arcade Fire mp3s. And I want to get paid for doing my part.

Distributed commerce will and up being a natural result of the information revolution.  Traditional commercial models were built to overcome the limitations of time and space.  Since digital media is not really bound by these boundaries, I expect that Fred’s model of superdistribution will flourish there first.  In a way, we are getting glimpses of how this will work, with Napster, Bit Torrent, Skype and YouTube.  The behavioral requirements are being established, and legal and commercial models will follow.

And, this will be truly disruptive.

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