{"id":17443,"date":"2010-03-07T19:42:59","date_gmt":"2010-03-07T18:42:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/?p=17443"},"modified":"2010-03-07T19:43:25","modified_gmt":"2010-03-07T18:43:25","slug":"marc-andreessen-per-i-vecchi-media-e-ora-di-bruciare-la-flotta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/2010\/03\/07\/marc-andreessen-per-i-vecchi-media-e-ora-di-bruciare-la-flotta\/","title":{"rendered":"Marc Andreessen: per i vecchi media \u00e8 ora di bruciare la flotta"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Techcrunch<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"Legend has it that when Cortes landed in Mexico in the 1500s, he ordered his men to burn the ships that had brought them there to remove the possibility of doing anything other than going forward into the unknown. Marc Andreessen<\/a> has the same advice for old media companies: \u201cBurn the boats.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yesterday, Andreessen was in New York City and we met up. We got to talking about how media companies are handling the digital disruption of the Internet when he brought up the Cortes analogy. In particular, he was talking about print media such as newspapers and magazines, and his longstanding recommendation that they should shut down their print editions and embrace the Web wholeheartedly. \u201cYou gotta burn the boats,\u201d he told me, \u201cyou gotta commit.\u201d His point is that if traditional media companies don\u2019t burn their own boats, somebody else will.<\/p>\n

Andreessen once famously put the New York Times<\/em> on deathwatch\"\" for its stubborn insistence on trying to save and prolong its legacy print business. With all the recent excitement in media quarters recently over Apple\u2019s upcoming iPad and other tablet computers, and their potential to create a market for paid digital versions and subscriptions of newspapers and magazines, I wondered if Andreessen still felt the same way. Does he think the iPad will change anything?<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Oh, and he points out, that the iPad will have a \u201cfantastic browser.\u201d No matter how many iPads the Apple sells, the Web will always be the bigger market. \u201cThere are 2 billion people on the Web,\u201d he says. \u201cThe iPad will be a huge success if it sells 5 million units.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite trying time and again, Andreessen\u2019s observation is that media companies have no aptitude for technology, nor do they really understand what technology companies do. The one thing technology companies do really well is deal with constant disruption. \u201cMicrosoft is going through this right now,\u201d he points out, \u201cBallmer is not complaining about it.\u201d He\u2019s tackling it head on. So did Intel when Andy Grove gutted it to shift from memory chips to microprocessors. So does every technology company CEO. It is ingrained in the industry Andreessen comes from, so it is just obvious to him: \u201cYou are cruising along, and then technology changes. You have to adapt.\u201d Media companies need to learn that lesson fast. To the extent that their products are now delivered and consumed as digital bits, they too are becoming technology companies.<\/p>\n

Beyond the iPad, he believes that all the talk once again from big media companies about erecting paywalls or somehow charging for news, articles and video online is shortsighted at best. He comes back to the simple fact that the open Web is where the users are. Talking about paywalls and paid apps is like saying, \u201cWe know where the market is and we are not going to go there.\u201d Print newspapers and magazines will never get there, he argues, until they burn the boats and shut down their print operations. Yes, there are still a lot of people and money in those boats\u2014billions of dollars in revenue in some cases. \u201cAt risk is 80% of revenues and headcount,\u201d Andreessen acknowledges, \u201cbut shift happens.\u201d You\u2019d have to be crazy to burn the boats. Crazy like Cortes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via Techcrunch Legend has it that when Cortes landed in Mexico in the 1500s, he ordered his men to burn the ships that had brought them there to remove the possibility of doing anything other than going forward into the unknown. Marc Andreessen has the same advice for old media companies: \u201cBurn the boats.\u201d Yesterday, … Leggi tutto<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,30],"tags":[121,159,160],"class_list":["post-17443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economia","category-media","tag-editoria","tag-giornali","tag-giornalismo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17443"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17446,"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17443\/revisions\/17446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}