Shawn Fanning, who founded Napster, discusses how licensing rules shaped media sharing and why people are moving toward synchronous experiences like co-viewing and shopping online. He points to multiplayer gaming as proof that shared real-time experiences work at scale.
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What was most, I guess, most interesting about what Napster represented that no longer exists was the fact that there was a well, you know, a breadth of selection available through Napster that has never really been replicated since because of the way the licensing frameworks work. You know, if search engines were responsible for going out and getting proactive permission to index sites, the internet would look very different and would have, you know, evolved very differently. But so the fact that media sharing services are required to start from zero and get permission as opposed to say making things available and then respecting rights holders who claim ownership of works is an unfortunate paradigm that had a big effect on the success of— or the failure of my first startup. Whether things will continue and trend towards, you know, the sort of ADD you know, bite-sized consumption. I have to assume that yes, it will. I think the biggest change, the biggest trend that might have an effect on that has to do with the ability, as a result of Flash 10.1 and RTMFP, for people to start to consume things together online. And so, not to push my current startup, but what we're focused on is trying to really make it possible to— Share stuff synchronously as if you're in the same room. And so that means, you know, you're able to go and watch, you know, a TV show and see the person's face and experience it together as if you're there together. You'll be able to shop online together and browse. And so that ability to do things synchronously as opposed to sort of the asynchronous web right now which allows you to have a large number of connections but really have— you have so many things competing for your attention at any given time that it's hard to imagine any one thing capturing your attention long enough to, you know, be successful. I think until that transition happens and there are these more rich, deep, meaningful connections where you're seeing a real person on the other end, it's unlikely that that will— that trend will change. But— so, yeah, I think the ability to actually have— live shared experiences online. Really, the gaming world, the massive multiplayer gaming world has sort of been the only thing that I can think of where you do have these kind of rich, long experiences that develop friendships that feel like they're, you know, they're shared experiences that help grow a relationship, a friendship and allow you to kind of collectively invest in media.
