Napsterize Your Knowledge: Give To Receive
“Information wants to be free.”-- Stewart Brand
When 19-year-old programmer and college dropout Shawn Fanning wrote a program in 1999 to help his roommate find and share MP3 music files, it allowed Web surfers to open their hard drives to other people and do the same.
He named his program Napster, a nickname given to him years earlier. Over 18 months (and 50 million users) later, the world of computing and knowledge sharing changed.
As Joel Selvin, the San Francisco Chronicle's pop music editor, said: “Napster encouraged people to try new music they wouldn't necessarily spend money to check out.”
The Recording Industry Association of America and the U.S. legal system eventually killed Napster. But its grassroots-fueled rapid growth launched the makings for a new type of distribution channel and value proposition that marketers should recognize and embrace.
The primary lesson: The more that a company shares its knowledge, the more valuable it becomes.
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Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba are the authors of Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force.
