The Taste Economy

If magazines were containers for taste, the creators of the creator economy are vessels.

If the blockchain and AI take hold, those moats will no longer be data and content creation. Which seems like a bad thing–but what’s left? From my perspective as a nascent entrepreneur, future moats fall into three broad categories: proprietary technology, supply chain innovations, and media that can’t be replaced by AI because it comes from a stro

Magazines were containers for someone else’s taste, and when you read them you were inhabiting that taste. But you were also co-creating with the magazine, because by reading the magazine you were contributing to its fantasy of lifestyle. “Dreaming is free. You can’t be stingy with dreams,” said Franca Sozzani, the late Vogue Italia editor.

“It should be a sound, not an echo,” Tina Brown says about producing a magazine. That was editorial advice, but these days it is good advice for publishers encountering new technology.

If magazines were containers for taste, the creators of the creator economy are vessels.

The blockchain inverts the digital advertising landscape because it makes all transactions public. Data is no longer proprietary. So if you wanted to take advantage of that information by, say, serving New Balance ads to Nike .SWOOSH token holders you would have to create real estate on the internet where people actually spend time. You know, like

For the past 10 years, taste couldn’t be monetized. Soon it will be one of the only things that can.