In response to Matt Beadle’s blog post, I wrote the following comment. I thought it was interesting enough to post here too.
Most internet companies are run, initially, by creative technologists. Unfortunately most start-ups and internet companies, unless properly managed, quickly become victims of their own success. Aggressive recruitment, rapid hardware expansion, reliance on advertising revenue and an inability to scale combine to produce businesses that are primarily concerned with supporting themselves and their growing or already bloated infrastructure. Segregation of resources into technical/editorial is a further problem, distancing the business from its original goal.
In these cases it is easy for a company to lose focus, and their mission statement become diluted as they endeavour to cross-sell, upsell, provide business and professional services and generally spread themselves too thinly while neglecting their core values.
The businesses you mention (Google, Yahoo, Digg, Reddit, Plentyoffish) are, above all, tech companies. They produce very little original content, acting instead as a delivery mechanism for 3rd party information or as old-fashioned application service providers. They can afford to be run solely by techs as they effectively outsource their editorial team to the entire internet.
The problems occur when you have a business which creates and publishes it’s own data and content. Unless you have a clear mission statement, effective management of resources and all your staff working towards the same goal, you will inevitably end up with competing groups and views within the company.
The very existence of an “editorial” team, reporting to or working alongside an technical team, is enough to introduce conflict into a business situation, unless very well managed. The reasons for this include:
- advertising revenue becomes paramount, driving development to the
- ultimate importance of end-user is lost and replaced by advertiser acceptance and/or editorial whim
- editorial staff reliant on technologists for delivery of data and information
- tech dissatisfaction with speed of progress and/or implementation of new ideas
- the corporatisation of workflows and practices akin to a behemoth government department, or IBM.
The internet is unique in that the delivery mechanism of the product and the product itself are very often one and the same. Digg is a website which delivers information about websites. It’s owners need to deliver a framework for it to do it’s job – no editorial staff needed. The Guardian, on the other hand, create a mammoth amount of content, without which it’s website would be redundant – large editorial staff needed.
Both these cases are clear cut and it’s obvious which group steers development within the company. Problems occur in the grey area in between, and you need to have a frank debate amongst yourselves as to who controls the direction of the company.