Ten years ago it would have been inconceivable to say to entertainment professionals that audiences were turning the entertainment business model on its head. Sure there was a lot of talk about technology, piracy and convergence; but surprisingly little about consumers. Television, film and even games had a tradition of keeping people at a distance– at the far end of a screen. Nielsen ratings, retail units sold and other metrics treated audiences like blobs. Blogs hadn’t been invented. There was no YouTube. And in the entertainment business, there was no grand tradition of “the customer is always right.” Today, the line ...

I’m fascinated by the way some people become fiercely loyal to certain entertainment properties. Their dedication is cult-like. The marketing guru Douglas Atkin, in his book The Culting of Brands, has a similar fascination with brand loyalists. He thought, why not study real cults? It turns out that people become addicted to cult brands for more or less the same reasons that people become committed to cults like the Moonies. And that companies cultivate unshakable allegiance through the same basic techniques as those used by, say, Hare Krishna. Asks The ...

In January, the Chinese government announced that the country will soon surpass the US with the most Internet users. With 210 million Internet users at the end of 2007, China is only 5 million users away from topping the US as the world’s largest Internet market. But markets are much more than numbers – they represent demographics, psychographics, communities and fans. Check out Henry Jenkins’ current posts about his China travels for a great read. Lead Investigator at the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium ...