What essentially caused media companies to be “bamboozled” by the Internet?
John Motavalli: Basically, the Internet operates on different paradigms than media. Big media is produced by people in New York or L.A. and dispensed to the public who then purchase it, and it’s not hugely interactive. The paradigm of the Internet that works the best is one that is based on not just consumer input but consumer operation. A successful Internet company, like an eBay, is completely operated by the consumer. It’s not about editors or producers supplying content; it’s about the consumer supplying the content and the company providing the tools to enable that to happen. So, in the very hierarchical media-type situation in New York and L.A., [media executives] simply didn’t get it. The Internet was just not set up to do what they do. Even if they had understood this, I don’t think they could have set up an eBay. It would have had to come from someone who was a geek because you’d have to know how to create the software for it. That kind of expertise did not exist in any media
