Sam Ford in Forbes

Check out this excerpt from Forbes‘ recent piece on the rise of the social video, “Gangnam Style Hits 1BB Views: Social Videos To Skyrocket In 2013“—featuring Sam Ford:

[To] be appreciated, content must be seen. Methods of distribution are various. Sam Ford, co-author with Henry Jenkins and Joshua Green of a new book coming out January 21 called Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture, looks at self-distribution from known creators (example, the Seinfeld episodes) as one of many new experiments being sown across the Internet. “They [personalities like Seinfeld, Nike, et al.] are a trusted commodity,” says Ford. “And their audience is enthusiastic and perhaps willing to enter uncharted waters in pursuit of their content. But these experiments are laying the groundwork for business models to come.”

An entire chapter of Spreadable Media looks at independent creators building new models around online circulation. “From animator Nina Paley to science fiction author Cory Doctorow to videogame makers to indy bands,” says Ford, “producers are creating content that couldn’t have been made in a traditional business world and creating new models to make profit from it. From indy bands allowing content to circulate freely and then building tour dates and marketing plans based on where the content becomes popular to relying on word-of-mouth practices and donations from enthusiasts to circulate media content to new audiences, these groundbreaking creators have been—for the past several years—experimenting with new models that will likely be picked up and incorporated by bigger media companies over time, as they try to work out what they will do in the online space.”

Read the entire article here.

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