me,’ said Kevin.
‘Andrei?’
Andrei was silent. Instinctively, he would have said that it did. But as Chris had reminded him, it was one of his principles to be open to challenge on the scope of Deep Connectedness. ‘I’d have to think about it,’ he said eventually.
Chris nodded. ‘Let me add one thing. Companies like us, we all survive through advertising. That’s reality. We allow advertising and that gives us the money to keep building the great services we want to build. And you know what? The way I see it, the advertising we do is a form of Deep Connectedness as well.’
‘That’s a new one,’ said Ben.
‘No. I’ve always thought so. We enable companies to connect with their customers in a way no one else can. And to me, if you have a broad conceptualization of Deep Connectedness – both of what it can be about and who it can be between – then that’s a form of Deep Connectedness like any other. But the truth is, however good we are now, the most efficient model of advertising will always win. At the moment, we target better than anybody else, which is why our advertising revenues have always been so strong. But the way we do advertising, that’s already yesterday’s model. The model I’ve described, that’s tomorrow’s model. If we don’t do it, someone else will. And I would hate to see that happen. Not only because of what that would do to the value of the five per cent that I own of this fine company, but because I think Fishbowl does and will do Deep Connectedness better and more efficiently than anybody else will ever do it. I think we’re more honest and more transparent. I don’t think anyone else would have had the cojones to write the Mea Culpa statement, Andrei. That was a Stakhanovite thing to do. But if we don’t lead, if we don’t develop the model of tomorrow, someone else will take our place. To me, that’s another perspective on thinking about why this is about Deep Connectedness. It’s about making sure we’re the ones still here to provide it.’
‘We’re doing pretty well with what we’ve got,’ said Ben.
‘Ben, this model of advertising will carry us through some way yet, I grant you that. But not in the long term. Of course, you could ask people to pay – we don’t have to be a thirty or fifty billion dollar company. We could be a five billion dollar one. That would be OK, right? All we’d have to do is ask the five hundred million users we’ll have in a year’s time to pay, say, ten dollars each year. Ten bucks. How many would do it?’
‘Some would,’ said Ben.
Kevin smirked. ‘You and your grandmother.’
‘Some would,’ said Chris. ‘Maybe once. But you know what else would happen? Someone would come along and provide our exact same service for “free”, by doing exactly what we’re talking about tonight, and create the thirty or fifty billion dollar company we could have been. And not even the ones who were prepared to pay their ten bucks first time round will pay it the second year, and then we’re nothing. That’s human nature.’ Chris grinned. ‘Never fails to disappoint.’
‘I don’t care about how much we’re worth,’ said Andrei.
‘What I’m saying is that if you’re not worth a lot, you’re going to be worth nothing.’
Kevin grinned.
‘Forget that,’ said Andrei. ‘Let’s say this is a way of extending Deep Connectedness – I need to think about that, but maybe it is. Why do we do this now?’
‘Why would we wait? We want the most Deep Connectedness, in the broadest sense, don’t we? We’ve never waited before.’
‘Maybe James is right. Maybe this will kill our reputation.’
‘Andrei, James is dead wrong.’
Everything Chris had ever seen had convinced him that people couldn’t care less what use was made of them or their data on the internet, as long as they didn’t have to pay for it. They wouldn’t care about this either, he was sure, or at least not enough to do anything about it. But he didn’t put the argument quite that bluntly.
‘People don’t like change, even when it’s bringing them even better Deep Connectedness. It’ll take some time for them to see its benefits. So, yeah, there’ll be people who scream, but after a while they’ll stop.’ Chris paused. ‘Let’s do an experiment. Let’s sell this concept to a couple of advertisers, do it for a while – four, five months – see