The limits of leverage?

CITY CITY BANG BANG

- SANTOSH DESAI

THUMBS UP: There is money to be made in the attention business, for it is now easy to leverage one’s popularity in one field into another. The world of social media has figured out a way to monetise attention

The influencer is a creature of our times. That the ability to influence someone should become a fullfledged profession is a tribute to the new economy that is hinged on attention. Since the only truly scarce resource in this world is increasingly going to be time, and with it the attention we can accord to anything, those that are able to lay claim to our time are truly valuable. Historically, only celebrities enjoyed this kind of attention and hence only they had the ability to monetise it. Today that market has got democratised thanks to social media.

There is money to be made in the attention business, for it is now easy to leverage one's popularity in one field into another. The world of social media has figured out a way to monetise attention the biggest technology companies of the world have learned how to turn our attention into their profits, and the same is now true for anyone with an audience.

The idea of leverage is the central concept here. In a financial sense, it is to make the most of what one has. It typically refers to the ability to borrow on the back of one's assets. It is a legitimate part of the business landscape for that is what allows for growth. Unless one goes overboard.