Comments on: Stock and flow

By: Jessica

Jessica — Tue, 17 May 2011 17:02:30 +0000

I love this so much. You should know that this idea is still making the conference circuit. I heard about it at the recent Confab content strategy conference. A really helpful analogy — thanks for writing it up so thoughtfully!

By: Simply the best « Snarkmarket

Simply the best « Snarkmarket — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 20:03:18 +0000

[…] it turns out that Snarkmarket’s highest-traffic single post is Robin’s “Stock and flow,” which is a little over a year old. Not only a good candidate for the blog’s “best of” […]

By: Stock & Flow « Looking at Local History

Stock & Flow « Looking at Local History — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 20:50:20 +0000

[…] weeks ago a link from a photography blog that I dip into regularly led me to post by Robin Sloan at Snarkmarket. The concept of stock and flow may not be ‘much of an a-ha’ but it made my brain fizz a bit and […]

By: Deep Sleep Issue #5 – The Sea, Plus a Few Thoughts About Online Magazines | la pura vida

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 21:41:27 +0000

[…] Recently I’ve bee wondering what a hybrid of these online magazines and the standard daily blog might look like. One concept that has always resonated with me is the Stock and Flow idea put forth by Snark Market back in January. […]

By: Escape from Thunderdome « Snarkmarket

Escape from Thunderdome « Snarkmarket — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 03:06:22 +0000

[…] first I thought it was maybe a stock and flow thing. You know: Flow is a treadmill, and you can’t spend all of your time running on the […]

By: Arsene Hodali

Arsene Hodali — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 08:06:25 +0000

Hey, just wanted to comment about how much this post inspired me to reflect on my own inner conflicts with media and life.

I actually wrote about it on my blog in details (1700+ words) and I added my own views to it. Check it out below, see whether or not I’m onto something or just full of crap. And btw, yes this does sound like a shameless self-promotion but…

–> Stock & Flow: The Hard Part’s The Switch http://ow.ly/34d8q

By: Susan Friedmann

Susan Friedmann — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 15:18:22 +0000

Just learned about flow and stock from Dennis Callahan at PodCamp 5. After doing a search I found this post which I absolutely love. It makes so much sense and certainly helps put much of the social media revolution into perspective for me. Thanks!

By: Jay

Jay — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 08:49:30 +0000

nice post!! i would like to add that it takes time and patience to develop the ‘stock’ whereas to develop the ‘flow’ you can start anytime. So one should start working on ‘stock’ asap.
I am no economist,so am not sure you’ll agree, but this is what my conclusion is.

By: Stock and Flow : clusterflock

Stock and Flow : clusterflock — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 15:52:01 +0000

[…] A theory of web viability: I feel like flow is ascendant these days, for obvious reasons—but we neglect stock at our own peril. I mean that both in terms of the health of an audience and, like, the health of a soul. Flow is a tread mill, and you can’t spend all of your time running on the tread mill. Well, you can. But then one day you’ll get off and look around and go: Oh man. I’ve got nothing here. […]

By: Christie Nicholson

Christie Nicholson — Wed, 26 May 2010 18:54:23 +0000

Hi Robin, Thought you might be interested in this Globe&Mail article, “Information Rich and Attention Poor” published last fall, that also describes the metaphor of stock and flow.

http://bit.ly/3oJXjn

Here’s the relevant p’graph:
Knowledge is evolving from a “stock” to a “flow.” Stock and flow – for example, wealth and income – are concepts familiar to accountants and economists. A stock of knowledge may be thought of as a quasi-permanent repository – such as a book or an entire library – whereas the flow is the process of developing the knowledge. The old Encyclopedia Britannica was quintessentially a stock; Wikipedia is the paradigmatic example of flow. Obviously, a stock of knowledge is rarely permanent; it depreciates like any other form of capital. But electronic information technology is profoundly changing the rate of depreciation. By analogy with the 24-hour news cycle (which was an early consequence of the growing abundance of video bandwidth as cable television replaced scarce over-the-air frequencies), there is now the equivalent of a 24-hour knowledge cycle – “late-breaking knowledge,” as it were. Knowledge is becoming more like a river than a lake, more and more dominated by the flow than by the stock. What is driving this?

Then Nicholson goes on to describe the possible (and awesome) drivers behind WHY knowledge has evolved from stock to flow. You say it’s for obvious reasons, but I think the reasons are still quite fascinating and worthwhile.

(It is an excerpt from a much longer speech he gave at the Fiesole Retreat in Glasgow, Scotland, July ‘09.)

Interesting stuff!
lemme know your thoughts,
- christie