I was drawn to the usage of the word, “scale” appearing in the Washington Post (March 30) article that came under the title, “I worked for Jared Kushner. He’s the wrong businessman to reinvent government.” It reads:
“Why would you buy a newspaper if you expect it to scale the way software does? Why assume that media and software have the same risk profile and dynamics? Kushner would argue that because Gawker started with one person, that meant you didn’t need head count to scale a media company. The Internet makes media more scalable, of course — distribution is unlimited and gained at little marginal cost. But that doesn’t mean a media company is just like Uber.”
Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary provides definitions of “scale” as a verb:
1.to climb to the top of sth very high and steep
2.to remove scales from a fish
to remove tartar from the teeth by scraping.
to change the size of sth.
To me none of the above definitions seems to exactly fit the nuance of “scale” used in the above quote. It seems to me that “scale” in the above paragraph have something to do with making profit and “scalable” means profitable, but I’m not sure.
What does “scale” and “scalable” mean? Are the words, “scale” and "scalabe" used in such a way very often?