Month: June 2014

There are two trends creating the market for micropayments for content.  They are impacting Content Creation and Content Distribution.

1.  Content Creation: Shift from Analog to Digital:  

In  Analog days, there was a high cost, both in dollars and man-hours, to actually create a piece of content:

• PICTURES:  TV/Movies required specialized cameras, large crews to be organized (and paid) to complete a project.
• PRINT: Magazines / Newspapers  /Books require editorial staffs, large printing presses to deliver words on paper.

In Digital Times, this can all be accomplished with a mobile phone.

2.  Content Distribution: Proliferation of Internet Connected Screens: 

In the analog days, there was a high cost, both in dollars and man-hours, to actual distribute a piece of content.

• PICTURES: TV/ Movies: requires physical delivery of  reels, competition for space in Movie theaters that requires negotiated contracts.  Televisions were bulky / laying cable is expensive and time-intensive.
• PRINT: Magazines / Newspapers  /Books: requires large crews to  delivery product / inventory storage / physical locations to sell.

Now, we have the internet, which is connected to more screens than people.

Results: 

The result is that there an super-abundance of content being created and consumed.  Bu t what’s interesting is that people are actually consuming this NEW content, and not simply ignoring it:  People are watching youtube channels and reading niche blogs.  This is not to say that Analog content dies.  (see my previous post).  Rather, a Digital day will begin.

I’ve been thinking a lot about content lately.  In particular, the value of it.   Digital Technology has enabled an abundance of content to be published, and the Internet has enabled that content to be distributed.  There is certainly economic value to be created in the sheer scale of what is going on.  Or to put it another way, it seems likely that new business models will emerge to match the shift in how content is being created and consumed.

But what of this content? As I browse the web I think to myself: there must be limit to how much content can actually be consumed.  Forget about the bad content, I’m just focusing on the good stuff, screw that, even the Great stuff.   You can’t even get through all the great stuff on the internet!

I have a hypothesis that the rate at which great content can be  made is faster than the rate at which it can be consumed.

For example, I am a regular reader of the New Yorker magazine.  A publication that has maybe 3 or 4 long-form articles and number of shorter ones alongside that.  I’m a committed reader, and I rarely get through the whole magazine each week.

Now take a look at what’s going on with the Internet:  It’s the New Yorker at exponential multitudes. There’s everything from long form to tweets and a whole lot of interesting dada in between.

This doesn’t mean that the content shouldn’t be created, just that the same factors, such as luck and the right connections, will continue to play out in the world of digital distribution as they did in analog.

I guess at the end of the day (or whenever you choose to consume)  more Great Content creators will be able to make a living of their creations.  And there ought to be a value in having more great content in the world.

//Potential Next Post//

And further, and perhaps the next post topic, if more Content and be supported by direct consumer payment as opposed to advertising, there could be some interesting side effects for the Brand advertisers.   If Brands no longer rely on commercial advertising, they will need to rely more on Product Quality rather emotional value / bond to the product. And that might lead to better quality overall.  Something to Ponder.

 

A post from a writer that outlines how we can lose Great stories when we rely on Popularity as the metric of quality:

They understand that sometimes great stories aren’t always the most popular ones. They understand that EVEN A STORY WITH A LIMITED AUDIENCE CAN BE WORTH PUBLISHING. The alternative is having a world of journalism written entirely by amateurs with no experience, no education, and limited talent. Or a world in which great writers bypass fantastic stories because not everybody in the universe is going to read it. And that’s a pretty lame world, frankly.

Full Story Here: 

We must work together to free content from the grip of advertisers.  The beautiful creations that people all over the world are uploading to the Internet everyday deserve to be more than space for a company to display and advertisement or build their brand.  Page Views should not be driving metric for a budding creator to worry about.  The metric   should be people who are wiling to pay for it.

The creators of content will  only be free when they no longer have to worry about advertisers supporting their work.  Together as a world we can support it.