Content is not the king?

Corbett | September 25, 2003 2:42 AM

Every once-in-a-while you get a newsletter link in your email box that requires checking out. This one got me to take a look, and also involved me into what everyone else was saying, and then got me really thinking that content isn't really the king, then actually made me write a response.

My reply:

Very interesting thread. Especially since I've spent the past 3 years of my life telling carriers, infrastructure providers, handset makers, content providers and investors the same damned thing. They just don't get it. These people are not media people, and we are talking about a media here. Operators are essentially water and electric companies with some fancy interconnecting infrastructure. It will be years before they even begin to get it. Their only real intellectual and business ability is counting how much water is flowing through the dam.

It's cost my company way too much money and fatigue to continue shouting the obvious to them. For what? Large carriers will believe only what they want to believe, so let them slip down the ROI path to hell. We can't stop them, and if they refuse to listen, why bother to educate?

The realistic alternative I think is to create active sub-networks, devaluing the overall larger carrier network, and shifting a portion of the balance of power and spending over to these sub-nets. This is the only sensible option we have. So this becomes about how to build communities around content. Gee, sounds familiar right? But how do we get Ms. 23-yr-old-Nokia-user to even get interested in being part of a community? This is where the real work lies.

Saleem said, "You don't always want to have to actively participate to be entertained..." We found this out the hard way. We thought users were interested in creating or playing with their phone and then using these creations to interact with others. DIY greetings, flash content, mobile maraoke messages, voice to SMS, SMS to voice, contests, lotto, voting...etc. You name it we have probably tried it. But do a lot of people want to actually "think" (ie: actively be involved in creating something like interactive content) in order to communicate or be entertained? No! That's why people would rather sit in front of the TV watching mindless brain numbing programming. Masses are still very passive.

Crmccav said, "The key question then becomes, 'How can we best apply this technology to satisfy a particular type of consumer?'..." This is actually the real point, but is sort of like saying "How do we get a Swedish housewife to want to order some Peking Duck?" You have to convince them it's what will make their life better, their waist slimmer, their hair thicker, their sex life better...which is advertising of course. But in this complicated content delivery model, how can a content provider afford advertising when their working margin is so low? We have done a ton of great advertising, but all we really accomplished was building more users for the carrier, and even worse, teaching the carriers how to build their own interactive campaigns so that they would go and create and deliver their own in-house products based on what was working for us, then find ways to cut us out of the picture. Ouch. So this leaves us the option of low cost self-generated user communities. So the community needs to build out itself.

Msellers said, "So, content isn't king: it's attractor, enabler, catalyst... but it's also the thing that keeps people coming back, and from taking their valuable connections elsewhere. So the content isn't all-important -- it's eclipsed by the social connections -- but at the same time the right sort of content is vital for the success of any online, distributed, or mobile business that is based on connecting people together.."

This is a great comment. In the end, this fancy technical BS all comes down to the same basic business, economic, and cultural mechanics of opening a bar. Why do you go to one bar and not the other? Think about it. Why is one club happening, when next door, it's totally dead? Bars can be in the same neighborhood, offer the same basic decor and functionality, have the same drink menu, at the same price, but some bars are just happening while others are completely empty.

It's all about your clientel. And how do you attract and keep people coming in? Maybe we should just talk to some bar owners and forget about all this value chain mumbo jumbo. I think they will simply say, "It's about people who need to be around other people, We just provide them a place to go where they can be around the same sort of people they click with, and we loosen them up a bit with the booze, and people make new friends, complete their business deal, complain about spouses, and maybe even get laid."

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